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Anna Giaritelli joined the Washington Examiner in 2015 and focuses on homeland security, immigration, and border issues. Her coverage of the border crisis won runner-up for the 2024 Dao Prize in investigative reporting. Anna has traveled to the border on more than 60 occasions since 2018 and continues to cover human smuggling, the evolution of the war on drugs, domestic terrorism, and migration trends.
“In this op-ed, I spoke out about my assault for the first time, beginning my public journey as a survivor.”
A man went to prison for assaulting me. DC Police crime stats show he was never arrested.
By Anna Giaritelli | August 14, 2025
Five years ago, I was violently attacked and sexually assaulted in broad daylight in Washington, D.C., by a homeless man. He served time in federal prison for what he did to me. But if you look for evidence that the attack happened in the city’s crime statistics, you won’t find it.
The truth of what happened to me and the D.C. government’s role in it is as much a public scandal as it is a personal trauma. D.C. police covered up the unspeakable wrong that the stranger did to me. Even though a judge sentenced my attacker to hard time in prison, D.C. police leadership would rather deceive the public and appear less dangerous than list mine and countless other sexual assaults on their website.
The extent of crime in D.C. has been debated by the Left and Right since President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he would take federal action to crack down on problems in the District of Columbia.
But if the public wants to have an honest conversation about crime in D.C., the MPD will first have to be honest about how prevalent crime is. Without MPD’s honesty about the crimes that it has chosen to hide from its public-facing stats page, the White House cannot get an accurate picture of how bad the problem actually is and adequately fix it.
For me, the story began long before that attack. I was a Washingtonian for seven years. I was saving up money to buy a condo and planned to spend the next few decades in Washington, the intersection of politics and media. D.C.’s crime problem was something you lived with. You took Ubers and Lyfts, told others if you were walking after dark so they knew when you were home, and knew to be aware of your surroundings, almost to the point of paranoia. (Ladies?)
On a Saturday morning in 2020, I walked out of my apartment on Capitol Hill to mail a package at a post office several blocks from the U.S. Capitol. I put on my black sweatshirt and black sweatpants then headed out the door.
I never made it to the post office.
The full op-ed may be viewed here.