First Creepy-People-In-The-City Story. The First of Many, Apparently.

"False Livery Cab Driver Arrested on Rape Charge"
by Vivekananda Nemana
for the Washington Square News, published February 25, 2008.

Note: When reporting this I realized for the first time exactly how competitive New York news can be. I had nothing against the Daily News, the New York Post, the Gothamist, and the New York Times. Ah, the frustrations of an inexperienced WSN journalist!

Thanks to two women, New Yorkers now have one less thing to worry about. 

Monica Maneiro, a 23-year-old employee at Scores West, a gentleman's bar in Chelsea, was partly responsible for last Sunday's arrest of Torkieh Sadageh, a 28-year-old man who allegedly posed as a livery cab driver and attempted to rape Maneiro and another woman outside nightspots in Chelsea. His arrest is now thought to be related to two similar incidences in the Lower East Side last September and October. Both neighborhoods are frequented by NYU students. 

Sadageh has been charged with the rape of the other woman on the same night. 

Maneiro alleged that after she had gotten into the fake livery cab after work, around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, Sadageh pulled over and forced himself on top of her. She escaped from the vehicle and called 911 to report his license plate number. 

"I didn't really fight back too much because if I would have he probably would have gotten more upset," Maneiro said in a statement to the press. 

The other woman was not so lucky. According to press reports, he picked her and her three friends up minutes after the first incident. She said that after he had dropped her friends off, he raped her in the back seat. She also took down his plate number, which connected the two attacks. 

According to news sources, Sadageh admitted to assaulting Maneiro but denied raping the other woman. He was arrested Sunday night outside his home in Brooklyn. 

"They were drunk women. This was an accusation. Nothing is rape," he shouted to reporters while being escorted to a police vehicle in East Harlem. 

Sadageh is currently in the custody of the New York City Department of Corrections. 

Police also suspect Sadageh is connected to the livery cab sexual assaults of women outside of The Box bar in the Lower East Side last fall. Sadageh initially admitted to those attacks but later recanted his statement. 

NYU Public Safety Vice President Jules Martin said there are measures students can take to help avoid situations like these. 

"At NYU we strongly suggest to all students to use the 'buddy system' when navigating the streets of New York - regardless of the neighborhood, especially late at night or early morning," he wrote in an e-mail. 

Martin noted the importance of traveling on well-lit streets, using yellow taxis when possible and calling Public Safety and the Wellness Exchange in addition to 911 when victimized in an attack. 

But NYU students said that they aren't too concerned with safety. 

"I kind of just assume I'm safe," CAS sophomore Meg Coslett said. "If you go out, you're not really worrying about being safe, you just care about getting home."