The years-long string of anonymous nighttime sexual assaults on lone women walking the streets over on the east side of town has begun again, apparently because the weather has improved.  Three women have been assaulted; the perpetrator pushed two of them to the ground and reached up beneath their skirts and actually followed the third victim into her  home.  See the Iowa Press-Citizen coverage here.

Like this blog, the best part about online newspapers are that anyone with access to a computer can comment on their stories.  In this case, it yielded breathtaking results.  Here’s one of  my favorite anonymous commenters (grammar and punctuation preserved):

the only girls stumbling around alone in mini-skirts a 2am on friday/saturday night are drunk. as a woman i think they deserve what they got. its sheer stupidity. don’t even try to make the argument that it could be a student studying late. i was a student at iowa for 6 years and i studied late and always got home fine, but thats because i wasn’t intoxicated and i wasn’t dressed promiscuously. and if i was… there’s always NITE-RIDE… blame the victim, at this point i have no sympathy. my tax dollars are paying for that whore-shuttle and their not even using it.

Of course, there’s a fine line between warning people against doing something unsafe and morally condemning these crime victims as “whores.”  This person doesn’t have a fine enough marker to draw such a line.