This certainly shows Escorts to be second class citizens. LE & Pro Journal conspired to ruin the lady's life. How dare she report a crime? "After all, she asked for it!" (Not my personal opinion.) Forget about equal protection under the law.
skb
Man charged with assaulting escort
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
By Amanda Milkovits, Providence Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE –– A Massachusetts lawyer moonlighting as an escort told the police that a man who called her for an appointment attacked her at knife point and tried to rob her.
Providence police Maj. Thomas Oates III said that William V. Lapierre had contacted the woman through an advertisement for escorts in the adult section of the Providence Phoenix newspaper. According to the account the woman gave detectives, the encounter in the early hours of Sunday, April 26, became a fight for her life.
Nina C. Baccala, 36, of North Providence, told the police that Lapierre invited her into his first-floor apartment at 18 Barrows St. before 2:30 a.m. and offered to get her a drink, according to Oates and a police report. Instead, Lapierre returned from the kitchen with a large knife, according to a police report.
Baccala said that Lapierre told her: “I’m not going to give you money. You’re gonna give me your money.”
Baccala told the police that Lapierre held the knife to her throat and threw her on the couch, according to the police report. Baccala sprayed Lapierre in the face with a chemical spray and fought him off when he tried to stab her, according to the police report. She fled outside and called the police.
While the police were frisking Lapierre, he told the officers that he’d just been in an altercation with a woman. The officers seized a knife with an eight-inch blade from Lapierre’s kitchen.
Lapierre was charged with April 27 a felony count of assault with intent to rob. He is being held at the Adult Correctional Institutions in lieu of $100,000 bail with surety.
Lapierre, 40, has a criminal record dating back more than 20 years. His record shows convictions for drug possession and assaults, including attacking a past girlfriend and pointing a gun at three women whom he thought were talking too long on a payphone.
Baccala, who graduated cum laude from New England School of Law, in Boston, was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in December. She is awaiting the results of the bar exam she took in Rhode Island in February. A Bryant University graduate with an MBA degree, Baccala is also listed as the president of BCN Enterprises LLC, a business that she incorporated in 2003 as a “dating service.” Her business is recorded at the secretary of state’s office as providing “assorted gifts, merchandise, personal services,” and she listed it as “telephone sales” on her 2008 application to the Rhode Island bar.
Assistant Attorney General Stacey Pires Veroni contacted The Journal on Friday and said that Baccala wanted to recant her allegation because of “press involvement” and urged the newspaper not to identify Baccala as the victim. “I’m going to have difficulty with my case, or no case at all,” Veroni said.
In an interview with The Journal, Baccala vehemently objected to having her name published and said that to avoid publicity she was going to tell the police she made up the attack. The publicity “will ruin my entire life,” she said.
The alleged robbery bears resemblance to the craigslist.com cases, where a Boston University medical student is accused of robbing women who advertised services. On Monday, the Warwick police said they had an arrest warrant for Philip Markoff, 23, on four charges for allegedly attempting to rob at gunpoint an exotic dancer staying in a hotel by T.F. Green airport.
Despite Baccala’s insistence that she was recanting, “We believe it happened,” Providence Police Capt. James Desmarais said late last week. “Upon reviewing everything in this case, the case is still proceeding forward.”
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What victem of an attack would want to report a crime after seeing this?
Remember the other CL victims that were afraid to report the crime, due to potential legal issues
This is a huge problem, victims cannot safely report a crime without being punished in some way.
Fear of reporting a crime ,results in more crime.
We need a (Jane Doe law) safe haven & privacy for victims.
please join swop_east their main thrust is to make it so that sex workers can file charges when they get attacked with out being dismissed because they are sex workers
soon there will be a florida chapter
You don't have to be a genius to be a lawyer.
I agree completely with skb and mrfisher regarding the sad state of the justice system when ANY victim has to worry about the repercussions of reporting a crime. Sad and ridiculous. But I guess that is part of the fall-out of our original puritan settlers.
On the other hand, the woman was smart enough to get through an MBA and law school. She was also savvy enough to have founded and registered a LLC through the state. Yet she doesn't apparently have a clue about screening? the guy had 20 years of priors including multiple assaults on women. Think that might have turned up with any reasonable effort to screen?
Well actually, it seems to me that isn't all the bright when it comes to understanding the legal profession, the local processes, and ignores public relations. I don't condone what happened to her, but I gotta say she hasn't demonstrated being very proficient at her legal profession... just my 02
Judging from her resume posted on her blog (easily located via google search of her name), she seems very accomplished and bright - she could probably build a practice representing/defending providers or clients and do better than most law graduates in this economy.
(not that I condone publishing her name, in this case I don't think it will hurt her and might even help her - she certainly has an understanding of the business)
-- Modified on 5/6/2009 7:13:48 PM
Now maybe she was angling for a career defending the rights of woman, even providers. And she did get a lot of RP.
But I am sure she is worried about being disbarred, and how do you think her family will react? SO, friends, etc.
How are lawyers going to treat her now? I can guess it won't be good.
Her life is going to be very difficult for a while.
The Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and Rhode Island Board of Bar Examiners might have some problems with her after-hours activities. At the very least, they might have problems with her saying that she is going to tell police that she made up the attack.
I am so sorry for that lady. She has to be naive and thinking (or now, was) that the police would help her. There have been some situations where the authorities have overlooked the "source & circumstance" and gone after the bigger fish...but since the cl killer, well, those days are over (hopefully temporarily...but def. the media is just looking to keep up the hype on the industry related crime). In light of her situation and future, was I her, I would have "charged that loss to the game" and counted my lucky stars I was still alive. She was probably going to be a prosecutor...Now I bet that's changed! But in all seriousness, she doesn't seem well versed in criminal law procedure, so she might have chosen a different field...Maybe Constitutional Law? International Law? Tax Law? Civil/probate? Who knows.
But that does spark me a question: when you take the bar, are you taking a general exam of legal knowledge or based on one's specialty/field?
Hopefully, she can move forward and take the bar somewhere else (she hasn't been arrested for prostitution or soliciting as of yet, right? On the other hand, if she claims it was made-up, that's filing a false police report - felony if I remember right and they're going ahead, so that means she will be called as a witness...Can she legally refuse to testify?
Wow is all I can say...It just takes One date to cause a nightmare for life...
(don't know enough to be a lawyer)
Most states it is a 2 part exam, one part is multiple choice general common law principles and the other part an essay based on the state's law but in general - not directed at whatever area of law one would practice....so I have heard.
She'll probably lose her license and not be admitted where her bar results are pending. It will probably be deemed a crime of "moral turpidude" that will be a violation of the rules of ethics.