Bahamas police have finally come forward to inform the public that there have been a number of home invasions and rapes in various areas of New Providence.
The rapes have mostly occurred in the early morning hours and have intensified over the past several weeks.
Police have received reports of one or two men breaking into homes in various areas and holding residents at gunpoint between 2:00am and 6:00am.
Some of the reported home invasions start with men stealing cash and jewelry, with the residents being held at gunpoint and women being raped.
Police think the rapes are connected but more than one serial rapist may be involved.
The most recent incident involved a woman who was sexually assaulted in a quiet subdivision in Western New Providence around 5:00am yesterday morning.
There have been nearly a dozen incidents in the past few weeks, yet police are only now releasing information and warning the public.
It is not clear why police did not inform the community earlier, it may have prevented the last half dozen incidents.
One police officer, who asked not to be identified, said that the PLP government wanted to make it appear as if they had stemmed crime with their new anti-crime programmes. The programmes have yet to be proven of any value whatsoever, but giving fancy names to the programmes and issuing press releases, while hushing actual criminal activity, made some naive Bahamians think crime had abated.
The Bahamas has the highest incidence of reported rape, per capita, in the world.
More alarming is the fact that there are many more incidents of rape that go unreported.
