Last Wednesday morning, Sept. 5, two female joggers reported they had been groped in Duxbury Village by a “white male in his late teens or early twenties.”

The nearly identical reports described incidents about 45 minutes apart on Powder Point Avenue and Crescent Street – a distance of less than three miles. They were similar to a complaint in August by a woman running on St. George Street.
Duxbury Police deployed the Czech-bred German shepherd “Zar” with his handler, Officer Ryan Cavicchi, in an attempt to obtain a scent in the woods off Crescent Street, where the second alleged victim reported her assaulter had fled when she confronted him. Police also put out a “reverse-911 call” alerting the public to the reported assaults and advising joggers to run in pairs.
Some residents expressed shock that the alleged groping of the women’s buttocks could take place in Duxbury. Nearby residents expressed fear for their daughters and granddaughters. One woman described the “invasion of mental, physical and emotional space when you are alone” as more offensive than the act of groping. A citizen living in the St. George Street area wondered why a reverse-911 call had not gone out immediately after the first report in August.
Police gratefully acknowledged receiving many tips, but as The Clipper went to press on Tuesday, no arrest had been made after six days.