Local News

Woman raped in Cambridge office building suing site’s owners, managers

Her lawyer said they filed a discovery suit to find out how someone entered the building and reached the third floor.

December 2, 2024

2 minutes to read

The woman who was raped at knife-point in an office building in Cambridge in May is suing multiple companies connected to the building, where there was ongoing construction, for information related to their ownership and management.

Joy Jones, which is a pseudonym, was working on the third floor of the office building on Cambridgepark Drive on May 17, according to court records. Jones entered the bathroom, where a man wearing a face mask and vest with reflective markings threatened her with a knife, “forcibly stripped her of all her clothing, and brutally raped her,” the complaint said.

Cambridge police confirmed that the investigation is still open and active “with no significant updates at this time,” a spokesperson said Monday evening. Police asked for public assistance one week after the alleged attack.

Jones’s lawyer, Carmen Durso, said they filed a discovery suit to access records relating to the defendants’ ownership, management, operations, security, and building construction to find out how someone entered the building and reached the third floor.

“We need to get information that we can’t get from public records,” Durso told Boston.com. “We’re not saying that any one of those individual defendants are responsible for the terrible attack that my client was submitted to. We’re saying that we want to get answers.”

Boston-based King Street Properties, Texas-based Lincoln Property Company, Delaware-based PPF OFF 125 Cambridge Park Drive, Delaware-based Regus Management Group, and Hopkinton-based PIDC Construction have until the spring to respond to the discovery suit.

Boston-based Longfellow Real Estate Partners was also named as a defendant, but a spokesperson said Longfellow was erroneously included and “has not been involved at all with the property since March 2024.”

“Plaintiff seeks to determine whether there is a sufficient factual basis for a claim based upon failures of the security systems in the office building,” the complaint said. “There are no records available to the plaintiff to determine which defendant hired the security company that was providing services during the relevant time periods.”

The lawsuit also seeks to identify any of the construction workers and if they were working at the time of the alleged attack.

“This was done by somebody who seemed to be in control of the situation,” Durso said. “Maybe this wasn’t his first time he had done something like this, and he’s someone who needs to be taken off the street.”

This story was updated to include a comment from Longfellow Real Estate Partners.