The mannequin, who has not been identified until her relatives can be notified, was discovered half undressed, face down, on the floor of the Hardware department, on the sixth floor. The enterprise of her attacker was not lost on Mr Mason, who told utterpants: "As the elevators were switched off for maintenance over the weekend, the rapist must have dragged her up twelve flights of stairs from the Lingerie department on the Ground Floor. Frankly, I'm surprised he had the energy to mount her, much less modify her."
"Modify her?" we asked.
"Er...he'd drilled a large hole between her legs with an electric drill."

'Cassandra,' as she is known to her many admirers in the store, is the fifth victim in the rapist’s four-week sex spree. The only evidence left at the scene were a heavily soiled pair of grey boxers and a used condom. When we expressed surprise at the use of a contraceptive on an inanimate dummy the store manager's jaw dropped with a strangled gasp. "Where have you been? London isn't Los Angeles you know. We take safe sex seriously here. You do wear rubber gloves and a facemask when you're submitting to the monthly conjugals? British men expect it you know."

The attacks began three months ago after local retailers noticed a customer blatantly groping semi-naked mannequins at several fashionable shops in London's Oxford Street. On each occasion the man escaped before he could be apprehended. Although there is no doubt that dropping your trousers and rubbing your willy against a plastic woman, is sexually inappropriate, it remains unclear whether or not it can be classified as rape. Two of the rapist’s previous victims have described their attacker as a man in his middle 30s with a receding hairline and an extremely small penis. Unfortunately, since their description applies to almost every thirty-something man in England, the perpetrator has not yet been caught. However, the DNA collected at the scene of his most recent victim is being tested and may lead to the identification of a man in his middle thirties with a receding hairline and an extremely small penis.

The hunt for the elusive rapist threatens to strip the crotchless panties from the debate on rape raging in pubs up and down the country and expose the festering yeast infection of Britain's sexual hypocrisy. Some consider the Mannequin Rapist an innocent victim of modern sexual marketing which has swept demure, fully clothed store dummies out of shop windows and replaced them with anorexic, thirteen-year-old nymphets flaunting postage stamp sized thongs and see-thru bras. Others insist that he’s mentally ill and could be reintegrated into decent society—or possibly even Parliament—after a short, sharp shock to his genitalia. And still others suggest that the only therapy that could cure him is a rabid feminist armed with a pair of blunt scissors. Unsurprisingly, the middle-aged bloke we interviewed plying a glassy-eyed teenage girl with Bacardi Breezers in the Cockwell Inn, was unsympathetic to our suggestion that the Rapist should have his bollocks lopped off.

“Those plastic lolitas are gagging for it," the 52-year-old misogynist opined with a suggestive leer at his scantily-clad companion. ‘I've seen the way they dress, flaunting themselves in public with their provocative poses and skimpy outfits. Fuck me, some of those mini skirts don't even cover their arses and the dummies in shop windows are even worse!" He talked fast, his voice slurred with drink, or possibly the prospect of getting into his companion's tracksuit bottoms. "It’s disgusting how these filthy sluts show their pert nipples through the thin, clinging fabric of them skimpy tops they’re whoring,” he added as he massaged the rising bulge in his trousers. “One little tart wasn’t even wearing any knickers!”

His attitude is symptomatic of the confusion which surrounds contemporary female sexuality which has blurred the line between plastic dummies and women who strive to look like them. But no matter how much plastic women are made of, can skimpy clothing, or the lack of it, ever justify rape? Women may answer in the negative, but the correlation between the number of mannequin rapes and how few clothes they were wearing when they were attacked, suggests that the bloke in the High Street considers anything in a short skirt who can't or won't say no, fair game. According to police records, a mannequin is 600 times more likely to be assaulted if she models lingerie than if she is working for a DIY store. We spoke to one female mannequin modelling fire-resistant overalls while holding an electric drill in one hand and a hammer in the other. The closest she’s ever come to being raped, she told us, was when a butch dyke slipped a hand into her back pocket and gave her buttocks a squeeze.
“I nearly dropped the hammer,” she giggled.

One anonymous mannequin wearing only a see-thru matching Prada bra and panty set posing provocatively behind a window in Knightsbridge, told us that not a day goes by when she isn’t accosted in some deliberate or accidental way. “Usually they pretend to trip and catch themselves against my buttocks, some slide a cold finger very slowly across the seam of my thong. Once, a smelly Italian faked a fainting spell just to reach out and take hold of my breasts for support. But we’re ladies, so we don’t react or pull away. If it were up to us, we’d slap them, but that would be bad for business. So we just grin and bare it—quite literally.”

Grinning and baring it, however professional, only adds to the soaring problem of Mannequin abuse. If a mannequin refuses even to step away from an offending shopper, the chances are that she’ll keep her lips sealed as well. A straw poll of fifty random shoppers conducted in London's Oxford Street during our researcher's three hour lunch break, found that nearly 92% of men and 69% of women don’t consider an assault rape unless the victim clearly says no to her aggressor. Since most mannequins lack a larynx or functioning lips, it is no wonder many of them just grin and bare it. One mannequin, who can speak, but elected to talk through an interpreter as she only has a smattering of Ukrainian, told us she'd been repeatedly abused, adding tearfully: "If I could open my mouth properly, it would only invite some disgusting pervert to shove his throbbing manhood into it."

Utterpants was shocked to discover just how little sympathy store dummies get from women. As one clinically obese cocktail waitress with red hair and spots snapped at us: “Why should I care? They have the best job in the world. All they do is stand there, the most expensive and beautiful clothes clinging to their perfectly proportioned bodies, flaunting their pearly teeth, deep tans and pert boobies. They get ogled at all bloody day long for doing nothing. I work my arse off for twelve hours a day only to have some wanker ask me if I eat the leftovers to stay so slim."
“Would you ever consider sexually assaulting a store dummy?” we asked her.
“Fuck off! If I sat on their faces I’d crush their pretty little heads.”

Two other ladies, carrying a few extra pounds along with their shopping, were equally scathing in their condemnation of the morality of plastic women. “I’m not jealous or anything,” said Tamara Tompkins-Snogworthy (38), “But have you noticed how tiny their waists and bottoms are?” Her sixteen-year-old daughter, whose naked, bulging belly testified to her fondness for pizza and chips, agreed, adding, “The rapist is a sad sicko—no doubt about that. But can you really blame him for not being able to control himself around some of those mannequins? It’s a good thing that Ann Summers had a sale on thongs today because I needed a new pair once I got out of there.”

“How about male mannequins?” we asked.
“Oh, they’re so dishy,” they chortled in unison, suggesting that the double standards in our society that label sexually aggressive women as sluts and their male counterparts, as studs, have not been lost on the mannequin community.
“So why aren’t randy women running around raping male mannequins?” we asked.
“Because it would interfere with shopping,” snapped the mother.

In an endeavour to probe the complexities of a mannequin rapist’s mind, we interviewed Jack Barby, 41, currently serving three years in Pentonville prison after raping an astonishing thirty-four mannequins during the record-breaking Christmas Shopping season of 1992. The first thing he told us from behind his very own window was: “I didn’t think of myself as a rapist. I preferred to call myself a mannequinizer. I loved everything about them: their cold, deeply tanned, slightly oily skin, their smooth, hairless bodies, their aloof unavailability and synthetic smiles that cried out to be wiped off their simpering faces."

When we asked Barby to tell us about his first time, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. “It was an ordinary day. I was shopping for lingerie for my wife, who later divorced me, probably because she never got the lingerie. I couldn’t decide on red camiknickers or a black teddy. Nearby a store dummy was wearing the camiknickers, so I asked a sales assistant to hold up the black teddy, to compare the items. Before you could say 'buy one and get two free', the shop girl dropped her knickers, we ducked down behind Housewares and I took her roughly from behind while she was munching on the mannequin's Lady lips. From then on, I got a massive stiffy whenever I passed a store dummy.”

“How were you finally caught?” we asked him.
“There are only so many mannequins you can grope before the security guards start to notice. But I was having such a good time; I never saw them coming, which is more than I can say for the dummy whose eyes were wider then her legs by the time I came all over her Dolce & Gabbana thong. When the guards slapped the cuffs on me, my first thought was that Madeleine—she was my favourite—wanted to play rough. Well, I got my wish all right when I was sent here. Only it wasn’t with a store dummy but a hairy-arsed arsonist from Peckam called 'Bob' who shared the cell with me. I never saw him coming until I felt a hot, burning sensation between my cheeks. It was then I realised how Madeleine must have felt when I raped her.”

Barby, now a born again Christian, realises that he suffered a severe lapse when he succumbed to the slippery temptations of hard plastic. But he’s tackled his problem and is moving on with his life. He works as a plastic injection mould operator during the week and busies himself cataloguing his collection of designer thongs most weekends. Over the years he's had ample time to reflect on the selfishness of his past behaviour.
“Just because she dresses in a sexy, satin crop top and arse-grazing pelmet doesn’t mean she's gagging to be taken from behind to the tune of 'Santa's coming to town' belting out over the store intercom. Just because she didn’t say no or push my hand away when I reached into her sheer silk panties, doesn’t mean she wanted sex. It just means she was made of plastic and couldn’t talk or move her limbs."
"You've just described the average British woman after ten Bacardi Breezers and a night on the town with her giggling mates," we commented.
"Have I?" asked Barby. "Bloody hell! You mean I could have raped real women and got away Scott free?"
"Thousands of other blokes have."
"Does the Mannequin Rapist know that?"
"Apparently not or the stupid fucker wouldn't still be terrorizing London's mannequins."

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Story © 2005 Jennifer Gardner. Picture & Design © 2005 utterpants.co.uk / 201205