'Nightmarish' swap may have led to sexual assault

Warning: This article contains mature subject matter.

In what is being called a "nightmare swap come real," a known sexual predator may have been loosed on the City of New York, under the guise of an 11-year-old girl into whose body he has been swapped.

On March 24, 11-year-old Colleen Golightly of Queens went missing and was presumed kidnapped. Only a week later, parents Ryan and Helen were presented with a ghoulish alternative.

"They told us they thought she had been sighted in the city," said a tearful Helen, "A man had been attacked by a young girl at a party. They thought it was our Colleen."

Gerard Toombs, 28, was attending a casual cocktail party in the SoHo loft apartment of a friend's acquaintence.

"I was drinking and feeling drowsy," recalls Toombs, "And I should have known something was wrong then, but someone told me I could go lie down in the bedroom. I must've passed out in the bed."

As Toombs thinks back, he should have realized he'd been drugged; "I hadn't had enough to put a man of my size down." A toxicology report later revealed he had in his system a combination of ketamine (an anaesthetic often used as a date-rape drug) and viagra.

Toombs awoke some time after, restrained to the bed by expertly-tied knots, stripped, gagged with a washcloth, and blindfolded.

"Someone was on top of me," Toombs says, "She was small, I could tell, and from the way she sounded, far too young to have been at the party. Someone must have snuck her in. I could also hear another voice by the door. It was the most disgusting violation I have ever felt, made worse by the treatment that girl's body is getting. It makes me sick."

Toombs' descriptions match the modus operandi of two other recent sexual assaults in the New York area, one in Clinton and the other in Central Park.

Party-goers later admitted to seeing a small girl matching Golightly's description, with a larger bald man, leave the party. no-one questioned could identify either.

Mr. Golightly is outraged, saying "it is unbelievable that a pervert could take my daughter's body and commit those horrible things."

Meanwhile the identity of the assailant remains a mystery as detectives interrogate numerous known offenders.

"Given that the girl has been unable to contact her parents, we are under the impression that the swapee was incarcerated," says NYPD Det. Simoné Gupta, "And given that the perp had an accomplice on the outside and knew the area, we will be checking New York state facilities first. The thought that this poor girl is rotting in a cell with no idea where she is or why she's there is the most disgusting part of this, to me."

As the search continues, swap authorities at the BISA are calling the matter "the worst conceivable nightmare" of the swaps, and have cited it in their request for greater funding for researchers examining potential causes.

"We have to make sure this does not have the opportunity to ever happen again."