HOUSTON – An Atascocita man is accused of multiple sexual assault cases in the Houston area spanning almost two decades. Police are now calling for other potential victims to come forward.<\/p>\n
Houston crime: 20-year span of alleged assaults <\/p>\n
What we know:<\/p>\n
Records confirm that 62-year-old Phillip Cerf<\/a> has been charged with four counts of aggravated sexual assault.<\/p>\n Authorities shared details of the assaults during a press conference on Friday, along with Cerf’s current mugshot and previous mugshots from separate crimes.<\/p>\n Phillip Cerf (mugshot courtesy of the Houston Police Department) <\/p>\n Between 1997 and 2016, Cerf allegedly offered a ride to each of the four victims in Houston, then took them to a location to physically and sexually assault them.<\/p>\n Police say the victims went through a forensic sexual assault examination, and the evidence was saved in the CODIS (Combined DNA Intex System)<\/a> database. The Texas DPS eventually launched a Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, and evidence from the examinations allegedly identified Cerf as the suspect in those four cases.<\/p>\n “This case demonstrates why cold cases are not forgotten,” said HPD Chief Noe Diaz. “These investigations remained active because victims had the courage to report these crimes and participate in the investigative process.”<\/p>\n What we don’t know:<\/p>\n Other details of Cerf’s arrest are not available at this time.<\/p>\n What you can do:<\/p>\n Authorities are looking to speak with any unknown victims who were allegedly assaulted by Cerf.<\/p>\n Anyone with more information can call the HPD Special Victims Division at 713-308-1180.<\/p>\n The Source: Houston Police Department<\/p>\n Crime and Public Safety<\/a>Houston<\/a>Top Stories<\/a>Atascocita<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON – An Atascocita man is accused of multiple sexual assault cases in the Houston area spanning almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[13616,1046,405,56,58,57,223,2053,216,393],"class_list":["post-393850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-atascocita","tag-crime-publicsafety","tag-harris-county","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-tx","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}