For nearly 350 women - and likely hundreds more - Philadelphia must seem a cruel place.

It's the scene of their rape - as well as their encounter with police who sloughed off their pleas for help.

It's been known for months that the police sex-crimes unit shelved thousands of assault claims for years.

But the stark impact of this practice - bred of overwork, bungling and indifference - is becoming clearer.

Police Commissioner John F. Timoney on Tuesday revealed that his unprecedented reopening of thousands of reported sex crimes since 1995 had turned up about 1,000 serious crimes.

Of that number - about half the cases under review from a two-year period - he said there were 346 rapes, 469 other sex offenses, and 178 assaults, robberies and the like.

As powerful as the numbers was the commissioner's frank admission of how these women were twice victimized - "raped, subjected to some kind of a sexual crime, that the police treated at the least improperly, probably unprofessionally, and probably in a god-awful manner," as he put it.

As the Police Department review of another thousand cases proceeds, other names of those twice-victimized will be added to Mr. Timoney's list.

To the victims, the city owes an abject apology.

Unfortunately, it may hard to deliver on what was owed and not delivered in the first place - an effective investigation. Arrests may be hard to come by, due to the difficulty of pursuing years-old cases where the trail has gone cold.

The commissioner has pledged that police will do all they can to make arrests. The recent arrest of several dozen suspects backs such assurances.

Just as important is how the sex-crimes unit is performing on current cases. Here, without a doubt, the transformation under Mr. Timoney has been remarkable.

Other numbers tell that story.

The sex-crimes unit has 95 staff members, up from 65 only a year ago. While police reported about 650 rapes annually several years ago, the number this year will be much more accurate, around 1,000. Under the new leadership of Capt. Joseph M. Mooney, the sex-crimes unit has boosted arrests by more than a half over last year, to 959.

Nor are police falling into old, bad habits, according to a coalition of women's organizations reviewing sex-crime cases. The group said its examination of 104 cases rejected by police last year showed officers made the right call.

More needs to be done, as police acknowledge.

The city needs to push ahead to replace the sex-crimes unit's dreary, inconvenient offices at Frankford Arsenal. At an estimated $10 million - the amount spent on such a facility in similar-sized Houston - this is a project worthy of private sector and philanthropic support.

Mr. Timoney's candid disclosure of the rape-squad statistics should become the model for the Police Department - an annual public accounting, with detailed information on allegations and outcomes. Added to that should be a policy of informing sexual-assault victims in writing on the status of their cases.

Rebuilding trust won't be easy, but Mr. Timoney's Police Department is making major strides. ------------- ------------------ --------------------- ------------------ --------------------- ----------------- ----------------- -------------------