Not again.
When I was very new at this job, I had an experience that left me badly shaken. I’d been a D.A. only about six months when I prosecuted my first rape case. The victim asked that she be assigned a woman prosecutor. I was the only one available.
I met the victim outside the courtroom before the preliminary hearing. She was a light-skinned black woman with close-cropped hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She looked about my age-mid-twenties-and had an average build. She’d been waiting forever for a bus, and she was late for work. Out of nowhere a man pulled up in a car and offered to give her a ride. She hesitated but she wasn’t going very far and he seemed okay, so she agreed. He pulled into an alley-and raped her. She’d been able to escape from the car and made her way to an emergency room, where the police were called. They caught the guy the same day.
I was impressed by this woman. She was calm, articulate, conservatively dressed. She was going to make a terrific witness. Since it was my first rape case, I remember taking what seemed to me awkward steps to reassure her.
“You only have to look at him once to identify him for the judge,” I told her. “Other than that, you can look at me, and when his lawyer’s asking you questions, you can look at the lawyer. If you need a break, say so. I’ll make sure it happens… You’re to be treated with respect, and I’m here to make sure of it.”
How do you comfort someone like that when you haven’t been in her shoes? I squeezed her hand and gave her my phone number.
She smiled and thanked me.
I went back to work. An hour later my head was throbbing. My bones ached. My skin hurt. Down in the courtroom, I could barely stand up to handle a motion for a continuance. The defense attorney actually looked over at me and said, “Go home. It’s making me hurt just to look at you.”
I did go home. And when I got there I crawled right into bed. I was burning with fever. Then freezing. Then burning again. I took my temperature: 103 degrees. As I lay there shivering, I wondered how this could have come on so suddenly. I’d felt perfectly fine that morning. All the way up until the interview. What was it about the interview? Slowly, as though curtains of gauze were parting in my head, I saw unfold a series of events that had occurred almost ten years earlier.
I was almost seventeen and I’d just finished high school. As a graduation gift, my parents sent me on a Jewish youth group tour to Europe. I was one of about thirty girls in a group that ranged in age from sixteen to twenty-five. I think I was the only one from California; the rest of them were from around New York. When we landed in Europe, we were bused to a resort and parceled off in groups of four into a cluster of little huts.
We went to dinner that night in the hotel dining room, where we occupied one long table. We were attended by two waiters, young men in their twenties, who were clearly delighted at having exclusive access to a group of young American tourists. One of the waiters, a stocky dark man, spent a lot of time leaning over my shoulder and brushing against me. After dinner, he and his buddy invited the entire group to join them at a nearby restaurant-bar. Everyone agreed, except me. I was tired and didn’t like to party in large groups. But the waiter who’d been dogging me was persistent.
“Come with us,” he urged me. “You’ll have fun. You can’t just sit in a room by yourself.”
Once again, I refused.
The others left. I went back to the hut. It was empty and I enjoyed the first few moments of solitude I’d been able to steal since leaving the States. I flopped down on the hard bed and fell asleep.
It seemed only a few minutes later when I felt a weight on the edge of my bed. I opened my eyes and saw to my shock the waiter who’d been coming on to me at dinner. I was paralyzed with fright. I remember that he was trying to talk to me and then he started to stroke my hair. I pulled away and asked him to leave. He said he wouldn’t until I came with him. I knew I had to get him out of that room.
I found myself walking around the grounds of the resort with a man who had broken into my room. I simply did not know how to get free from him. I suppose I could have run, but I was held there by some inexplicable imperative not to offend him. Pretend everything is all right, I told myself, and it will be.
It was so strange. His manner was uncomfortably intimate, yet somehow respectful. I let him lead me into a “club.” It wasn’t a bar in the usual sense. There was no hard liquor, just beer and wine. There was a jukebox that played local hits, and everyone was eating watermelon and dancing. I spotted some of my friends from the tour, and that put me more at ease. My companion guided me to a table near the window, left me for a moment, then returned with a couple of plates of watermelon. I ordered a Coke.
Pretty soon we were talking easily. I’d begun to doubt my own senses. Had I not awakened in terror only a couple of hours earlier to find this man sitting on my bed? Had I dreamed that? No, of course not. I wouldn’t even be here now, sharing a bright comfortable space, with my friends all around me, if he hadn’t broken into my room.
My “companion” had launched into a long narrative about himself. Waiting tables was just a temporary thing. It gave him quick money until he could figure out what to do with his life. When a stranger shares his aspirations with you, it somehow inspires confidence. Perhaps I’d been spooked too easily.
After an hour or so we left the club to take a walk. I noticed that it was getting harder and harder to hear him. A strong, hot wind had kicked up and it was whistling past my ears, carrying his words away. I had to ask him to repeat himself over and over again, even though he was only about a foot away. He suggested that we sit on the steps of the hotel restaurant where we’d had dinner earlier, so we could hear each another.
“I have a bunch of records in my room,” he told me. “Why don’t you come over and I’ll play them for you?”
I loved music and the idea of being out of this eerie wind listening to R &B seemed comforting just then. Still… He sensed my indecision and put a hand on my arm.
“Look, I feel so close to you. I feel like a brother to you. You’re almost ten years younger than me. I know you’ll like the music. We’ll listen to a few records, and then I’ll walk you back to your room.”
As we walked toward his room, I tried to get my bearings. Where was my hut? Out here in the dark they all looked alike.
His room was bare. It contained only a chest of drawers and a nightstand. A small record player, the kind that’s obsolete nowadays, sat on the top of the dresser. There were no chairs, so I perched primly on the edge of the bed-legs crossed, back hunched, my arms around my knees-while he selected a record.
Within moments he was seated next to me, whispering in my ear how pretty I was and how much he liked me. I pulled away, confused and betrayed.
“What are you doing?” I complained.
He leaped over to the door and threw the bolt. When I tried to follow he turned and fixed me with a hard, determined look.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” he said.
I began to scream, but no one came.
“No one can hear you,” he hissed. “Not over the winds tonight.”
I began to gag on my own tears as he straddled me, ripped open my light cotton pants, and raped me.
It was over in seconds. As I lay there sobbing, he took my face in his hands and said, “Now, you will never tell anyone about this. And when you leave tomorrow you will say good-bye to me sweetly or I’ll make you sorry. Do you hear?”