As I pause on the elegant oak-lined street, surrounded by apartment windows, I yearn to cry out, “Did anyone hear my screams that night? Did anyone–anyone–call the police?” Instead, I weep silently as I recall the moment that shattered my sense of personal safety forever.
I have returned to the spot where, almost 20 years ago, I was abducted by two men; raped, sodomized and tortured mentally for six and a half hours; then left handcuffed to a lamppost in an empty parking lot, stunned to be alive. My face was so bruised that when my mother arrived at the hospital, she barely recognized me. I was 21 years old and fresh out of college.
I hadn’t expected my visit this past fall to spark such an intense reaction. I’ve gone on with my life, pursuing a career, nurturing relationships and raising two kids. I’ve even driven down that street before–without tears. But standing there as the anniversary approached evoked the terror of that night of July 7, 1980.
My urge to shout also reminded me, once again, of the silence surrounding rape. Less than one third of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to a law-enforcement agency, according to a 1997 report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. There are millions of rape survivors in this country, most of whom–unlike me–were attacked by a family member, intimate or acquaintance.
Over the years I have shared this piece of my past with friends and colleagues, but I usually avoid the dreadful details. Those remain in a five-page detective’s report–and in a mental drawer that I rarely open.
I peered inside that drawer in 1987, when one of the detectives who had handled my case flew to my home with mug shots of two men convicted of raping another woman. My abductors had not been caught, despite my efforts to leave blood and hair in the car as evidence. But the detective hadn’t given up, and he was convinced that these were my attackers. I was sure, too. Although the statute of limitations had expired on my case, I wanted to support the prosecution. I traveled to Washington to review a lineup and attend the sentencing of the two men. They received a light punishment, but at least I knew they were behind bars.
In 1993 I opened the drawer again by enrolling in a self-defense course. I learned how to elbow, knee and verbally deflect an attacker, and I took control over a part of my past. During one session, we were invited to create a scene with the padded “muggers.” I re-enacted the encounter with my kidnappers, but this time I changed the ending–by knocking them both to the ground. My classmates cheered, and I shook.
Although I don’t think about it every day, my assault has become part of who I am. It affects where I walk, what movies I see, how I digest the news. Hearing a radio account about Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was lashed to a fence, beaten and left to die by two homophobic men, left me sobbing in my car.
As I stand on Q Street, I am opening the drawer one more time. I see the bridge over Rock Creek Parkway just yards away, and I wonder. If I had left my dance class a few minutes earlier that evening, would I have reached the bridge and been harder to grab because of the guardrail that runs along the sidewalk? If I’d crossed the street when the silver car slowed down, or not responded when the occupants called out “Good evening,” would the pair have driven away? And had I not bitten the small guy where it really hurts, might I have been spared his wrath and the razor-blade scar he left on my middle finger? But “what ifs” are counterproductive. I know I did something right that night, because I lived to tell the story. And I’m grateful I had the strength to press on with life–strength that comes, in part, from surviving a bout with cancer during college and growing up with a mother who endured years in Nazi Germany.
The attack taught me about humans’ capacity for rage and cruelty, the kind that allows a man to grind his shoe into a woman’s face as she lies on a car floor. It taught me about humans’ ability to withstand horrible events, and about the importance of countering the stigma of rape by speaking out.
Above all, the assault underscored for me the power that memory has to startle and haunt. There are times I choose to open that mental drawer of details; other times it opens itself without warning. No matter how hard I push, I can never completely slam the drawer shut.
lives in Massachusetts.
