The Systems Shortcomings from a Victims Point of View
The Crime
You are a 50-year-old woman living alone. You are asleep one night when suddenly you awaken to find a man standing over you with a knife at your throat. As you start to scream, he beats you and cuts you. He then rapes you. While you watch helplessly, he searches the house, taking your jewelry, other valuables, and money. He smashes furniture and win- dows in a display of senseless violence. His rampage ended, he rips out the telephone line, threatens you again, and dis- appears in the night.
At least you have survived. Terrified, you rush to the first lighted house on the block. While you wait for the police, you pray that your attacker was bluffing when he said he’d return if you called them. Finally, what you expect to be help arrives.
The police ask questions, take notes, dust for finger- prints, and take photographs. When you tell them you were raped, they take you to the hospital. Bleeding from cuts, your front teeth knocked out, bruised and in pain, you are told that your wounds are superficial, that rape itself is not considered an injury. Awaiting treatment, you sit alone for hours, suffering the stares of curious passersby. You feel dirty, bruised, disheveled, and abandoned. When your turn comes for examination, the intern seems irritated because he has been called out to treat you. While he treats you, he says that he hates to get involved in rape cases because he doesn’t like going to court. He asks if you “knew the man you had sex with.” The nurse says she wouldn’t be out alone at this time of night. It seems pointless to explain that the attacker broke into your house and had a knife. An officer says you must go through this process, and then the hospital sends you a bill for the examination that the investigators insist upon. They give you a box filled with test tubes and swabs and envelopes and tell you to hold onto it. They’ll run some tests if they ever catch your rapist.
Finally, you get home somehow, in a cab you paid for and wearing a hospital gown because they took your clothes as evidence. Everything that the attacker touched seems soiled. You’re afraid to be in your house alone. The one place where you were always safe, at home, is a sanctuary no lon- ger. You are afraid to remain, yet terrified to leave your home unprotected.
You didn’t realize when you gave the police your name and address that it would be given to the press through police reports. Your friends call to say they saw this infor- mation in the paper, your picture on television. You haven’t yet absorbed what’s happened to you when you get calls from insurance companies and firms that sell security devices. But these calls pale in comparison to the threats that come from the defendant and his friends.
You’re astonished to discover that your attacker has been arrested, yet while in custody he has free and unmonitored access to a phone. He can threaten you from jail. The judge orders him not to annoy you, but when the phone calls are brought to his attention, the judge does nothing.
At least you can be assured that the man who attacked you is in custody, or so you think. No one tells you that he is released on his promise to come to court. No one asks you if you’ve been threatened. The judge is never told that the defendant said he’d kill you if you told or that he’d get even if he went to jail. Horrified, you ask how he got out after what he did. You’re told the judge can’t consider whether he’ll be dangerous, only whether he’ll come back to court. He’s been accused and convicted before, but he always came to court, so he must be released.
You learn only by accident that he’s at large; this dis- covery comes when you turn a corner and confront him. He knows where you live. He’s been there. Besides, your name and address were in the paper and in the reports he’s seen. Now nowhere is safe. He watches you from across the street; he follows you on the bus. Will he come back in the night? What do you do? Give up your home? Lose your job? Assume a different name? Get your mail at the post office? Carry a weapon? Even if you wanted to, could you afford to do these things?
You try to return to normal. You don’t want to talk about what happened, so you decide not to tell your co- workers. A few days go by and unexpectedly the police come to your place of work. They show their badges to the recep- tionist and ask to see you. They want you to look at some photographs, but they don’t explain that to your co-workers. You try to explain later that you’re the victim—not the accused.
The phone rings, and the police want you to come to a lineup. It may be 1:00 A.M. or in the middle of your work day, but you have to go; the suspect and his lawyer are waiting. It will not be the last time you are forced to conform your life to their convenience. You appear at the police sta- tion and the lineup begins. The suspect’s lawyer sits next to you, but he does not watch the stage; he stares at you. It will not be the last time you must endure his scrutiny.