I have told personal stories here in the past about a childhood of abuse, an unwed pregnancy beaten out of me by my own mother, being screwed while I cried by men who didn’t care about me, and a brief period prostituting. I don’t think I’ve talked about the friend of my roommate’s husband who insisted that I ride with him on a trip to Las Vegas where it was understood that my girlfriend and I would be sharing a room, since I didn’t even know him. He drove off into the desert, tried to rape me, got scared, I guess, when he knocked me unconscious, dumped me in the 110 degree heat, and left me there. But that’s not what this is about.
Because of that expirience, in the early seventies I was involved with a Rape Hotline. In addition to helping the victims, we were determined to get some of these cases to court. Rape prosecutions were very rare in those days. Knowing how badly victims were treated, we offered support, but never encouraged anyone to go to the police. Because I was the grind of the group, I studied everything I could find that would be of use to a woman reporting rape and going to trial.
Our first volunteer was a middle aged woman who had been repeatedly raped by her landlord. This was and still is very common in low income and assisted housing. It is talked about in support groups but almost never reported for reasons that are obvious.
She was willing to go to the police because she wanted it to stop, and because there were so many young girls in the complex that she feared were being abused as well.
This man had keys to her apartment. He would come in at night and get in bed with her, as if they were having an affair. He said she couldn’t tell on him because she was behind that month, and he’d just say that she was trading sex for the rent. Nobody would take the word of a welfare whore over a businessman like himself. Her nerves finally got so bad, after weeks without sleep, that she couldn’t take it anymore. I went with her to the police station.
We were walked back to a detective’s cubicle hung with Playboy centerfolds. She took a long look at those naked women on the walls, and turned to me. We stood there, looking into each others’ eyes, and I knew she could never talk to this man, this representative of law and order, this man paid by our taxes to protect and serve.
She didn’t report the rape that day. I doubt she ever reported it. I know she never went back to her apartment because I tried to find her for weeks.
