This is a reprint from an April diary, April being sexual assault awareness month. But that doesn't make a hill of beans to me, as every month on any day I can be in the midst of sexual assault awareness month, when I go back to that day forty-four years ago when I was raped by a stranger with a gun.
March 4, 1966
I awoke at five-thirty to get my four year old daughter and I ready for work and the nursery. It must have been a hassle, as every day was, for a child without a father due to divorce and a twenty-two year old mother who was really too young to be a mother was not always a great combination. I also always lived with the stress of being a semi-scandal, being divorced in 1966 in a small southern town where respectable people didn't do that sort of thing.
I do remember it was a regular day, a Thursday morning in which I was glad the week-end was coming and I was eager to get to work as it was payday. I dropped my daughter at the nursery and headed to Atlanta, about twenty-five miles away to my job. I worked for Atlas Van Lines and gave out moving estimates over the phone. A pretty easy job and one I was good at. I also remember I was excited about a date I had the next night. Just an ordinary March day in the life of a young divorcee.
I opened the office at eight a.m., and, after organizing a few things, I began to wait for the phone to ring and, to pass the time, I was reading a book called, "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. I was soon to learn what an awful choice that book was for me to be reading. I had just reached the part where the killers locked some family members in the bathroom - with the knowledge that the next step was their murder, when my front door opened and a young African-American came in. He wanted to know if my boss was there and I told him he would be in any minute. I had no idea when my boss was coming, but I didn't want this jumpy young man to know I would be alone for more than any minute.
He left at that point and closed the door. I was about to get up and lock the door when it thrust open loudly and there was the young man holding his arm out and pointing a gun at me. He wanted to know where the money was. Where all the money was. We kept no money there, none at all, and all I had was two fifty-cent penny rolls in my pocket book. That, in those days could get me more than a gallon of gas to get home on if I were running out.
That was when he locked me in the bathroom in the office and began searching for money. There was a full length mirror across from me and I just stood there with my arm in front of my stomach, looking at this scared little girl and saying, "He can't kill me, I've got a four year old daughter. Many years later I wrote a book in which I talked about my daughter and I not communicating for years and I couldn't understand why, because in the worst moment of my life, when I thought I would be dead at any minute, all I could think was, "He can't kill me, I've got a four year old daughter."
After searching the office for a few minutes he dragged me out of the bathroom and with the gun at my head began walking through the office into the warehouse. He threw me down on a crated up mattress, tore off my hose and, still, with the gun at my head, he raped me. When he was through, he got up and told me not to move, not to dare move and I certainly didn't. At least until a couple of minutes later when the office phone rang and I jumped up and ran to grab it. It was my boss's wife and I told her to call the police and told her what happened. I called the police too, because I couldn't stand to be alone.
They were there in what seemed like forever and no time and then began a game of cops and robbers and victims and it was hard to tell who was who. I had to be taken to a hospital for a rape exam and that wasn't very pleasant and I was still scared and confused and just wanted to go home and be with my four year old daughter. But I got through that and went to the police station to look at mug shots for a few hours and then the police drove me home. Of course my family was angry and upset and I'm not even sure who their real anger was directed to. I was a young white girl in a small southern town who had put herself in a bad situation by going to work to support her daughter in the only job I could get with barely a high school education, and of course, if I hadn't divorced my perfect country club husband none of this would have happened to me. So I became a victim a second time. But I can't complain about the police, they were wonderful, unlike some horror stories I have read.
The rape occurred at ten til nine on a Thursday morning and on Saturday night the police picked up an informant (I think he was allowed to run moon shine whiskey) and they began driving around Atlanta. At about nine that night, the informant pointed to a car and told the police that was their man and he jumped out the back and ran and the police stopped the car and arrested the suspect. The African American with a gun. The perpetrator. The man who haunts my dreams still.
He was taken to a line-up where I had to go and identify him. We were separated by only a chain link type fence and I could smell him and it came crashing down on me again. A few months later we went to trial and just before it started, he made a plea, got a gazillion years to serve and the police were furious as the death penalty was on the table in Georgia in those days if an African-American raped a white woman. I wouldn't have wanted that though. It seems as if his death would have been on my conscience.
I lost the job and a lot of friends who would not let me back in their house after I had been touched by a black man. I became a pariah. All I know is I went to work one day fantacizing about a date and before I knew it I was dirty and tainted and not wanted in polite company.
But I wasn't dead and there was no four year old daughter at my house without a mother. And I'm okay, mostly. Oh, yes, sometimes it can be a smell or a doorbell ringing or a parking deck or an elevator that can take me back to that day even after forty four years, but I'm okay.
Update: This diary is nine months old. I'd like people to know I had no outward bruises, no broken bones, no screams were heard and yet my psyche was damaged almost beyond repair. I will never be over it. And if it were up to you Mr. Boehner, if I had gotten pregnant, minuses bruises and broken bones, you probably would have made me carry and have this evil man's baby.