July 7, 2001 was hot. Holy sweet Jesus it was hot. And humid as all get out. It's my friend Krissy's birthday, so I had traveled from my home in Rochester, NY to the city where I grew up for a girls-get together to celebrate. I was excited because I recently lost about 30 lbs (due to being on my own and dirt poor) and I was wearing a really cute halter top and dress pants to show off how hot I looked!
We started out at her friend's house, hanging out and having a few beers. I had 3, I think. I was buzzed, but in no way intoxicated. Someone's husband drove us the 5 blocks to the bar. It was 11 pm.
I purchased only 1 beer there, and never finished it. There were so many people there that I hadn't seen in years...I was too busy talking! The beer got warm and I eventually put it down. I was going to spend the night at Krissy's house, but since I was completely sober, I decided to drive back to Rochester. I just had to get back to my car, which was still parked at her house. Everyone was going to an after hours party and I didn't want to go. It was 2am.
I used the pay phone outside of the bar to call a cab, but since it was when the bars were closing, I was told it was going to be at least a 1.5 hr wait for a cab. I said no thanks and decided to walk the 5 blocks or so through downtown. It was well lit and I knew the area well.
I walked quickly, looking straight ahead, holding my car keys in my hand for protection. I was about a block and a half away from my car when I saw I wasn't the only one walking that night. A man was approaching me. I moved off the sidewalk to "give him room" and that's when he grabbed my arm and said "oh no you don't" in a low voice in my ear. He had a gun and it was pressed into my lower back. The left side. I threw down my purse and said he could have it all. He said he didn't want my purse.
My therapist tells me this is when survival mode kicked in. I remember telling him I was walking to my boyfriend's house ("it's just right over here.") and begging him to let me go because I was pregnant. Which I wasn't, by the way.
During this time he had dragged me to his parked car. It was an early 2000s silver Ford Taurus. I remember that now and I remembered it when it came time to recall the details later that night and over and over again over the next 2 years.
His car was parked right next to a funeral home, rectory and 2 doors down from a Catholic Church. How ironic is that? A place where you're taught you can always feel safe and take shelter was closed off to me when I needed it the most. He told me to kneel down on the floor and put my head on the front seat face down, facing the rear of the seat. I told him I was too tall at 5'9 and wouldn't fit. He and the gun said, "yes you will."
I talked to him. I begged him not to hurt me or "my baby" and I told him my name (Katherine) and I asked his (I don't remember what he said but it was a lie.)He chastised me for drinking while pregnant (he could smell beer on my breath) and I asked him if he was going to church later that day. He said yes and told me to shut up. It was 2:30am. It was at that point that I thought, "I now know how those women feel when they know they're about to die."
I couldn't see where we were going and even though I tried to follow a probable route in my head by the amount of street lights, I quickly lost my bearings. Even when the car stopped and he told me to get out. I didn't know where I was. Except that I was surrounded by trees on 2 sides, there was an abandoned garage in front of me and darkness behind me. I told him I had to pee and he motioned with the gun over to the corner where I cased the place and realized I had nowhere to go.
It was at this time that I knew I was going to die so I figured I'd might as well leave clues for the CSIs. There's a Tori Amos song that talks about her rape and one of the line goes "It's kind of funny the things you think at times like these." And it's true. I dropped some items from my purse into the grass...a makeup compact, a lipstick, a few coins. He didn't see and then ordered me back into the car. It was 2:45am.
The official legal terminology is "sodomy," but it's also referred to as sexual assault, sexual abuse and even rape. I've always felt guilty calling it rape. I don't feel like I deserve that classification since there was no penetration. I don't remember the actual sex-related charges he was brought up on for what he did to me but there were many of them and I always felt like what he was being charged with properly represented for everything he did to me and everything he made me do.
After he was finished he took my wallet which contained about $35 and my license and social security card and told me to walk straight ahead and not turn around. It was surreal. I can still remember walking away and bracing myself for the bullet to hit me in the back or the back of the head. He was a coward and he couldn't get it up...he certainly wouldn't have the balls to look me in the eye when he murdered me. I was surprised when he actually did drive away.
I found my way to an apartment complex where I hid in some bushes while trying to figure out my next step. It was about 3 am, I didn't have any money, no cell phone and I wasn't anywhere near a payphone. Right at that moment I heard a car pull up and I crouched down lower into the dirt...thinking it was him coming back after changing his mind about letting me go alive. It was a car full of women though and I climbed out from the bushes and approached them. I was shaking yet strangely calm. They all stared at me wide-eyed as I quickly went through what had happened (minus the gory details) as they got me water. It was at that point that I realized one of the girls was someone I went to Catholic grade school with. She tried to make small talk at first but then realized reminiscing was the last thing on my mind.
I didn't want to call 911 because I was terrified of all of the police cars converging on the location. I didn't want the ambulances and the flashing lights alerting the neighborhood that somewhere amidst the uniforms was a broken girl. It was a theme that has plagued me these last 10 years: never let them see you as broken.
Instead I asked them to drive me to the police station. One of them, not my long lost friend, walked in with me. I approached the counter and a young, bored-looking officer quickly listened to the details, walked me into a windowless room and told me to wait for the detective whom he just called. I released my driver from her uncomfortable job. Looking back now I picture her as a fish struggling for its freedom at the end of the line. What was she supposed to do? I didn't know. I didn't want my hand held or a hug or reassurance that everything was going to be okay. Everything was NOT going to be okay. Too much had happened in the last 2 hours for things to every be okay again.
The detective was a youngish guy...mid-30s maybe...handsome. He went through all of the formalities, "it wasn't your fault," "we'll catch this guy," "what a bastard..." I can't remember if he asked me if I wanted a rape crisis counselor. He probably did, but I declined. He wanted to call my family and I declined that offer too. I wanted to do this alone. It was close to 4am.
After taking a report (hen-pecking at the keyboard. I repeatedly asked him if he wanted me to type it.) I told him exactly what kind of car it was, his height (5'6ish), his hair type and color (longish and salt-n-pepper like). I described the gun as best as I could. We discussed accents and identifying marks. We talked about clothes. I never cried.
He had this bright idea to take me back to the garage where it happened. Is this SOP? Taking a sexual assault victim back to where she was just violated a couple of hours earlier while the scene was being processed? He drove me in his detective's car...with a safety glass and no handles on the door. I was trapped yet again in a car with a strange man.
I don't remember much about what happened at the scene. I showed him the area, they found the small items of my purse that I had purposely left there in case the crime was ever discovered and pictures were taken. My plan had worked after all, I thought. My makeup compact and lipstick (with DNA mind you) were now safely packed away into evidence bags.
Then I was free to go and I started the hour and a half drive back to my apartment. I drove close to 100mph the whole way, with the idea that if (when) I was pulled over, I would tell them I had just been sexually assaulted, check your computer and they would feel bad and let me go. I never got stopped.
I made it home, grabbed a butcher knife and went to bed. Needless to say the sleep was restless. Or maybe I didn't even sleep. I called my boyfriend at the time (he was about an hour away) and he was quiet...offering few words of comfort. Later on that night we would break up with him saying that "he couldn't deal." I still didn't cry.
I was in a brand new city (had moved to the area less than 2 months earlier) with no family or friends or even coworkers that I was friendly with. I was alone with my secret and that's how I wanted it to be. I was worried they could read it on my face.
Over the next few weeks the detective would visit me frequently during my lunch breaks and show me photos. I think there were 3 sets of 6 pictures he showed me over the course of a month or so. The people at my new job started at me and this law enforcement person with a glock in a shoulder holster looking at photo arrays on the trunk of his car in the blazing July sun. A few asked me about it and I told them half of the truth. I was robbed one weekend. To this day I think only 2 of them know the truth.
About a month later I got a call saying that they got the guy. He was caught after kidnapping, handcuffing and repeatedly raping a woman in a small town called Buffalo, WY. He was arrested while taking a break at a diner. The woman managed to signal to a waitress that she was being held against her will. In his "bag of tricks" was found my social security card. (Later on I was told that he had intended to kill her and leave her body somewhere in the Wyoming wilderness. I was "lucky" they said.) They tracked me down with the help of the FBI, all the while hoping I wasn't a Jane Doe in a cooler somewhere. Another photo array...this time with me easily identifying the man in the top left corner as the man who broke me. Dale W. Dean Sr. I didn't cry.
September 11th happened. And it took that magnitude of tragedy to break me. I remember staring at the TV in my tiny studio apartment hurting. Physically hurting. I was curled up in a ball crying like I had never cried before. I was dry heaving and gagging and gasping for breath. I never bothered to use tissues. The tears and snot and drool ran down my face and soaked my shirt. I couldn't even muster the strength to get up off the floor. I hurt so badly. So so badly. It was physical and tore through me. I was just so tired. At that point I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. I remember thinking and begging God to just put me to sleep. To euthanize me like a fatally injured animal. I finally fell asleep.
I don't consider that a thought of suicide, as I would tell therapists later on. God only knows what they wrote in their inch thick files on me. I never thought about shooting or stabbing or hanging myself. I was too much of a coward. I wanted God to do it for me. Here I was, asking God to do me a favor all the while cursing him for allowing such evil people to walk among us. I was torn...for some reason I was allowed to live yet living meant a heaviness that I would never be able to describe for people.
It was around then that the detective broke the news to me that Dean would be tried in WY before coming to NY to face the charges in my crimes. It was something I was OK with...still am. It was a few weeks later that I got a call from the investigator out there informing me that WY has a "prior bad acts" law where a defendant can face stiffer penalties if proven he's a habitual offender. Dean was recently paroled from a FL prison after serving time for armed robbery, attempted murder and a variety of other charges I never bothered to listen to because the first 2 always sealed the deal for me.
The investigator asked me to fly to WY to possibly be a witness for the prosecution in this rape case. I agreed and in Feb. of 2002 my Mom and I flew to Buffalo, WY, population 1200. We flew in on separate flights...I arrived a day or so before her. I was picked up from the tiny airport by the investigator I had been speaking with on the phone. While he was very nice, I always got the feeling like he was waiting for me to crack. I hadn't had another one of those "episodes." I had become numb to the details, to the procedures I was dutifully going through. Later on during my trial the local papers called me "stoic" and "matter-of-fact."
The WY victim asked to meet with me. She wanted to meet the woman with whom she had shared something so intimate, yet had never met. I agreed and me, the investigator, a rape crisis counselor and the other woman, Tina met in a diner for dinner. After laying eyes on Tina I knew why the investigator was convinced I was going to crack. Tina was more broken than I could ever imagine. No human should ever be in the state that she was in. She was on the verge of emaciated, as she had no appetite. Her hair was falling out. She made herself as small as she could, all the while trembling like an abused animal. She couldn't look me in the eye, though I'm sure she wondered if I was, in fact, the "NY victim" as I had come to be known.
We weren't allowed to talk about our cases, since we had to be sure neither of our testimonies was tainted in any way. It was then I was told that I may not have to testify after all. The DA told the defense attorney about my presence and that blew their case apart. He was claiming consensual sex, but since I was attacked in a somewhat similar manner just 2 wks prior...that's where the "prior bad acts" law comes in. Because I was there, Dean probably wasn't going to take the stand in his own defense.
I wasn't allowed in the trial, though my Mom was with the strict instructions not to talk about it with me in any way...which she did not. I wasn't even allowed into the court house, except on the day that my testimony was tentatively scheduled. That day, as I waited at a long conference room table, the DA came in and told me he wasn't taking the stand and we're sorry, but you won't be telling your story.
Shortly after that the case was handed to the jury. The prosecutor took my mom and I out to dinner while we waited for a verdict. As we were leaving he got the call...they had come back after about 2 hrs. We all rushed into the courtroom. I was allowed in at this point since there was no more testimony.
He was guilty and I broke. Again.
I ran out of the courtroom into a nearby bathroom and sobbed in a way that was very similar to September 11th. I crouched into the corner of the bathroom as my mother begged to come in and I just wanted to keep her out. I didn't want her...I didn't want anyone. I didn't want to be touched...I wanted to be alone. Alone was safer then having people want to help you and take the pain away. It was my pain and it had become comforting...a security blanket.
I don't remember anything from that point up until I left Buffalo, WY. Tina and I exchanged addresses and wrote a few times, but a year or so after the trial I stopped getting responses. I figured she needed to move on and I was a part of her past that she needed to forget. At some point I received a trauma survivor book and a newspaper clipping from the rape crisis counselor out there. The clipping was about Dean's sentencing...120 years. I don't know where either of those are today.
A few months later it was my turn for "justice." I testified before the grand jury where they handed down the charges. I was prepped and the DA and I went over my testimony again and again. It wasn't necessary because my story never varied which is what happens when you tell the truth.
As I stoically and matter-of-factly told my story and was questioned by the prosecution and defense, I don't remember looking at the jury. There was no point, I knew what I was going to see...sad eyes. Maybe even some sympathy. I didn't want their sympathy. I wanted them to do their job so I could get on with my life. I didn't need closure but everyone around me did. I don't know if there ever will be closure...but I've made peace with everything.
The defense attorney did his job and tried to say that it was a case of mistaken identity because I got wrong (or didn't know) the details of any facial hair he had and I mis-identified the gun. He was grasping at straws of course because what jury would expect a 22 year old woman to be able to identify a gun in detail? All I was concerned about was what that gun could do to me, not how pretty it looked.
I remember waiting in the law library in the courthouse for the verdict. I don't remember how long it took them...4 hours maybe? All I know was that I was so sick to my stomach. There was nothing anyone could do at that point to change what was going to happen. It was out of my hands and once again I was helpless when it came to this man.
I sat in the front row in the courtroom as the verdict was read...guilty on all counts. I remember crying out and just collapsing. Finally this part of the ordeal was over. Sentencing was a few weeks later and he got like 25 years for each of the 3 or 4 charges to be served consectively. He wouldn't, of course, serve a minute of "my" time because he was serving Tina's time first but that's okay. My time was kind of something to fall back on. Verdicts are appealed and thrown out all the time. This way if her verdict was thrown out, he would never walk free again because my verdict would be waiting for him.
At the sentencing I was allowed to read a victim impact statement. I wrote about how he didn't break me, but now, 10 years later, I know he did. There are parts of me that are so very broken right now that I don't know what to do. I face them everyday. They are constantly on my mind and I just want to forget but I can't. The damage has been done and it can never be undone and all I can do is take it day by day.
But then there are other parts of me that I wouldn't hand back for anything. Having to discuss sexual details with stranger after stranger opens you. Attending years of therapy where I would recount the events over and over...all of this has made me so open and unafraid of speaking my mind. I've completely lost my filter and I know it and I don't give a shit anymore. I've gotten brash, mouthy, sarcastic, snide and sometimes even rude and again, I don't care. I stopped caring what people thought of me. I've been considered a victim, one title I've always hated, yet I realized I can't change a person's perception of me. So I stopped trying and caring. In that way, I feel reborn. I feel as if I'm finally in the skin I'm meant to be in.
Because it's only in facing death that you truly learn what it means to live.