Chapter 22: Welcome to Hell
Just as rape is treated differently in a victim’s personal life, so it is in the justice system. Unlike a car accident or a mugging, it is much more difficult to prove with physical evidence that a crime has been committed. Even with physical evidence present, the proof lies in the abstract. It must be proven that the actions which occurred were without mutual consent. Unfortunately, this usually boils down to the victim’s word against the defendant’s. Therefore, what results is the test of credibility. If the accuser can be convincingly portrayed as even close to being untrustworthy, the entire case will fall apart. Therefore, while the alleged perpetrator’s lawyer must defend the accused from having committed a crime, the victim must defend their entire being — their background, life choices, family history, lifestyle, everything since the day they were born.
Like any other unsuspecting victim suddenly thrust into the bowels of the legal system, I had no idea what I was doing. Just a week after the crime was committed and days after being released from the hospital, the real legal process began. The police questioning in the hospital room was nothing compared to what I was about to face. It started out gently, with my main contact being John, the Assistant District Attorney who was assigned to handle my case from that point forward. He knew the story, and I went over it with him again and again as best I could. But apparently, it was time to get real.
You see, in my mind, there existed plenty of evidence. I was kidnapped for days without being able to contact my friends or family. My body was mangled, beaten and bruised. ADA John had taken me into the back of the DA’s office as soon as I was discharged from the hospital for visual documentation while my injuries were still raw. I remember he told me to sit on a wooden stool in front of a black curtain in the dark. He took pictures of me with a flash that will forever make me see dots, ones with imprinted circles of light against a menacing dark. He captured stills of my swollen face from being beaten, my bruised neck from strangulation. I was forced to offer to his camera any part of my body that had been affected. I was alone. For what I understood to be police work stuff.
ADA John told me that the Ringmaster actually had priors. That he had been arrested more than once on charges that “were extremely similar to mine”. And that of the other perpetrators they talked to, there was one that could be useful in my case. I immediately knew it was the guy in the taxi that I had berated for not realizing what he was a part of. It was already sounding open and shut to me.
Then, John asked me a question that chilled me to my bones:
“You know there was a camera there?”
I had hoped that those monsters were bluffing when they told me that there was a camera behind the mirror in the hotel room. That when they required me to smile at it, to pose at my own reflection, it was only to further humiliate me. Humiliation I could deal with. Humiliation was the new normal. But I could not believe it was real. I immediately flashed back to the hotel room, trying to contort my face at their demand. I remembered pulling the corners of my mouth wide across my face because I forgot how to grin. I saw my shivering naked body, my dark eyes screaming at a lens I didn’t even think existed. Hoping the falsehood of it all would beam through anyone who may be watching, if anyone ever did.
I nodded back to the ADA, unable to fully comprehend any of this, my thoughts racing. Luckily, John brought me right back to earth, “You didn’t look unhappy in the video.”
Video, not pictures. Actual video.
I don’t know what I said at that point, but of all the moments throughout this ordeal, I remember how I felt in this one. I know I teared up and I know I said words. But none of that mattered because the next thing he said was the beginning of another gang rape: “Well I mean, he said you were into that stuff.”
Welcome to the Justice System xoxo
