Independent Evidence

It is 2009 and I am in my friend’s guest room in Maryland, where I am staying for a few months. 

I type his name into the sex offender registry search box for the thousandth time, but he isn’t there. I had been searching for him for years with no luck. I want to find him, and the registry is the only place I think to look. I assume he had reoffended. Despite my inability to believe in God, I prayed that someone else had reported him. I know the limits of the registry, but still have faith that he would be there. Or maybe I am afraid to find him elsewhere.

I decide to try Google. I know his full name, where he went to college, and his hometown. Each time I click a link in my search results, my heart skips a beat. I scrutinize the details on each website, and when I realize it’s not him, I don’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved.

I click a LinkedIn profile. There he is. The camp counselor who had raped me when I was 13 is completing a doctoral degree at an ivy league university instead of serving a prison sentence. 

The rape happened in the summer of 1992 on a deserted college campus outside of Boston. I look up the statute of limitations for Massachusetts. For victims who were under age 16, the statute of limitations was 15 years after the victim turns 16 or reports to police, whichever is earlier. I quickly calculate that the statute of limitations ran out 15 years after I turned 16, or on my 31st birthday, which I had celebrated the day before.  

For the second time this evening, I don’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved. Here I am, reconsidering reporting the crime, and I am one day too late. I  cannot reconcile that I had let the man who raped me go free. He faces no accountability for what he has done. But nothing can be done, so I close my laptop and stop searching the registry.

****

It is 1999 and I am in a classroom at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. A professor puts a newspaper article on my desk and says, “I thought you might be interested in this story.” 

There is a picture of an old man, but I suppose everyone over 40 looks old to a 20-year-old college student. He is starting an organization called the Camp Safety Project because his son was abused in a summer camp. My eyes widen. When I get back to my dorm room, I look up his number and call him. “I want to help,” I say. “I was also abused at a camp.”

I become a poster child for camp abuse. I talk about my assault on television and in op-eds. We conduct a statewide survey to learn the scope of the problem. We uncover over 100 cases. I create a resource guide for camps to use to prevent sexual abuse. I start a website to collect stories of camp abuse. I connect survivors with one another. We are both relieved and disappointed that we are not alone. We lobby for legislative changes and some pass despite Catholic church opposition. I feel powerful and know I want to spend my life preventing abuse and helping survivors.

****

It is 2016 and I am sitting in a conference room at a pro-bono civil legal service non-profit in Boston. I am a professor, not a client, and we are discussing our joint research project. The topic of statutes of limitations comes up, and what journalists are calling the “Cosby effect.” Several states are starting to make changes to their statutes of limitations to allow for victims to have more time to report sexual abuse cases from decades earlier.

“Has Massachusetts changed their statute of limitations?” I ask, casually, as if it’s a question related to our research.

I learn that it has changed. For rape of a child under 16, there is no statute of limitations, but if it has been more than 27 years since the offense, there needs to be “independent evidence that corroborates the victim's allegation. Such independent evidence… shall not consist exclusively of the opinions of mental health professionals.”

I have two years from this moment to decide to report because if I wait any longer, I will need “independent evidence.” I stop listening to the conversation so I can think. I don’t have any evidence like in the CSI television show. I didn’t tell anyone for almost two years after it happened. I never went to the hospital. I never reported to the police. 

Wait. The police. A police officer interrupted the rape. The rapist took me into an empty dorm room to assault me. An officer saw the light on and knocked on the window. We came out of the dorm, he lied to the officer and said I was his little cousin who he was showing around campus, and the kind officer drove us back to his car in the back of his patrol car. Next, the camp counselor drove me to a more secluded place to continue what he had started. I didn’t know where I was or if I would survive the night. I don’t remember returning to the dorm or my bed, where I woke up the next day.

I decide to contact the university where the rape took place to see if there were any records of the officer finding us that night. A lieutenant replies to my email: 

“Apparently, the University Police switched to electronic records the month after your assault occurred, so she is digging to see if there are paper files remaining. She expressed that she feels terrible about the timing and remains hopeful that she will be able to find some remaining paper trail to share with you. She agreed that she would be in touch with you to let you know what/if she finds anything.” 

I never hear from them. 

Curious, I decide to see if I can find him again online although seven years have passed since I first found his LinkedIn page. It does not take long to find his C.V. He is a researcher who regularly presents at academic conferences, including one that many of my colleagues attended. I look up where and when the conference will be next. He is presenting at the annual conference in two weeks in Washington, DC, a couple of miles from my apartment.

My heart races. I begin to imagine various scenarios where I would confront him, in front of a room of academics, for what he did to me. For the pain he caused. For the way he has been able to live his life for 24 years without consequences. 

Through Google, I find his home address. I find the name of the woman he has married. I find records of his contributions to the Democratic party and other progressive causes. I imagine writing a letter to him – or maybe his wife – to call him out as a rapist and a despicable human being. I fire off an email to my best friend, who I’d known since third grade, to tell her all I had learned about this man and that I am considering writing or reporting him. Her response, as always, is what I need to hear.

okay, first of all, I need to tell you that I love you so much.... having said that, I have a few hard things to say about this guy in Boston.

Please!!!!! STOP giving this man any more control over your life! He is consuming your thoughts! Girl.... please, be kind to yourself, This man is not deserving of this much control....

Jane, I love you so much, and this letter was not easy to type because I would rather be here to listen, and would love to agree with you.... but this is how I truly feel about the man in Boston...... Just send him the bill for all your years in therapy!!!! ......

I rip up the post-it where I had written his address and let the conference dates pass. 

****

I was 13, and he was a 20-year-old college student who took advantage of my vulnerability. Legally, I could not have consented to what occurred. It was technically statutory rape, so I could probably get a conviction. 

But would a conviction actually be possible in 2016, I wondered? And to what end? I had spent my career working to end violence. The most powerful positive impacts in this work – where I had a glimmer of hope that another world is possible – were in the community-led and community-based initiatives. The most negative impacts were made worse by the harms inherent in the criminal legal system. 

I was angry that the statute of limitations had been extended. That a door that was closed for me had reopened, trying to invite me back in. I wondered if my silence meant he was able to go on with his life as if it never happened, while I struggled with chronic back pain, nightmares, flashbacks, intimacy, and an inability to feel safe. At the time that I ripped up the post-it note, I couldn’t sit in a room without facing the door. I was always on edge. I took the stairs instead of the elevator so I couldn’t get trapped. I even had trouble taking cabs, because I wasn’t in the driver’s seat. Yet I realized it was not me that let the man who raped me go free. And it was not because of me that he faced no accountability for what he had done.

Pursuing charges wouldn’t unrape me, it wouldn’t take away the pain I’ve experienced, it wouldn’t pay for the years of therapy, and it likely wouldn’t put him in prison. He could hire an expensive lawyer and call me a liar. I had no “independent evidence,” after all. Even if he did go to prison, it wouldn’t be for very long, and it wouldn’t have prevented any other offenses he may have committed in the intervening years. And it wouldn’t hold him accountable in any meaningful way to me and my life. 

The reopening of the possibility to press charges was an opportunity for me to reflect on what I, as a survivor, needed to heal. I needed to ask my heart what felt right to me. I was an activist, professor, researcher, and a former social worker. My head was filled with data and survivors’ stories that said loud and clear: the police will not protect you and the courts will not keep you safe. I realized my head and my heart were saying the same thing: pressing charges would help no one. The legal system would not change our culture that raised men to want to control women. It would not heal me. It would break me. It cannot heal the men that harm women. It cannot magically make a survivor feel whole again. 

I do not know what would have happened if I had reported the rape at any point, whether it was 1992, 1994, 2003, 2009, 2016, or yesterday. What I do know is that I needed what I would argue most survivors need: to be able to tell my truth, for my truth to be believed, to feel safe, and for my power to be restored. What I also know from my work over the past two decades is that the criminal legal system is not a place where victims are believed, where victims can feel safe, or where victim power is restored. 

As I consider the multiple moments that made me whole again, I think of the first person I told, a high school math teacher, who believed me. I think of the kids who sat across from me in a counseling room, who told me their stories with puppets or other toys, who I validated and said, like the math teacher said to me, “You’re going to be ok.” I think of the emails I received from other survivors via the Camp Safety Project website. I think of my lovers who held me and helped me feel safe. I think of the community of people – a community of survivors and queer people – who I have surrounded myself with over the years. I think of my chosen family, who have helped me know what it is like to be loved, to be cared for, and to reciprocate such care. I think of my therapists and acupuncturists who helped me discover that my nervous system was stuck in a trauma (fight/flight/freeze) response and who are working with me to learn to be present in my body again. I can now sit with my back to a door and, as I age, I welcome an opportunity to take an elevator over stairs.

It is 2021 and I know that the sex offender registry doesn’t make us safer. Statutes of limitations are artificial boundaries on when a survivor can tell their truth. The legal system is designed to protect defendants’ rights, not victims. What we need, as survivors, are the community-led and community-based solutions that don’t require “independent evidence” and instead center hope, healing, and community transformation. I’ll never forget the moment I heard a spoken word poet declare the words “risk hope.” These two words are what get me out of bed each morning and help me imagine – and work to create – a different world – one without violence or the prospect of it. Without hope, we remain trapped. With hope that a different world is possible, we can be free. 

Note: This essay is an excerpt – with minor additions – from a forthcoming chapter in Queer Victimology (Texas Review Press), which will be published in 2022.

Jane Palmer is a professor, researcher, and activist in Washington, DC. When she's not reading, writing, sewing, or hanging out with her family and friends, she is dreaming of a world without violence. Twitter: @riskhope.