Another Side of Rape

I watch as the man who raped my girlfriend 15 years ago walks toward me in this trendy bar. He is now bloated, with a face so fat that his eyes are pinched into a permanent squint. I rise from my table and motion for him to sit down. He is expressionless; he doesn't remember me, doesn't know who I am or why I've called him to join me. But I remember him.

Laurie and I were sophomores at the University of Iowa when it happened. It was a cool Sunday night and we were lying on a blanket beside an isolated lake, kissing, touching. The reflected moon shimmered on the water's surface, when three men approached and sat down 15 feet away. They studied us briefly, then left, one of them saying, "Sorry to bother you." The man's (continued on page 150) Another Side of Rape (continued from page 106) inflection told me that he was black. We're white. "No problem," I said.

The year was 1970, and I believed that the political-and-cultural revolution was not far away, that all black people were my friends. We stayed.

Five minutes later, two of the men returned. They must have car trouble, I thought. I noticed this time that the men were big, one of them much heavier than my 135 pounds, and they came strangely close to us. "Do you want to share your girl?" the larger one asked. Jesus. "Do you want to share your girl?" he repeated.

"No," I said, hoping that their asking meant that they would leave. He then turned to Laurie and asked her if she wanted to fuck them. Her head was bowed, she didn't look up, and she said in a choked voice, "No."

According to the police report that would be filed in a few hours, we were only six feet from the lake's edge.

In my fantasies, I have the presence of mind to whisper for her to run into the lake. As she races into the water, I hurl myself at the men's feet in what we used to call a roadblock in sand-lot football. I take out the closer one; the other one doesn't reach her in time. The lake isn't deep, but they are too cool to wade in after her. She is safe.

But that is only a fantasy.

"Well, you're going to fuck anyhow," he said, and he motioned to the man standing next to him, who smiled as he slowly poked forward the curved end of a tire iron he'd been hiding behind a leg. I rose, my breath coming fast. I took a step toward them and was met by the man with the tire iron, who pushed me to the side and said he wanted to talk to me. The other man walked behind Laurie, who was kneeling on the ground, grabbed her by the neck and pulled her ovér backward. He choked her and then stopped and started feeling her, telling her to just let him take off her clothes, just let him see her body, just let him do it. She pleaded with him to stop as he pulled her pants off.

"I can take you without this," the man with me said and threw the tire iron down between us, just a few feet away. He weighed at least 30 pounds more than I. I took a step forward as I told him I didn't want to fight and managed to locate the tire iron with a foot. He was about a yard away, his fists poised, unaware. I knew that if I went for the iron and failed, he might kill me.

My fantasy is always in slow motion. I grab the lire iron and feint a blow to his head. Both of his hands come up to ward off the blow and to grab the iron away from me, but instead I swing it low with all my strength, hitting the sweet spot of his knee from the side, breaking his leg. He falls heavily on the ground, writhing in pain. I walk slowly, purposefully, toward the other man, his eyes widening in fear as I approach, as I cock the iron like a bat and bring it down, time after time after time.

But that is only a fantasy.

He was too quick, too close, or I was too slow; as I grabbed the iron, he was on me. We wrestled, both holding the iron; but he soon was on top, choking me with it.

He let up and got off me. "If you move again, I'll bust your head," he said. He made me kneel with my back to Laurie, about ten feet away from her. I didn't move. He was standing behind me; I knew that if he decided to hit me, I would have no warning, no chance.

Laurie was a frenzy of screams and pleas that she was a virgin, that she didn't want to get pregnant; then she was silent. All I heard were the man's low-pitched grunts and the rustle of people struggling. I tried to calm myself. I remembered to make a mental picture of the men for the police. I wondered what they would do with us when they were through. I was sure they wouldn't just let us go. I shivered; none of their likely options was desirable.

Several minutes passed, and then I heard the sound of urination directly behind me. The man with the tire iron was pissing. I decided to run to my car, which was parked about 100 yards away, to get help--there was nothing I could do where I was but listen to Laurie's cries, and if I could escape, they would have to split. But I felt as if I were abandoning her; I felt as if I were running in gelatin; I could hear her cry out, this time to me--she didn't know what I was doing.

The prosecution asked Laurie during the trial: "Did [the defendant] strike you?"

"Yes.... Ransom had started running off. Then I started yelling again and [the defendant] slugged me on the right side of my face up by my eye."

Not running to get help but running off. Those words seared me during the trial, and they sear me now.

The man with the tire iron tackled me within 15 yards. He told me that if I moved a muscle, he would hit me with the iron. I asked him not to get on Laurie when the other guy was through. He didn't answer but asked what she looked like, if she was pretty. I knew better than to say that she was. He then asked if I wanted to get on her, too.

This is a casual act to these two men, I suddenly realize. They believe that they are merely exercising their male rights, that after they're done with her, I'll also take my turn, and when I'm done with her, we'll shake hands, hail fellows well met, and go our separate ways. And since I've taken my turn, no one will report it to the police, and she's probably secretly enjoyed it all, anyway.

But that is their fantasy.

I told him no. I looked over at her; the man was on top of her in a push-up position, his groin area directly over her head.

The man with the tire iron prodded me and told me to strip. I did, knowing what this might mean. I heard later from a cop that the man's brother was doing time for raping another man.

Before I found out his plans, though, a set of car lights appeared in the parking lot. Soon a flashlight was coming toward us, and I wanted to yell, but I could feel the presence of the man with the tire iron next to me. We both watched as the flashlight came closer and shined on me, then on him, then on Laurie.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Our two assailants were a blur of motion.

"Look out; this one's got a tire iron!" I yelled.

But they didn't attack him; they raced toward his car's lights, the only way out.

"Get 'em, Hank!" he yelled. There were people by his car, but the two men sprinted past them.

I whipped into my jeans and idiotically--they were already 150 yards away--took a few strides in their direction. "Get 'em!" I screamed, but no one was going to catch them tonight, not the police with their many cars that soon rushed to the scene, not the helicopter that was soon flying low over the lake, searchlight slicing the night sky. And not me.

I went back to Laurie, who, covered by our blanket, was crying as she put her clothes back on. I held her, just as I'd held her so many times before, but this was different--this was no longer the embrace of two teenagers eager to enjoy each other's touch. It was tainted. She trembled in my arms. The flesh around her right eye was cut and swollen horribly where she had been hit.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," was all I could say.

The police came and led us back to their car to take our story, and as we passed the motor home of the man who had rescued us, I noticed a bumper sticker that read, America, love it or leave it. Irony abounded: We had been assaulted by blacks, whom I saw as the vanguard of the revolution, and saved by a right-wing redneck who later complained to me about the "nigger bastards." My naÏveté was ripped away that night.

We were taken to police headquarters, where we looked at mug shots of convicted sex offenders, but we didn't find anyone who looked like our assailants. Later, the police photographer came to take a picture of my girlfriend's facial contusions. He asked if I had any injuries. I had a couple of bruises by my collarbone where I had been choked with the tire iron, but it seemed ridiculous to mention them when Laurie could barely see.

"None to speak of."

He said nothing, but his eyebrows lifted.

"So what would you have done, you son of a bitch?" I wanted to say but didn't."Were you there?"

"They had a tire iron," I said weakly.

He said nothing as he snapped her picture, then walked away. The guilt had started.

I felt it a few days later when one of my fraternity brothers--a house jock--told me that no one would ever rape his woman in front of him. "They'd have to kill me first," he said.

"Well, that wouldn't be so smart," I said, "because if they killed you, then they'd sure as hell have to kill your girlfriend, too."

"I don't care," he said. "They'd have to kill me."

"Then you're a fucking idiot," I said and turned away. It was a hell of a lot easier to say you'd make a suicide charge than it was to make one. But I couldn't help wondering if he had meant what he said.

And I felt the guilt, as well as a new awkwardness, every time I was with Laurie. Our relationship had subtly changed, even though we struggled to keep it the same. I didn't know what to say to comfort someone who had gone through this, and my inexperience was intertwined with the fact that I had been there and unable to do anything to help her. She told me that I couldn't have done anything differently, but that was little solace, because I knew that she wouldn't show or say anything to the contrary. There was nothing she could say to make me feel better--I wouldn't believe her--and there was nothing I could say to soothe her. We had lost the ability to help each other.

We waited to hear from the police.

Their internal reports show that the first break in the case came six days later, when a woman phoned to report that she knew the two men who were involved in the assault and gave their names. She said that one of the men had come to her house that night, breathing very hard, and had asked her roommate for a ride home. The roommate, who knew the two men through her boyfriend, complied. The informant told the police that she was calling because she didn't think it was right for anyone to do what they had done, and because she felt sorry for the girl.

The police had enough evidence to arrest both men when their girlfriends, who had both been lying to protect them, decided to tell the truth. Both men then confessed. The man with the tire iron pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two to three years in the state penitentiary. The other man, despite his confession, pleaded not guilty. There would be a trial.

The conviction of the man I'll call Lester Rath hinged on whether or not Laurie and I could identify him and on whether or not his confession would be admissible as evidence. Both aspects were complicated; although we had both identified him prior to his arrest from pictures we'd been shown, neither of us had identified him in the line-up at police headquarters, and so he was set free until his girlfriend finally broke his alibi a few days later. And his confession was legally suspect because of a question as to whether or not he had waived his right to have his lawyer present at the interrogation.

It was basically on my testimony that the conviction was decided--Laurie testified that she had some doubt about whether or not Rath was the rapist, because she had only glanced at the men, and that while her assailant was facing her, she "was either looking up at the sky or off to the side or had [her] eyes closed." My identification of Rath during the trial was somewhat stronger than I really felt it to be--it had been dark that night and I hadn't seen him all that well, despite my identification of him from the pictures-- but the police had told me that he had confessed, and by the time of the trial I didn't give a damn about civil liberties and legal technicalities. I knew he was guilty and I just wanted him in prison, and I was willing to testify that I was more certain than I really was.

The jury believed me and found Rath guilty. The state Supreme Court later sustained his conviction, dismissing his appeal that his confession should not have been admissible, noting that I had identified him, and with my identification the case would have been sufficient to support a guilty verdict without his admission. I still have no regrets about my testimony.

I later learned that Rath had been one of the most celebrated high school football players in Iowa a few years earlier. He had been recruited by many major universities, but he didn't have the academic standing to play. One of the University of Iowa coaches had arranged to have him attend a junior college to raise his grades, but he soon flunked out, ending his football career.

I was sitting in the courtroom's front row on the day he was sentenced to two concurrent five-year terms. He glared at me when he was led out, and he scowled and swore under his breath.

But he was free in two years.

The day I left that courtroom, I vowed to forget about the event, the men, the trial. But I did not, could not, forget.

I hung a black blanket over my fraternity-house window to shut out the sunlight and to enable me to sleep 12 to 14 hours a day. I skipped classes, my grades went to hell and I went into a depression that lasted for months. I drifted away from Laurie and didn't even have the grace to break up with her. I just quit calling.

And I'm still sorry.

•

Much later, I learned that the dissolution of our relationship wasn't? unusual. Although there has been very little research on the effect rape has on couples (whether or not the male is present during the assault), the single study that has been completed shows that most couples suffer from moderate to major maladjustment following a rape. The study, carried out by the Marriage Council of Philadelphia, notes that the final outcome of rape is often "that a large number of victims and their male partners silently suffer in unsatisfying marriages or simply dissolve their relationships in despair." It stands to reason, in the instances when the man in the relationship is present during the assault, that the effect of the rape is intensified. This doesn't excuse or justify my behavior after the assault, but it does, perhaps, explain it.

The only lengthy study to focus completely on the male's response to his partner's rape was made by Kenneth Stone, whose dissertation at Boston University identified what he calls the second-victim rape-trauma syndrome. The symptoms include "initial denial and shock often followed by anger and guilt; a strong desire to take quick and concrete action; feelings of confusion and frustration with regard to effectively aiding the initial victim; decrease in self-esteem ... [and] obsession with revenge...."

I, too, suffered from those symptoms, especially a marked obsession with revenge. In 1976 Rath was convicted of slugging a referee after a high school football game. His address was published in the newspaper, and I made a habit of driving around his block at night, peering in his windows from the street as my car crept past his house. It had been years since the rape, but I still couldn't shake my anger. It would have been so easy, I thought, to lure him to his door, pull out a gun and, as his eyes widened in panic, blow him away. I finally decided that my life had too many possibilities for me to go to prison for murder, but I swore that if I ever got a terminal disease, Rath was a dead man.

What makes a man react this way? Why was I unable, if not to forget, at least to put the incident behind me? No doubt my reaction was in part due to the fact that I, like almost every male, had been taught that the protection of any woman I was with was my first responsibility; the other part is that there is a powerful, primal impulse that affects a man whose female companion is sexually attacked, especially in his presence. I know that I've never thought of the assault as having been directed against only one human being while I, another human being, was held at bay by someone with a weapon; the assault was against my girlfriend, and I, the man, was unable to protect her.

After the rape, I experienced an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness that almost seemed to become a part of me. Fifteen years later, that sense of powerless-ness has faded, but it hasn't disappeared. I'm reminded of it in mundane settings: I was walking recently at night with the woman to whom I'm closest, and we heard footsteps not far behind us. I turned and saw that it was only a teenaged boy, yet my friend kept turning every few seconds to see whether or not he was gaining on us. She was clearly afraid. After we turned off and he walked on, I said, "It was only a goddamn kid."

"Yeah, I know, but ..." and her voice trailed off. Neither of us said anything more.

She has told me that if we were in a situation similar to the assault in 1970, she wouldn't want me to do anything differently from what I did that night; she could live with being raped, but it would be difficult for her to live if I were killed. But I know that if that situation ever happened again, I would fight until I dropped, even though, rationally, I would know that my chances against them were terrible--especially if they had a gun--and that I would be gambling with both of our lives. But I know my anger would be too strong for me to control, even though I might be, in my own words, "a fucking idiot."

I won't go through that again.

•

Dr.?Carolyn J. Hursch, author of the book The Trouble with Rape, wrote in a letter to me:

We all experience "downers" now and then--loss of job, coming off second best in verbal repartee, public humiliation by a superior--and the response to such situations is an almost uncontrollable need to right the wrong. We strive to find a better job, to respond more swiftly and smartly the next time, to publicly prove the superior wrong. But in the situation you describe, there is no second chance. The attackers (with luck!) may go to jail, but due process is impersonal and does not erase the personal injury to one's pride. The girlfriend may express her understanding of one's powerlessness--but this contributes nothing to the view of one's own manhood. The scar remains and, on bad days, continues to throb.

She is right; I haven't really healed. For years, every time I went home to visit, I would look up the names of our assailants in the phone book to see if they were still in town. Rath always was. At some point, I decided the only way for me to get a second chance was to confront him.

On the day I finally meet him, all I really know about Lester Rath is that in 1970 he was big and he was brutal. Is he still? Will he blame me for sending him to prison? My family and friends have told me this is a dangerous mission, but I want to prove that I am not afraid of him. The fact that the situation may be dangerous is what makes it worth doing. Nevertheless, it does occur to me to wonder whether or not he will be carrying a gun.

I have told him my name on the phone and mentioned that I was working on an assignment for Playboy--told him that I wanted to interview him. I haven't told him why and he apparently couldn't place my name. He sounded suspicious but agreed to meet me the next night in a downtown bar.

I arrive at the bar early; I want to find an isolated table but one still in full view. Twenty minutes later, Rath walks in, wearing jeans and a sea-green surgical smock that hangs over his enormous belly. Later he will tell me he has gained 70 pounds since the assault. That seems a conservative estimate.

I stand and motion him over. I feel a mixture of anger and uneasiness. He stares at me impassively as he clumsily pulls the chair out, sits down and lights a cigarette.

I'm careful to start by assuring him that I won't use his real name for the article and that I just want him to answer a few questions. He doesn't move or say a word. I look him in the eye.

"I was the man at Coralville Lake in 1970," I say. "That was my girlfriend you assaulted."

He shifts in his chair but doesn't speak, moving only to puff on his cigarette. A waitress asks if he wants a drink and he does. I hope this means he's planning to stay, but he says nothing until a couple of minutes after she delivers his order.

"What questions you got?"

I'm relieved. The obvious question to start with is why he did it.

He pauses, sucking on an ice cube. "That was a long time ago. I really don't know myself. It was a certain event that happened--I did my time, I had a jury trial, at which you and the girl identified me." He takes a drag of his cigarette. "So I felt kind of bad about that. Because you didn't know if it was me or Barker."

I tell him I knew the difference between the two men because he was so much bigger than Barker.

"I wasn't then." That is his first lie. Laurie, according to the police reports, said that the larger of the two men had attacked her, and I remember noticing a striking difference in size between our assailants. When I later call Barker in Hawaii, he will confirm that the other man was bigger than he was.

"But you were the one with my girlfriend, right?"

"No, I wasn't. Barker was the one with the girl. I was there and I participated, but I wasn't the main factor." That is his second lie. Barker was arrested after his girlfriend identified his bone-pick comb, which, according to the police reports, had been found nine feet to the east of where Laurie was raped, the same spot where I'd scuffled with him. The man who raped Laurie had never been in that area. Barker later tells me on the phone that Rath is lying, and although Barker tells me several lies of his own--for instance, that he didn't have a tire iron and that he was surprised when Rath assaulted Laurie--there's no question that Rath, not Barker, raped her. It seems that both men have repeated these lies to themselves so many times that they may actually believe them; maybe it's the only way they can live with themselves.

I ask Rath why, if he was the one with me, he confessed to being the one who assaulted Laurie.

At the trial, Rath testifies that after he was arrested, he was asked by a detective if he had been at Coralville Lake that night. From the transcript: "'Yeah, I was there,' you know.... [The detective] said, 'Did you force a girl?' you know. I said, 'Yes. Sort of.' You know. He said, 'You pull her panties down?' I said, 'Yeah. Kind of. Uh-huh.' He said, 'Make her blow you?' I said, 'Well, like, she was starting to, you know.'"

He tells me that Barker persuaded him to make a false confession by telling him that the courts would go easier on him, because his record wasn't as bad as Barker's. He says that he confessed out of friendship for Barker.

This stuns me. And it won't be until later, when I've had time to analyze his remarks, that I realize he is lying.

"That's amazing," I say.

"I'm hip."

I ask what they would have done to us if we hadn't been rescued.

"Nothing, probably. I ain't violent."

Right.

"We were told by the police that there might have been another man watching from the trees that night. Is that true?"

"Couple of them."

I ask whether he blames himself for what happened to his football career, and he says he does, that he was good enough to have played pro football. "I don't blame nobody but myself," he says. "It's easy to blame someone else."

He seems uncomfortable, nervous. Through most of the interview, he sucks on an ice cube; which makes his speech slurred, as if he were drunk. His answers are also often rambling and incoherent, and he frequently stares into the distance, refusing to meet my eyes. I feel that if this is a test of wills, which in some ways it is, I'm winning.

As we talk, I begin to see him less as an adversary than as someone to pity. He is a physical wreck who reminds me more of the big, fat kid who always gets teased than of the high school football star. He tells me that he's unemployed. He says, "I want to tell you that I'm sorry about what happened. I know that it messed up my life and maybe hers and yours, too.... I'm just sorry it happened to you or anybody." I show him the color picture taken of Laurie's face that night, which I had taken from the trial exhibits. He looks for a long time, seemingly saddened by it, and says the rape was a bad thing. My anger lessens. He says he wants to get a sociology degree so he can "save people."

I probably should end the interview now--he honestly seems to regret the rape, and I have whatever satisfaction there is in hearing his apologies, as well as the revenge of seeing how pitiful he has become. But it isn't enough. Even though I know I couldn't have prevented the rape, I'm still haunted by the fact that I didn't do everything that I could to stop it--I wasn't willing to sacrifice my life. And I'm haunted by it even though I know that such a sacrifice would have been futile, even though I know, logically, that I had no real choice. I ask him what he would have done if he had been my size and in my place.

He pauses to take a drag on his cigarette. I want him to tell me that there was nothing I could have done, that I would have been a fool to fight them and that, in my place, he wouldn't have done anything differently. He doesn't comply.

"The body don't make the man," he says. "If I'd have been you, we'd still be fighting."

"So you think I gave in too easy?"

"For what you had at stake, you did." He is no longer looking away.

"You, or whoever was with me, had a tire iron in his hand, though."

"I didn't have nothing in my hand." That isn't a lie, because he wasn't with me. Barker had the tire iron.

I argue with him, saying that both Laurie and I saw the tire iron, that I had gotten it in my hands and that I think it's strange that he doesn't remember it. He replies that the incident was 15 years ago and it wasn't the best event of his life.

"If you assume," I persist, "that the person with me had a tire iron, would you then say I put up enough fight?"

"You know, my man, I'm going to tell you something." His condescension infuriates me. "A weapon like a tire iron can only swing one time, and then I'm looking for a hit back."

"So if you had been me, and the other person had a tire iron, you still would have fought?"

"Oh, yeah."

I forget his apologies. I'm angry about getting a lecture on courage from a man who overpowered a woman weighing 100 pounds less than he did, whose accomplice had a tire iron and who had two friends waiting in the trees. That is the most cowardly act I've ever seen.

I'm also suddenly aware of the absurdity of asking for some sort of absolution from--of all people!--the man who attacked us, particularly when absolution is something that I haven't even been able to grant to myself. I realize that there is no second chance and that I will have to live with the event the rest of my life, perhaps never completely coming to terms with it.

But there is one thing I won't have to live with, and that is letting the interview finish with his having the upper hand. I have one last question to ask, one that I've thought about for days and one that I know carries with it a certain risk.

"Have you considered," I say, leaning forward so that my eyes meet his, "that I'm not writing an article at all, that I just wanted to lure you here?"

His eyes widen in fear--for the first time in 15 years, my fantasies are in sync with reality--as I speak slowly, deliberately. "Have you considered that I'm really here to get revenge?"

Editor's note: All names and locales and some details in this article have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.