Kill the Silence

by Monika Korra

  Yet I had no idea where to start. I was still confused; everything had been happening so fast. He got life; I was free. I was safe. But his wife, his children, had only just begun to deal with the ramifications of his crime. About to cry, I looked at them. I had to take a deep breath not to lose it. I looked over at him, looked him in his eyes. He met my eyes. He looked different now, weak in a way, like he felt bad, like he was sorry for all he had done. I had to talk straight from my heart.

  “I just want to tell you one thing,” I began, the words crawling painfully out of my mouth. “I don’t hate you. I hate what you did to me, but not you personally. I’m not mad, but scared. Scared that you will do this again, to me or to someone else. So I had to do this, I had to testify and tell what you did that night to prevent you from hurting anyone again.”

  He continued to look straight at me, straight into my eyes. I felt my stomach quiver and then settle.

  “By looking at you, by the way you look at me, I can see that you have feelings, empathy.”

  Tears fell from his eyes, and I tried to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t force it past my constricted throat. Seeing him in tears, weak and vulnerable, made me sad in a way that I’d never experienced before.

  “I wish all the best for your family; your wife, your children. I hope and pray that they will have a good life. And I hope that you will find peace now.”

  He didn’t let go of my eyes for one second now. He nodded his head and said, “Gracias. Gracias!”

  I stepped down, and was about to leave the courtroom, when I remembered the media. I was too overwhelmed with feelings to talk to them now. I wanted to talk to my family and my friends first. And I wanted to go for a run; I needed to organize my thoughts. But I felt like I had an obligation to make good on my promise to them to speak out.

  I looked out in the hallway. I could see the reporters standing there arguing, yelling at one another. I turned around and walked straight out the back doors. I had just gotten my life back; a man had gotten life in prison; a wife didn’t know how she would be able to move on with her life and take care of her children alone. But those reporters, they were standing there arguing about something so small that they didn’t even understand it themselves. I didn’t feel bad about not talking to them anymore. And they were too busy yelling to see me take the back door out.

  Kelly arranged for us to celebrate the end of the trials at the Rosewood Mansion, one of the nicest hotels in uptown Dallas, a place I’d only heard about and never imagined being in. We stood on the veranda drinking champagne before we ate, my cell phone chirping along with the birds that flitted around Turtle Creek. I didn’t think it would end, and it didn’t. Some members of the media, not all of them, texted me, called me, over and over. I stepped inside the hotel and scanned the barrage of voice mails and texts. After an hour my mom took my phone and turned it off.

  “Enough! Let her be!” she said to the night air.

  She led me back outside to rejoin the party. Kelly handed me another champagne flute. They all stood there looking at me, and I knew that I was expected to deliver another message.

  I raised my glass and said, “This was one of the best days of my life. I owe that to all of you—thank you. Skål!” I took a sip and felt the bubbles prickling my tongue and my nose. Everyone laughed at the face I made.

  “I’m not used to drinking expensive champagne like this. I’ll probably never have anything like it again.”

  Kelly walked up to me and wrapped me in a big hug.

  “Oh, yes you will, Monika. You’ll find the man of your dreams, and on your wedding you will realize that it’s the best day of your life. Then you’ll toast with an even more expensive bottle.”

  Kelly always knew what to say to make me smile. I stood there on that warm spring evening, the scent of citronella candles and the flowering wisteria bush reminding me again of how sweet my life was and would continue to be.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Going Public

  April 2011 marked an end to the cycle of court cases. Luis Zuniga, the one I’d thought of alternately as the Weak One, had pled guilty to his participation in my kidnapping and assault and was awaiting a sentencing hearing on April 28.

  By that time, after spending more than a year talking about this possibility with friends and family, I made good on my promise to the media and shared my story and identity. I was glad that I’d waited. (Strange how my parents always are right.) If I’d done it immediately after Arturo Arevalo was found guilty and sentenced, I would have been doing it partly out of self-interest. I was in a hurry to let people know that I wasn’t ashamed of myself for what had happened. I was so eager to put everything behind me, to get back to normal, that I was rushing everything. I’d done a lot of work on myself since the attack and even more in the months following the first trial.

  I’d tested the waters by coming out and sharing my story in Norway. I’d taken precise and measured steps, felt in control of what I said and whom I said it to, and was pleased with the results. That might have happened in January, but by waiting until after the April trial, not only was I in a better place, knowing that I wouldn’t have any more trials to face and that anything I said wouldn’t likely jeopardize the prosecution’s efforts, but I’d also built a solid foundation of trust with Scott Goldstein, the Dallas Morning News reporter. That was also true to a lesser degree with the rest of the media people. I didn’t like how some of them had portrayed me and the case, but I could see later that a lot of my responses to their stories were more reactions. In other words, I was still too emotionally reactive.

  Over time, I came to understand better that the media had something I wanted, just as I had something they wanted. If I was going to do some good for other people, I needed allies and not enemies. I didn’t want anything to be done in an adversarial way.

  I met with Scott Goldstein several times over coffee. He also spoke with my mother in preparation for the article. By the time the second trial had ended, I had known Scott for about one year. In that time, he’d earned my trust. He’d gone the distance with this story and proven to me several times that he was committed to the cause against sexual violence. He wanted to do what he could to help me get my message out. I couldn’t predict what the response might be, but I hoped it would turn out as it had in Norway, where my coming forward had received a positive response. So, when the article ran on April 19 of 2011, I had every reason to keep believing that I’d done the right thing. Eventually, I knew that I had.

  I’d spent a whole bunch of time thinking about all kinds of issues related to the attack. I was running away from the field in that regard. I just needed to give my thoughts some time to catch up to me, to let my head start to unwind.

  It also helped that I had the trials behind me. As much as I hated all the delays and how things had dragged on and on, what Erin and later Brandon had told me, “Trust the system. Let the system work,” had proven true. Two men were in prison for life, and the third man, who had helped convict the other two, was soon to be sentenced. For someone like me, who had been spending her whole life trying to go faster, learning to slow down was hard, but in the right circumstances, the rewards for slow could be as great as, or even better than, those for going fast.

  As much as I hoped that coming forward would help others, it helped me as well. I didn’t feel anymore the low-level paranoia that people might be talking behind my back. I was okay that people knew my name and my face; in fact, once the stories came out, more people came forward to talk to me. They let me know that they cared about me and hoped that I was doing well. They offered me help.

  Just before final exams, I logged into my Gmail account and saw an unfamiliar user name in my inbox. I clicked the e-mail open, wary of spam or something else, but as I started to read the message, tears welled up in my eyes. The e-mail read in part, “I know what you’ve been through. Until I read your story and how you’re working to deal with it, I didn’t think I’d ever feel safe or go
od again. I’m ready to take the steps I need to take now, to get back to a normal life. Thanks for sharing.”

  At that moment, I knew that no matter what else happened, I was glad that I’d spoken out. It reconfirmed my decision to do more for others. It also helped that at that point, everyone on my team was in support of my efforts. My father and mother saw how much better I was; I think it also helped that they’d spent so much time with the members of the support system I had in Dallas that their fears about the consequences of my stepping into the public limelight were much fewer.

  There is something called the law of unintended consequences. It mostly has to do with bad things that can happen as a result of an action we take, but in the spirit of my ever-positive mother, I prefer to think that unintended consequences can be good as well.

  I thought that going public would make unnecessary the conversation that most people in my position dread—the one about your past with a new man in your life. I met Nick at the gym at SMU in April of 2011, just as the second trial had ended. We were seated side by side on stationary bikes and just nodded at each other at first. I didn’t recognize him from around campus, but I did notice his quadriceps, the muscles at the front of his upper legs. I assumed he recognized me; after all, he was an SMU student and everybody (at least in my mind) had heard about the cross-country girl who’d been raped.

  “You must bike a lot,” I said. Only later, when I told Kristine about this opening line, did I realize how close it came to the bar pickup line about coming to this place a lot.

  He seemed pleased that I’d spoken first. “I do. Not on one of these usually. Out there.” He nodded toward the window that gave a view of the campus and the world beyond. “It’s a great way to get around and to get away.”

  I’d been thinking a lot about getting away, especially with the end of the semester coming up, going back to Norway, and all that entailed.

  We talked a bit more. I’m always intrigued by athletes, and seeing someone so clearly more proficient than the usual gym exercise biker caught my eye. Nick was a good-looking guy, and I could tell from our conversation that he was bright, articulate, and incredibly ambitious. But I wasn’t in there to flirt. I was at the gym to sweat.

  As my cool-down phase began, my pedaling slowed. Nick noticed this and said, “It was really nice talking to you.”

  I nodded. “You, too.”

  “You know, Sweden is one of my favorite countries. I was there last summer.”

  “I like Sweden, too.” I was charmed by his efforts, but I had to set the record straight. “But I’m Norwegian.”

  My heart cracked a little when I saw the look on his face.

  I next saw his face a week later. A friend of Kristine’s had invited us to go along to dinner with a group of people I didn’t know. I was surprised, and pleased, that Nick was among them.

  We sat next to each other, and at one point Nick, clearly trying to make up for his mistaking me for Swedish, started talking about Norway and its tradition of great long-distance runners. That made me happy. He’d gone to some effort to study for what I was beginning to sense was not a chance second meeting. He told me that he was majoring in business, and as I got to know him better, it was clear that he was driven to succeed just as I was—just with different end goals in mind.

  With the semester ending and Luis Zuniga’s hearing coming up, and knowing that I was going back to Norway for the summer, I told myself to be patient. That was easy. I liked Nick, but I wasn’t ready to date anyone, and so we kept things friendly. The fact that he was an athlete helped a lot. He seemed to get me in a way that made things easy between us. I liked having someone in my life who was a part of the post-attack/post-trials fresh start I was undertaking.

  As the summer progressed and we spent more time together, I realized that Nick actually didn’t know what had happened to me. I think he knew about the case, but he hadn’t made the connection.

  If I hadn’t been really starting to fall for him, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but I was. I spent a lot of time fretting about how I was going to tell him. I knew that before it got more serious than just being good friends I had to do it. Worse, I was terrified that the ugly truth would ruin what we had spent months building up.

  We had gone out to dinner, and we sat in the car outside my apartment. I felt that pre-race buzz circulating through my body. At one point, we lapsed into silence. We both stood looking straight ahead. Nick still sat with his hands on the wheel, staring ahead, as if we were at a stoplight. We were.

  “Nick, I have something that I need to talk to you about.” I didn’t dare pause but just plunged ahead. “I’ve been trying to tell you for a long time, but I just don’t know how. You know that I’m doing good and that I’m happy now, right? But the last few years have also been challenging to me. I’m not sure if you heard about the SMU girl that got raped on the news?”

  He shook his head, and I started to tremble. “I’m so sorry, Monika. I feel so stupid. Why didn’t I put it all together? I knew it was a girl from your team. But you? You’re always so happy and always smiling.”

  He shook his head again and smiled. I felt the squeeze on my heart loosening.

  He turned to look at me and took my hand and kissed it. “You’re so—” He let go of my hand and shrugged, lifting his hands so that they banged against the car’s headliner.

  We both laughed.

  “You’re so happy. Nothing. I mean nothing, you’ve ever done or said would have led me to believe it was you. You’re incredible.”

  Nick had never seen me as anything but the happy girl I was, the one who had been telling people for so long that she was okay, but had not been telling the truth in words and actions. I knew then that Nick and I were going to be okay as well, more than okay.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Perseverance

  The morning of April 28, I woke up knowing that, with any luck, this was to be the last time I’d have to set foot in the Frank Crowley Courts Building. If I was nervous about anything that morning it was my upcoming meeting with the president of SMU, who wanted me to speak the next fall at an event welcoming all the incoming freshmen. To burn off some anxiety, I did an interval workout before Sidsel arrived to take me downtown.

  With the question of guilty or not out of the way, and with the prosecutor’s office having worked out a deal in which Zuniga would serve twenty-five years, this hearing was really more about me. I wouldn’t get any say-so or have any influence on his sentence, but I would see him in court and speak with him.

  I didn’t have a problem with him being sentenced to twenty-five years. I tried to put that in context. I would soon be celebrating my twenty-second birthday. I couldn’t imagine being confined to prison and coming out twenty-five years later, at age forty-seven, having missed out on so much of my life. Zuniga would spend the prime years of his life in prison. It wasn’t just because Luis had turned state’s evidence that I felt like his sentence should be shorter than what the other two men received. He was the one who had seemed to be arguing that they should let me go. He’d tried to give me back my cell phone and my dress, and his attack was the briefest. He seemed reluctant to participate, and when arrested, he didn’t try to make excuses or claim that he wasn’t guilty. He cooperated with the investigators and the prosecutors, and though he was given that plea deal, I thought that he did so not just to get a reduced sentence but out of remorse.

  He seemed like he could be redeemed, like he could serve his time in prison, come back out, and be a decent person. Maybe that’s a very naïve statement, but I believed it. I wasn’t projecting that quality of “niceness” on him as a way to make myself feel better. He genuinely was a more compassionate person than the other two, and he deserved to be treated differently from them because of that.

  One of the things that I didn’t like about the trials was that I felt like I hardly participated in them at all. That wasn’t going to be the case during this hearing. In a way, I’d be the o
ne getting my day in court.

  —

  THAT DAY, I got to speak directly to Luis Zuniga. Being able to confront him made a big difference to me. I’d always thought that he was different from the other two men.

  When he spoke at the hearing, wearing an orange prison uniform, he seemed genuinely contrite. “I just want to ask for forgiveness. I know I’m not going to fix whatever damage or harm we did to you.”

  He also added, “I wish you the best in life and God bless you.”

  As important as hearing those words were, I wasn’t looking for a simple apology. Anyone can apologize for anything and ask for forgiveness. I needed to know that he was going to change as a result of his experience. I asked him directly if he was. He didn’t hesitate for an instant when he replied yes. He then added that he felt as if he already had begun that process. It was a bit strange to have to hear the words in Spanish and then get the translation from an interpreter—I understood what “Sí” meant but not much else—but his body language revealed a lot to me. He nodded thoughtfully and deeply, and his expression softened as I spoke to him. I didn’t think that he was an actor capable of making me believe emotions he didn’t really feel.

  I didn’t know much about his life. He was twenty-seven and didn’t have a criminal record; again I wondered just what had gone wrong in his life to make him do such things to me. I wanted to ask him why, but that was beyond the scope of the hearing. Instead, I wanted his assurance that he was going to change. I wanted the punishment to have a positive effect on him.

  So I said, “I don’t think what you did to me that night defines you as a person. I think you made a mistake. You have to promise me that you want to change. You have to hold on to it every day.”

  When the interpreter finished translating my message, I watched as relief washed across his face. Our eyes met briefly, and I could see that he took my words seriously.