Still Room for Hope

by Alisa Kaplan

  As preparations continued, it became clear to everyone that the district attorney’s office would be no match for the million-dollar team that Seth’s dad put together for their defense. Our team was well-intentioned, and they were working as hard as they could. But I was a mouse, and Seth’s dad was coming at me with an elephant gun.

  Before the trial began, the defense hired a focus group to try out various strategies, and they quickly arrived at a strategy they were sure would succeed: They would highlight my previous missteps and destroy my credibility. They knew that the jury would be appalled and disgusted by what they saw on that tape—anyone in their right minds would be.

  Their solution?

  To make it seem as if I’d engineered the whole thing.

  Much has been written about the way the legal system revictimizes victims. But I had absolutely no idea how horrifying the experience would be. Activists often say that rape is the only crime where the victim is put on trial. I call it reraping and say, completely without irony, that the actual incident had nothing on my experience at the trials—at least I was unconscious for the rape.

  I wasn’t in the courtroom for the opening statement, but reporter Scott Moxley was. Here’s what he wrote about it in the OC Weekly: “In just his opening statement, a pacing, finger-pointing [defense attorney] told the jury that the girl—next to the tape itself, the prosecution’s star witness—is ‘a nut,’ ‘a pathological liar,’ ‘a cheater,’ an ‘out-of-control girl,’ ‘the aggressor,’ a wanna-be ‘porn star,’ ‘a troubled young lady,’ ‘a tease—that’s what she is!’ ‘a mess,’ a ‘master manipulator,’ a ‘little opportunist,’ ‘a compulsive liar,’ ‘a cheat—that’s what she is’ and a ‘callous’ drug addict and alcoholic who trimmed her pubic hair, bragged about liking group sex and once drank a beer in a car.”

  According to the defense, I was a pathological liar and a whore who had consented to group sex as well as to being videotaped. I had feigned unconsciousness in order to further my dreams of becoming a porn star. I had even had consensual sex the night before the rape. Never mind that in the video you could see the boys signal to each other that I’m passed out. Never mind that I didn’t flinch when they hit, slapped, and pinched me, or when I urinated on myself after they shoved a pool cue into my vagina. Never mind that I vomited before passing back out. Never mind that I was sixteen years old.

  Riding home, we’d hear snippets from the trial reported on the radio. I’d felt for more than a year like I’d had no control, but this was a higher order of helplessness. It felt like what it was: psychological warfare.

  The only bright light was my victim’s advocate for the trial, Shirley. Gentle but plainspoken, Shirley was a proud grandmother who had nonetheless seen some of the very worst things humankind had to offer. She’d guided hundreds of sexual assault survivors through the legal system, and I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to hold my hand. Over time, she became a mentor, a second mother, and a best friend to me.

  During the trial, Shirley was with me every step of the way, telling me how strong I was, and how brave. She told me how much my willingness to testify meant for other women and girls, especially all of those women and girls who couldn’t testify. She told me that enduring this trial was the hardest thing I’d ever do, and that surviving it meant I could survive anything. But of course, she couldn’t protect me from the viciousness that surrounded me everywhere I went; nobody could. There was nothing anyone could do to stop the onslaught.

  I testified at the first trial for four days.

  The defense pulled no punches. Every time I walked into the courtroom, they petitioned to have Shirley removed. I didn’t want my parents or other family members there to hear what the defense was saying about me, so Shirley was my only support. Luckily, the judge allowed her to stay, although they did prevent me from holding the smooth, oval crystal she’d given me to hold in the palm of my hand. This beautiful, clear stone was the talisman that Shirley gave to all of her clients when they were on the stand. “You are so, so strong,” she’d say. “Pour all of your strength into that stone, so that the girl or boy who comes after you can borrow your strength.” What that meant, too, was that we could draw on the strength of every survivor who had come before us. Thanks to the defense, even that was a comfort denied to me.

  Each time I got up onto the stand, it was as if I were being attacked by a pack of wild dogs. The defense’s lawyers would get up in my face, screaming, the spit flying out of their mouths and onto my face. They said things about me that were so disgusting, I couldn’t stop myself from gasping, as if someone had crashed their fist into my guts. On a number of occasions, I cried so hard I couldn’t speak.

  But the biggest problem for our side was that I couldn’t testify with conviction. There was a simple reason for that: I didn’t remember anything. The only thing I clearly remembered from that night after Jared gave me the drink was about thirty seconds of it, when I came out of my stupor just long enough to throw up. All I remembered was seeing my bare legs and knowing that I’d gotten vomit in my hair. After that, everything is blank again.

  So when I was asked on the stand about that night, all I could do was tell the truth. “I don’t know.” Or, “I can’t remember.”

  I didn’t know then how commonly rape victims are accused of seeming cold or unfeeling on the stand. I was barely keeping it together up there; if I’d let myself feel any emotion at all while I was testifying, I would have fallen completely to pieces.

  It was also deeply unsettling not to know what had happened to me. I knew the bare outlines, of course, like everyone else in California. But there was still some part of me that didn’t completely believe it, a tiny part of my mind that refused to accept that my friends had really done what everyone said they had.

  There was a way for me to know exactly what had happened, of course: by watching the video. But I wasn’t allowed to see it. My parents were already concerned about the clearly destructive effects that the trial was having on me, and they honestly thought seeing the tape would break me. “We had to protect you. We thought you’d commit suicide,” my mother said later. “In the best-case scenario, we thought seeing it would drive you crazy, that you’d end up in an institution.”

  They may have been right, but their decision meant that I had only the most shadowy understanding of what had happened to me on that July night. Plus, I was consumed by guilt. I couldn’t believe that what had happened to me was as bad as everyone had said it was—bad enough to justify everything we were all going through, and everything we were putting my former friends through. At some level, I held myself accountable for setting into motion the events that would hijack not only my own life, but also the lives of everyone in my family, as well as the men who’d hurt me. It was more than I could handle.

  A very common response to a victim expressing guilt is: “Are you crazy? You were unconscious! No matter how you were dressed or how promiscuous you were, nobody deserves to be sexually abused with a pool cue.” You won’t get any argument from me on that front. But for the duration of the period where I was using drugs and not infrequently since then, I have often asked myself, What did I do to deserve it? What did I do to make it happen?

  I understand now that survivors often feel guilt because we want to feel control. I was powerless the night I was raped—literally, passed out and passed around. And complete powerlessness is a truly terrible feeling. A feeling of guilt, however twisted that might be, allowed me to feel a little more in control of what had happened. But it sure didn’t help my emotional state at the time.

  Not surprisingly, as the trial progressed, so did my drug use. My parents were completely frantic. They were beginning to understand how serious my drug problem was. They loved me, and their memories of the goofy, sweet, straight-A student I’d been blinded them to what I’d become. My mom bought me clothes and made my favorite foods. They did everything in their power to help me, but their life preservers couldn’t reach me. N
othing could.

  Every day of the defense’s testimony was more outrageous than the one before. Even now, knowing about victim blaming, I am astonished by some of the things that happened in that courtroom. I heard an adult man tell a room full of strangers that I loved to give blow jobs and have sex doggy-style. A porn star was called in to testify that, in her expert opinion, I had only been pretending to be passed out. A medical expert came from New York to tell the jury that actual consent wasn’t required because it wouldn’t have been possible to put a pool cue into my anus unless I consciously relaxed those muscles, never mind that I was unconscious and possibly drugged. The defense played the tape of my medical exam, over and over. My private medical records were leaked to reporters without our consent.

  The most shocking development was when the lead defense lawyer told the jury that, in his opinion, I should have been charged with raping Seth, Jared, and Brian.

  I don’t make excuses, but I can tell you that I drank and did drugs so that I could stop feeling the shame of hearing grown men smear me in terms so extreme that they were talking about a person I didn’t know. I drank and did drugs so I could stop seeing the hunted, sick look on my father’s face when he thought I wasn’t looking, so I could stop feeling the shame associated with ruining so many lives, including the lives of the men who had attacked me. So I could forget, for just one minute, that I had to spend every waking minute trapped in a body that had been degraded and abused in unspeakable ways, and then thrown away.

  I didn’t know then that those aren’t feelings that go away, that they’re feelings I’d have to live with forever. I didn’t know then that I would be working through and praying on those feelings for the rest of my life. Actually, I’m glad I didn’t. Because if that knowledge had come without knowing that I’d have God to keep me company on that journey, then there’s no question at all in my mind that I would not be here today. I would have made sure of that. In fact, I very nearly did.

  Between rehab and the media scrutiny, school had become completely untenable for me. I was homeschooled for the last two months of my senior year so that I could graduate with the rest of my class.

  My mom got what she wanted: She did see me cross the stage in a gown and mortarboard. But it was hardly the day she’d dreamed about. I was so drunk, I could barely make it across the stage. My parents were scared for me, and scared of me. There isn’t a single photograph of my graduation day.

  Less than a week after I graduated high school, the defense rested.

  California law was clear: A person can’t have sexual relations with another person who is incapable of giving consent. The jury had seen the video, which showed me so clearly unconscious that the experienced police deputies who first saw it believed that they were watching an act of necrophilia. They’d seen my so-called friends give a thumbs-up and then a “go-ahead” gesture, to indicate that I was indeed passed out. They’d seen me urinate on myself without otherwise moving when Jared shoved the pool cue so deeply inside me that it hit my bladder—and then seen my attackers high-five each other, squealing with disgust and laughter.

  Still, the jurors remained unconvinced: They couldn’t agree that Seth, Brian, and Jared had had sex with me without my consent. My prior behavior implied consent, they claimed, and anyway, I hadn’t shown enough emotion on the stand. After three and a half days, they were still deadlocked. Because a unanimous vote is required for a conviction, the judge declared a mistrial.

  June 28, 2004, almost two years after they’d attacked me, my assailants walked out of the courtroom, scot-free.

  The juror who had held out to hang the jury gave an interview, reeling from what had happened. “I can’t believe they saw the same video I did,” she kept saying.

  She was another hero, another Good Samaritan, like the woman who turned in the tape. She must have been under a lot of pressure in that closed room, and she could have simply thrown in the towel, rolled over so she could go home to her life. But she didn’t. She believed me, and she fought for me, and I would have a lot of cause to think about that over the years.

  Unfortunately, her bravery didn’t make the difference that day. My mom was on the phone with Shirley when we heard the news. Beaten down after months of humiliation, I was devastated but not completely surprised. My mom wept, but I didn’t have any tears left. Instead, I screamed. And screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

  Later, I remembered thinking: Wow. You really can buy anything.

  Chapter Six

  It Leaves a Hole

  The jury’s verdict left me completely bereft. I’d gone through months of shame and humiliation for nothing. I no longer cared whether I lived or died.

  Not everyone was reeling from the injustice I felt. In July, a grand jury reported the results of its investigation into actions by officials in the sheriff’s department for allegedly suppressing information that Seth and two friends had been caught with marijuana in their car in 2003 (while Seth was out on bail), but they determined there was not enough evidence to prove those officials had violated criminal law. Also that month, Seth was arrested on misdemeanor charges of statutory rape after allegations that he’d had sex with yet another sixteen-year-old.

  About a week after the declaration of a mistrial, Chuck Middleton, chief assistant district attorney, the DA’s second in command, called and asked for a meeting. He wanted to talk to me about retrying the case.

  Chuck seemed kind and almost grandfatherly—an impression that evaporated as soon as he began to speak about what the guys had done. This case was clearly a passion project for him. So much so, in fact, that although he’d stopped trying cases, he came back to retry mine. But first, he wanted to make sure that I was on board.

  “If I reopen this, will you testify?” he asked.

  He knew I didn’t have a choice. Still, he asked, and it was the first time anyone had consulted me on practically anything since I’d been raped. It was such a relief to be treated like a person with opinions and thoughts, as anything other than a dumb, slutty, sad-sack teenaged victim. Chuck made me feel that I had something of value to contribute. He made me feel like I was part of a team, and it truly meant the world to me.

  They couldn’t have found a better prosecutor. Chuck was incredibly experienced in the courtroom, with particular expertise in sexual assault. I’d seen evidence of that experience without realizing it when he’d made it a special point to establish a connection with me. He didn’t need my cooperation, particularly—if he’d called me to the stand, I would have had to testify, whether I wanted to or not. But Chuck understood how essential it is to make the victim feel she has a voice.

  He simplified the charges so that they’d be easier for the jury to understand. The biggest change from the first trial was that we were no longer trying to prove that the guys had drugged me. I thought they had, the cops thought they had, and everything I remembered from that night and experienced the next day was consistent with the use of a date rape drug. But there wasn’t enough physical evidence to prove it. Instead, Chuck would focus on proving that I had been unconscious, and they’d had sex with me anyway, no matter how I’d gotten that way.

  Most importantly, Chuck was the right person to help the jury over what everyone now understood was the biggest hurdle, at least as the defense had chosen to handle the case, which was my past. Here was a clearly decent, honest, upstanding man (and the father of two teenagers at the time) asking the members of the jury not to be swayed by the bad choices I’d made. Regardless of my history, he would tell them, I did not deserve what had happened to me. As he would say at the trial, it’s about “what they did, not who she is.”

  As I write this, I get angry all over again. Should my history have mattered? Does any woman—anyone?—“deserve” to be raped? Of course not. But in the eyes of that first jury, my history had mattered. To win, we had to make sure that it didn’t matter to the second one.

  I agreed to testify. But as soon as I did, I began to regret it.
At least at the first trial, I hadn’t known what to expect. I’d walked in there as a lamb to slaughter. The second time around, I knew better. I woke up bathed in sweat from nightmares about taking the stand in front of a roomful of strangers and hearing those grown men scream the most disgusting things they could think of at me while I cowered in shame and fear. Plus, our family was still being followed and stalked, and it hadn’t gotten any less frightening. I was using drugs every day, a couple of times a day, and drinking, too. Still, there was hardly enough meth in California to dull my dread.

  In September 2004, I met a guy called Neil. He was gorgeous—a former football and wrestling star. He’d parlayed his rock-star status in high school into becoming one of the most powerful drug dealers in town. He was also physically abusive to his girlfriends, as I would discover when we got together. But his business meant that we always had drugs, and that meant we were pretty much always high. It also meant a complete immersion in the drug world: shady characters coming out of the woodwork, and frequent trips to the disgusting places they lived in. It also meant trouble with the law, and I was arrested for the first time in October 2004.

  Being in high school had kept me together somewhat. I was a complete druggie mess, especially in my senior year, but at least I’d been functional. After I graduated, whatever remaining sense of responsibility I might have had evaporated. There was no reason not to stay up for four days straight, doing meth and then whatever obsessive chore caught my fancy. My parents’ pool had never been so clean.

  Without school, there was no reason to shower, to change my clothes, to brush my hair or do my nails. It might sound shallow, but all the little ways that we groom and take care of ourselves signal to other people, to ourselves, and to God that we value ourselves. Letting myself fall into complete and total disrepair was the outward representation of my belief that I wasn’t worth anything at all, not the time it would have taken to run a file over my nails.