Post date: May 18, 2012 9:14:22 PM
Chapter 3
“Good news. We didn’t find any drugs in your system so you weren’t drugged and you weren’t raped. You’re just mistaken”.
I’m in shock again. This can’t be happening.
“That’s not true,” I argue back. “How do you explain me not having any memory for ten hours? That’s not normal, has that ever happened to you?”
“I wouldn’t know Ms. Hunter, I don’t drink the way you do,” Detective T replies. “You drink to a blackout, this guy is lucky enough to take you home and you want me to put him away for that?”
I am now in shock twice. Shock to infinity. I kick the white fence I’m standing next to.
“How am I supposed to do a background check on him? I only have a first name and a photograph.”
Did the photograph make the pre-text phone call? You have his phone number, I think to myself.
“You’re full of horse shit” I tell him. “I want a new detective.”
He stutters his bosses’ phone number. I don’t care if he is mad. He’s not listening to me. Someone will. I’m tired of this guy. How is he a detective? Does his mother know he talks to rape victims like this?
He had already upset me a lot during the pre-text phone call. About a week after my rape, on February 28th, I went into the police station to call my rapist while the police listened in. It’s called a pre-text phone call. The detective led me into a small room with sound proofing. There is a tape recorder on the desk. He locked the door behind us. I didn’t like that. I had to get Naylor’s phone number for him. I didn’t have it before the rape even though I had hooked up with him once before.
“Then you will have to go back to the bar and get it,” Detective T told me.
I had told Ed I was going to have to go back and get it. But Ed had Naylor’s number from that night.
“I don’t know. He seems like a really cool guy to me. We were all really drunk.”
I didn’t think more of it. Of course Ed was on my side. He was like family to me. Like a brother. We had been friends for 8 years.
I can hear the pencil scrapping across the yellow legal pad from Detective T’s heavy hand. It reverberates back into my phone that is wired to the tape recorder. I try to motion to him to write lighter. He ignores me. Whatever. I have never done anything like this before. I need all the help I can get. How little did I know how little help I really had?
Speaking to the man who raped me on the phone was probably the most surreal moment of my life. He can’t know something is up, but he does.
“You wait six days to call me?” he says.
Who counts days like that? A fourteen year old girl maybe.
“You already had your top off when I came out of the bathroom.”
I think of the scratches buried into my back.
“I had to get your pants off of you. I only left because you stared screaming at me to get out.”
I’m in shock again. I have never screamed at a man to get out after sex -- drunk or not. He tells me about how someone roofied him once. Nothing happened. He just woke up on the same couch he had passed out on.
I see Detective T’s eyes get big at some points. That has to be a good sign. Naylor tells me other things that involves Ed that Ed failed to mention. He then wants to know when he will get to see me again. My head turns hard to the right at the thought of it. I can only picture his naked body on top off my unconscious one. It makes me ball up my fists. I hate this man so much. I finally get off the phone.
“I don’t hear a rape” Says Detective T as soon as the tape recorder is off.
I’m in shock. I’m starting to hate this feeling, but it’s the only one I will know for a while.
“What do you mean? The part about the pants and me screaming?”.
I am fixated on the table. The tears starting again.
“Well, he says all of you were drunk. In the state of California, if a man and woman are both intoxicated, it can’t be rape.”
“But I was drugged,” I whimper trying to defend myself.
“We will see what the toxicology says, but I don’t think this case will be strong enough to present to the DA.”
The tears are full stream. I want out of the room. He has to unlock the door. I am practically running out in shame.
“If the DA is even interested, would you be willing to do an interview with them?” he yells out behind me.
I sort of nod my head. I’m shaking as I walk briskly out of the station.
The next two nights I walked in my sleep. I have a deep gouge in my right leg from running into something. I’m not sure what, but it didn’t wake me up. I was turning an overhead fan off, and messing with other lights. I hung a bell on my doorknob in case I wander out. I peed my bed one night. Every morning after that I had to pinch my arm to make sure I was awake and not peeing my bed again. I think back to the lights and how I found them when I came to. The overhead fan light wasn’t on. It’s the main light in the room. Just a bed side lamp and the bathroom light were on. It was dark in here when Naylor left. He couldn’t figure out how to turn on the overhead light. It was strange lighting to me when I woke up. Not at all like I normally have it. It seemed darker than usual. I keep hanging on the thought that they will find drugs in my system at some point in time. That this rapist can’t be allowed to walk. That I won’t let them shut down my case. Are they giving me an “out” if I’m mistaken because I’m white or because I work in the industry...or do they do this to every woman who walks through the door?
A coworker snuck up on me at work. Not on purpose. He didn’t know about what had happened. I freaked out hard just knowing that someone was behind me in a dark room. I almost hit him with a heavy object, and then I realized who he was. I flew out of there like a wet cat, more concerned with the fact that I almost took someone out.
I had a two-week follow up at the rape center. I tried to not cry but I did -- the whole way out there. I was twenty minutes late. I wanted to leave before I even walked in there. They want me to give a urine sample. I just want out. I give them my blood sample and go. I can’t even sit through the therapy session. They pegged me as a goner. The therapist tells me it’s ok -- most women don’t make it back. That stuck a cord with me. I can’t be like most women. The second visit was after the phone call from Detective T that there were no drugs in my system.
Shock was a constant state I was in. I had already made up in my mind that when I was strong enough, I would call back and schedule the appointment for the one-month with the rape center. They were the only ones who seemed to care and want to help. So many things in my life are a jumbled haze right now.
Chapter 4.1
I receive a phone call from a Detective M. He wants me to come into the Mid-Wilshire station. He is Detective T’s boss. Or so I think. He will look at the facts and determine if Detective T is doing his job or not and if I should be assigned a new detective. I go in March 20th. I’m already not liking the station. Both times I walk in there, the uniformed officer at the front desk is watching daytime TV on a cart parked in the middle of the reception area.
“I don’t know who that is, you will have to call them,” they say each time I try to check in. The front desk officers have no idea who works there or where. I always have to call for them.
“He is one of my best, he had been doing this for twenty years” Detective M tells me in a conference room.
Strange, Detective T told me he had been doing this for ten years. My file is spread across the desk. A copy of my drivers license sits on top of my blood alcohol report. I grab that and look. It reads 0.0000.
“That’s a lot of zeros for someone who was supposedly in a drunken blackout and tested less than 12 hours later.”
“Well, it’s normal to have a small reading as there is normally some alcohol constantly in the blood stream.”
“But I have all zeros. Does this mean the test is wrong or something?”
He moves on. I continue to press him. “Where is the THC? I smoked weed the day I was drugged. The toxicology is wrong if it didn’t find the THC and the drugs.”
In my mind they are linked, find one and you will find the other. Find none, and your test is damn wrong.
“We will do a retest,” he tells me. “Let’s see what it says. If drugs turn up, then we can issue an arrest warrant right away, if not, then this case isn’t strong enough to go before the DA.”
I agree and walk out of the station. I am hopeful because once they get the new results in, they will see that I’m telling the truth. He says he will listen to the pre-text phone call tape after I have left. He will call me and let me know what he thinks. He does.
“I don’t hear a rape here. Both of you were drunk. You weren’t drugged, you weren’t raped and there just isn’t a rape here. You’re mistaken.”
Hello shock, my old friend.
I start emailing him April 9th. It’s been two weeks since we met up. I am waiting for the retest of my toxicology. Two weeks since the phone call where I have to defend myself yet again. No, you are mistaken. I’m hanging onto the truth. I know how I came to that morning. I am sick of all of these men telling me I’m wrong. I’m not fucking wrong. I’m not going to listen to the rapist or the person who used to be a friend that wants to side with the rapist or the two detectives who want to listen to these two men over a victim. These lab results will prove everything.
My advocate is concerned that I am fixated on these test results, that I can’t allow myself to move forward with healing because of it. I tell her I don’t know which way to heal. If Naylor walks and nothing ever happens, I have to process that. If I have to go to court and sit in a room full of strangers and tell intimate details of what happened to me to help put his ass away, then that’s a whole different process I have to go through. I’m in limbo until I know what the results are. I don’t know which way to focus my brain.
Detective M emails me back -- on the 13th.
I have been off, I will get back to you by Monday or Tuesday.
I’m going insane. A barrage of psychotic emails comes from me including getting a lawyer. The back and forth continues. On the 17th, after a sobbing call to the rape center, he finally gets back to me.
The second report came in this morning, nothing other than the drug Desloratadine (Clarinex) was located. This test was conducted by the Los Angeles County Coroners Office. We are actively working your case and will let you know when the case is presented to the District Attorneys office.
Why hello again shock.