“Now You Are Going to Die!”
—A Rapist Invades a Christian Home
CRUDE hands choked me. I struggled to scream.
“Stop it! Stop your screaming and I won’t hurt you,” he demanded, squeezing my throat harder.
But I didn’t believe him and I didn’t obey him. I kept trying to scream. I clawed at his face, knocking off his glasses and wrenching the false teeth out of his mouth. As he struggled to touch and control me, I jammed my fingernails deep into his eye sockets. And I screamed. When his fingers got near my mouth, I bit with all my might.
Believe it or not, I was not afraid—the fear came later. Right now I was angry! This fiend wasn’t going to force his way into our house and rape me, not here or anywhere else!
But he kept trying. He grabbed a nearby belt and tied my hands behind my back—the first of several times, since I was repeatedly able to work them free. With one arm around my neck, he groped for his teeth and glasses on the floor. Suddenly I broke free and, inexplicably, began hurling things in the room and shrieking incoherently, as though I had gone out of my mind.
My attacker was momentarily stunned and paused to ask, “What’s wrong with you?” During the pause, I bolted, but he caught me, forced me to the bedroom and threw me on the bed. After tying my hands again, he was able to undress me partially. I writhed and thrashed to get him off me. I hated his filthy language and the filthy act he was trying to force me into!
A final time I freed my hands from the belt, pushed him away, and streaked for the outside door. I reached the handle, but as I turned it, he clutched me from behind and flung me to the floor. I was able to grab a nearby kitchen knife and slash at his legs. “That’s it,” he roared. “Now you are going to die!” He began pounding my head, and I collapsed into unconsciousness.
I can see now that I should have been more careful. I had always been alert to avoid trouble and troublemakers outside our home. I always traveled with my Christian husband. I always avoided places that such criminals might frequent, and I always dressed modestly. I just never expected that a rapist would have the venom to attack me right inside our own home.
This man was working on a construction site next door to our house. The building contractor had arranged for an electric line from our house to supply power for tools on the job site. Occasionally, when the line was overloaded, a worker would come back over to our house to reset a circuit breaker in our basement. It was a practical arrangement, but it was not wise.
He clearly planned to catch me off guard. He must have expected me to freeze and cooperate mindlessly, in a state of shock. Well, I was shocked when he lunged for me, but I did not cower. I didn’t stop to think about it either. I just reacted, instantly erupting in a frenzy of yelling and clawing and kicking and biting. It was the best thing I could have done, for my intense counterattack surprised him. It gave me an important psychological lift right from the start to know that he was not in full control of himself or me. It made me more determined to fight and reinforced the hope that I could win.
I regained consciousness in the front seat of a car moving in traffic. The same belt was now yanked tight around my neck, like a dog leash, which he held taut as he drove. As my mind began to clear, the realization of where I was and how I got there flashed through me like a burning fuse that quickly detonated my rage anew.
I elbowed the steering wheel in a desperate effort to force the car off the road. I was convinced that this deranged man now was more concerned with getting rid of me than raping me. He would kill me so that I could not later identify him. Although I was exhausted from nearly an hour’s constant jostling, my dogged resistance had taken its toll on him too. Tired and bewildered, he finally pulled to the edge of the road and shoved me out of the car. Another motorist stopped for me and took me to a hospital.
But I had won! I had not been raped! I was the victor, not the victim! My conscience was clean, my self-respect and dignity were intact. And I had kept my integrity to Almighty God, Jehovah!
That is not to say I felt so elated and noble during my hospital stay over the next few days. I was badly shaken, I hurt all over, and I looked terrible. The fear that did not come during the attack now washed over me in great waves. Unproductive thoughts of what could have happened kept crowding into my mind. During this time, I was questioned by police detectives and learned, to my horror, that this monster had been paroled from prison just six weeks previously after serving a sentence for rape!
On the day I was released from the hospital, there was the trauma of going to the police station to identify this man in a police lineup. Yes, I intended to press charges. I felt that to see him punished was something I owed to the other women he might attack, and I owed it to myself as a means of righting the wrong and reassuring myself that I was in control of my life. It was easy to pick him out in the lineup. He was the one with the bandages on his face and the cast on his hand!
At the hospital and at home in the weeks following, I was comforted by the many cards, letters, and visits from my fellow believers in the local congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some said they were proud of me. Some did not know what to say, but they showed their concern by coming to see me. Some called me a heroine, which, false modesty aside, I am not. When I could not get out of harm’s way, I simply applied what I had learned from my Bible study, and it worked.
Like the ordinary person I am, I needed to be reassured many times during my recovery. I had some very gray days. I did not want to go out in public for a while. While on some days I was able to put up a pretty brave front, my husband can tell you that at times I just shivered and could find no comfort as my mind and heart strained to process this nightmare and put it behind me. Probably the single greatest help to my recovery was knowing that with Jehovah God’s help I had done the right thing to the best of my ability. In my brighter moments I even found a little reason to rejoice. Time and again these Bible verses were my soft blanket:
“In case there happened to be a virgin girl engaged to a man, and a man actually found her in the city and lay down with her, you must also bring them both out to the gate of that city and pelt them with stones, and they must die, the girl for the reason that she did not scream in the city, and the man for the reason that he humiliated the wife of his fellowman. So you must clear away what is evil from your midst. If, however, it is in the field that the man found the girl who was engaged, and the man grabbed hold of her and lay down with her, the man who lay down with her must also die by himself, and to the girl you must do nothing. The girl has no sin deserving of death, because just as when a man rises up against his fellowman and indeed murders him, even a soul, so it is with this case. For it was in the field that he found her. The girl who was engaged screamed, but there was no one to rescue her.”—Deuteronomy 22:23-27.
I was profoundly thankful to know these simple words. They had taught me my moral duty. They had prevented confusion and uncertainty. Because of them, I had known exactly what to do. I screamed, besides which I also fought back. I had trusted the Bible’s instructions and found them to be bedrock. My husband and I prayed often; my strength and stability returned.
I wish that no other woman would ever have to go through an attempted rape—let alone a rape. But a rape takes place every 7 minutes in the United States, according to Uniform Crime Reports—Crime in the United States, 1983 edition, page 5, published by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. In my case, I relied on Jehovah, I remembered his words, I screamed. Besides that, I fought back.
In due course, this paroled rapist that attacked me was brought to trial. On February 7 of this year, he was convicted of the following crimes: attempted murder, second degree; burglary, first degree; attempted rape, first degree; and kidnapping, second degree.
So our courageous trust in God must always prevail over any dread of man. Let the psalm of David be our psalm, too, as we stand by these words unflinchingly: “In God I have put my trust. I shall not be afraid. What can earthling man do to me?”—Psalm 56:11.—Contributed.
[Box on page 23]
Why you should resist an attacker from the first moment:
1. Attacker may be startled and leave you
2. You may incapacitate attacker and be able to flee
3. Attacker may lose sexual urge or tire out and retreat
4. You can attract others to assist you
5. Your conscience will be clear. (Even if you are raped, you will not sacrifice your self-respect or cleanness before God)
6. Injuries you inflict on an attacker will help police identify him later (for example, bits of his skin under your fingernails)