KEY POINTS:
She had come to visit us from overseas. After a long, lovely day of showing her our town, we sat watching the late news.
With her eyes ahead still looking at the television, she said in a quiet voice, "I was raped a couple of months ago."
It
was so matter-of-fact, my partner and I both looked at her, then at each other to make sure we had heard correctly. She repeated it, a little louder this time.
She had gone back to her small hometown after the funeral of a dear friend who had died in a car crash. After she had taken Xanax to sleep, the fiance of a friend she was staying with starting knocking, then pounding, on her bedroom door.
He was the rich son of a prominent businessman in town. Her girlfriend had gone out for the evening. They were alone.
"He came in and jumped on me. I fought him," she said. He had it all prepared. He had locked the garage door so his girlfriend couldn't come in. He used a condom.
As soon as he finished, he ran back to his room just as his girlfriend came home.
"He went to the door as if nothing had happened. I was crying. I knew she would never believe me."
"Later he whispered to me: 'That was a bad thing we did.' And I said, 'We? You are a pig and if you ever touch me again, I'll kill you.'
"I felt numb. My sisters were so angry when I told them that night, they wanted to go get him. But I said, 'and do what?' I knew we couldn't do anything in such a small town. He has everybody in his pocket. He hangs out with top lawyers and knows judges. I would never have gotten a fair trial.
"He has always talked his way out of so many things."
Later that night, talking with my partner alone, anger morphed into frustration.
We agreed she was right, no one would believe her. What's more, she had lost two other close family to death within two years and we couldn't see her having the strength to stand trial. Her plate was full.
The piece of this story that kept playing in my head that night was the instinct: he will repeat this, he will do this again. No one told. He got away with it.
Next week or next month, he may rape another woman, consider it rough sex, and walk away whispering to his next victim: "That was a bad thing we did."
Last weekend we woke up to morning papers with long features on the men involved in the Rotorua police rape verdict. The press chooses its words carefully.
But that wasn't the morning I had. I walked into my video store and the first thing that tumbled out after "good morning" from the woman behind the counter was, "That verdict makes me sick! I just can't believe it." Next, the grocery checker cut to the chase even before I unloaded my trolley - "And they're policemen, the ones who are supposed to be protecting us."
These men have been proven innocent in the eyes of the law, but those aren't the only eyes that see them.
What we all see are not just these men, and this trial. What we all see is the memory of the story in our head of the justice that has not been served for another friend, in another place, that will never be heard.
If you are a woman reading this column, I'd wager that you or someone you love has a story of some kind of sexual molestation, maybe even rape. The sad truth is we all do. Just turn to the women in your life and ask.
Though that story may never make it on to the six o'clock news, it lives inside her and the women who have heard her secrets.
Tell it. Tell it to your daughters and tell it to your sons. Tell it to your family so they can understand the pain of the scars that live behind the silence. They are your beginning. They are the first ones who will begin to change how a culture of violence and the secrets it begets thrive on one another.
I understand that my friend could not tell her story in court. But she wanted me to tell it today, and I can't think of any better way to change tomorrow's news.