The Denver Post
Bryant case has far-flung fallout
Sunday, September 05, 2004 -
Driving the streets of Tucson, Laura Todd Johnson yelled beseechingly at the car radio last week when it blared the news that Kobe Bryant's accuser no longer wanted to press her sex-assault case.
"No!" pleaded Johnson, a lawyer and former prosecutor - and a rape victim as a teen. "You have to do it! Don't give up; you can do this!" In Nevada, a woman named Laurene wasn't fazed by the news - until she learned hours later that her own assailant, convicted four years ago, had just won his appeal and would soon be raising her sexual history in court. In Florida, Kellie Greene clicked through channels for news of approaching Hurricane Frances when Bryant appeared on her screen walking away from criminal charges. Click. "I'm going back to the hurricane," she told herself. Across the country, women who have had personal experience with sexual assault felt pulled in all directions by the sudden turn of events in Eagle, Colo. Anger competed with empathy. Hope that the accuser's rough treatment in the high-profile case was an aberration weighed against fear that victim protections had been eroded. Sadness that future victims might be silenced mingled with sympathy for the DA. "Everyone's story"
Fourteen months after the 20-year- old Eagle woman accused the basketball superstar of sexually assaulting her in his room at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera, she obtained a small measure of vindication in the form of Bryant's acknowledgment of their differing views of what transpired. Although Bryant's status as a high- profile sports star generated glaring publicity, the basic elements of the case mirrored many others, said Sarah Courtney, a graduate student at the University of Missouri at Columbia. "Her story becomes everyone's story," said Courtney, adding that she had been sexually assaulted by an athlete three years ago. "If she could get justice, everyone could. If she's not able to, that has an effect on everyone else. Everything that's uncomfortable and bad about the justice system was illuminated by the Kobe Bryant trial." Courtney chose not to press charges after her incident largely because she didn't think anyone would believe her - a concern that she said permeates many sex-assault cases and ultimately may have influenced Bryant's accuser to halt the criminal case. "At the time, you hardly believe it's happening yourself," Courtney said. "It's hard to imagine other people believing as well. Some people have been really angry that she hasn't chosen to continue, but it's unfair of us to put this sort of pressure on her to be the poster child for rape justice. Everyone has to make their own decisions." In a Denver suburb, a woman named Maryanne - like some sources, she asked that her last name not be used - was surfing the Internet when she spotted the news about Bryant's accuser halting the case. Her immediate thought: "I know where she's coming from. It doesn't surprise me. That girl's been put through the wringer." Maryanne reported being raped seven years ago by a man who was never prosecuted. As in the Bryant case, the issue of consent came into play and highlighted the risk that women who report rape will be victimized again. "As in CU (the recent University of Colorado controversy), as in the Air Force scandal, how are they treated?" Maryanne said. "Victims need to be believed. It's a terrible thing to go through. This poor girl has been threatened; she has been humiliated and embarrassed." The Bryant case, and its attendant legal miscues and peripheral events, horrified a Fort Lewis College student who asked not to be identified. She had been studying the proceedings as a senior thesis project. She ticked off issues: the court releasing the accuser's name, the death threats against her, the repeated use of her name in court by Bryant's attorney. "And people now say, 'You know, it's about the money.' That is ridiculous," she said. Five years ago, the Fort Lewis student was one of two women who testified to being date-raped by the same man. A jury acquitted him. So while she knew the difficulty in proving the case against Bryant, last week's news stunned her nonetheless. "My immediate reaction was, 'Oh no, nobody's going to come forward now,"' she said. "And the justice system is going to have a real hard time prosecuting these cases." Many sex-assault victims felt they had a stake in hearing Bryant's accuser tell her story in open court - and suffered a letdown when it didn't happen. After yelling at her car radio, Johnson, the Tucson lawyer, felt her reaction to the dismissal of charges come in layers. First, the personal. As a teen, she hadn't even reported her own assault. So while her instinct has always been to urge on victims with the strength to carry through, she understands the difficulties involved. "My association with the woman is always, 'You can do it, even though I couldn't,"' she said. "When I see it not working out to completion, and the victim is beaten up along the way, it's difficult. "I just heard too many restaurant conversations where folks kind of blamed the victim. It shocks me to this day that that goes on. I feel greatly empathic to this woman." Her empathy went beyond the accuser, though. "I also know what it's like to have your victim bail on you and say she can't do it," said Johnson, a former prosecutor. "When you don't have your witness, you have nothing. If what she said happened happened, then it makes me sad this is the way it turned out." Bryant fallout has implications
For Laurene, the woman in Nevada, the Bryant fallout carries frightening implications as she mulls whether to consider some kind of plea bargain in her own case. Her alleged attacker - an acquaintance - originally got 20 years to life, but appealed the conviction on the grounds that he couldn't introduce evidence of her recent sexual past, she said. "When I talked to the DA, he said the Kobe Bryant thing has weakened the case," she said. "They asked if I wanted to negotiate." Laurene said that when she heard Bryant's accuser declined to pursue the case, she felt her sympathy for the young woman shaded by anger. "I'm a firm believer that if you believe in something, you stand up for it," she said. "Now she did this, and mine surfaced, and they told me it's weakened my case. If I stand up, I'll relive everything again, plus more. "I feel no matter what I do, he'll get away with what he did." In southwestern Colorado, a woman named Jessica - who has a pending rape case - had a similar reaction. "I was very angry," she said. "I went running to my parents, raving about the rape shield law going out the window. I was very upset." She said she was attacked a month ago by an acquaintance in a small Colorado town. After that, "everything that could go wrong with a sexual-assault case did," she said. She worries the Bryant case has chipped away at victim protections and will discourage women from stepping forward. Already, it has given her second thoughts. "If I do report, my name is going to be dragged through the mud - and my past," she said. "When I go back to my hometown, I'm kind of put on display. Everybody talks about me, stares at me. Everybody knows." The negotiated apology from Bryant may have gone far toward providing his accuser with a crucial sense of validation, said Greene, the Florida woman attacked by a stranger waiting inside her Orlando apartment four years ago. "I think she got that acknowledgment with the apology," said Greene, who found Bryant's statement the most surprising part of the case. "That may have been enough for her." Greene understands the importance of having sex-assault trauma acknowledged. Three years went by before her assailant - already serving time for a previous rape - was identified in a DNA match. He pleaded guilty and got a concurrent sentence - no additional prison time. Greene helped change the Florida law that let that happen. She said she hopes the Bryant case will fade quickly and not discourage rape victims from reporting the crime. "In a couple of weeks, this is going to be old news," she said. "I'd like to think that it's not going to have much of an effect." Dealing with innuendo
Count Shirley Iverson among those who hope the Bryant case doesn't leave an impression commensurate to the publicity that surrounded it. Iverson sent her rapist to prison three decades ago in a case that caused none of the public stir that it did last year, when she suggested authorities question her then-released attacker in the disappearance of 22-year-old North Dakota student Dru Sjodin. Authorities later charged him with her murder. Bryant's accuser represents what a lot of sex-assault victims go through, said Iverson, who now lives in Oregon. And while the scope of the publicity - and the embarrassment it generated - certainly loomed greater than the norm, the toughest part for a victim is dealing with innuendo in the immediate neighborhood. "She did have lot of national coverage, but it's just as hard to have your neighbor second-guessing whether the crime took place or you invited the crime to take place as it is for a stranger in another state," Iverson said. "For many women, more are wondering what their friends and neighbors think, what their church will say. That scrutiny is universal. I think it's gotten better, but it's still a very misunderstood crime." She added that the impact of the Bryant case may come to bear on sex-assault victims weighing whether their personal lives, both past and present, can stand up to the microscopic examination of a criminal rape case. "My biggest fear about this is that if they have any skeletons in the closet or factors of their lives that wouldn't hold up to public perception, they would not come forward and report the crime," Iverson said. "Some people may read into press reports that the system is no longer safe. I hope it's just a perception. I think people have worked extremely hard to pass laws to protect victims and survivors, so I hope this is an anomaly." Staff writer Kevin Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@denverpost.com or 303-820-1739. Staff writer David Olinger can be reached at 303-820-1498 or dolinger@denverpost.com .
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