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Denver Post
Court ordeal often chills rape reports
Wednesday, October 15, 2003 - When Kobe Bryant's preliminary hearing on rape charges resumes today, at least one Colorado woman will try to avoid the fevered media attention.
The 26-year-old Denver resident says it's too painful to watch. It dredges up anguished memories of her own courtroom experiences resulting from her decision to press charges against the man who raped her Jan. 1, 2002. Last week, when she heard that defense attorney Pamela Mackey had asked in court whether injuries like those suffered by Bryant's accuser could have been caused by having had sex with three men in three days, the Denver woman collapsed sobbing in front of her television. "We're either nuts or sluts, aren't we?" she asked later, using the slangy description for a common defense in rape cases. "We're either crazy or promiscuous. The proceedings in the Bryant case offer an unusually public window into what women who press sexual-assault charges often face. The courtroom ordeal is believed to be one of the reasons rape remains so widely underreported. In Colorado, authorities estimate only 16 percent of all rapes are reported, according to Marte McNally of Denver's Rape Assistance and Awareness Program. On Friday, after Bryant's preliminary hearing was abruptly halted when Mackey posed her incendiary question, RAAP's hotline rang incessantly with calls from victims both outraged and terrified, McNally said. "It gets harder and harder to talk people into reporting when they see someone re- victimized like that," said McNally, director of counseling services for RAAP. That's one way to look at it. Another is that Bryant's high-paid defense team was just doing its job. Denver lawyer Larry Pozner said the specificity of Mackey's wording - not just implying that the accuser had sex with someone else, but "three men in three days" - was no accident. "Why would she say it? Because she has evidence," he said of Mackey. "She has a good-faith basis for the question." Pozner is past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. Added McNally: "It's the defense attorney's job to get the client off. It's not personal, even though it feels terribly personal." RAAP counselors try to prepare victims for just how personal it's going to feel. "We try to help them understand that, second only to (the assault), going to trial is the most traumatic part," she said. In the Denver woman's case, her rapist went to trial nine months after the attack as a New Year's Eve party was winding down. Her assailant told the jury that when he stumbled against a futon where she was sleeping, she pulled him down and started kissing him, accusing him of rape only after his fiance walked in. "They said maybe I was embarrassed because I was caught cheating," said the woman, who said she was a virgin at the time of the attack. "So telling this to a courtroom full of people I've never met in my entire life is somehow less embarrassing?" Colorado's rape shield law holds that an accuser's sexual past is irrelevant in rape cases unless, among other exceptions, the sex was with someone else. Mackey worded her allegation carefully. Although she drew a rebuke from Eagle County Judge Frederick Gannett for dropping Bryant's accuser's name repeatedly throughout the hearing, she omitted the name from her musing about the accuser's sexual history. And, it's possible the allegation will never resurface at trial. If it does, McNally said, Bryant's accuser must steel herself. "As hard as it is to understand," she said, reprising her advice to victims who testify, "this isn't your case. It's the state of Colorado's case. You have no control, no power. That's up to the attorneys." The Denver woman who was assaulted nearly two years ago saw her assailant convicted and sentenced to three years to life in prison. "I was extremely fortunate," she said. "Everybody believed me. Nobody said it was my fault." And, she added, her situation was relatively private, to the point that police honored her request not to turn on their lights and sirens when they came to her apartment. "I didn't want my name on the news," she said. "I was so ashamed. ... I felt dirty." The Denver woman said that news of the Bryant case "has made the world seem so unsafe again. I was so angry. ... I've heard a lot of victim-blaming." Her own roiling emotions have made her think she's better off not watching coverage of the case. "I feel like my neighbors are going to petition for me to watch 'Clifford' before I got to work," she said. "I keep cursing at the morning news. "But I can't help it," she said. "It feels like they're attacking me." |