Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [29]
Mom, Dad, and I went about Parents’ Weekend activities, not really speaking of what had happened. They would ask how I was feeling and I would say, “Fine.” I tried to let them see the normal parts of my collegiate life, introducing them to the friends I had made, showing them my classrooms and the places I hung out. Still, when it came time to leave, Dad made me promise that I would call him every night at ten P.M. If I ever didn’t feel safe, he said, or if something felt wrong, he’d fly down right away and collect me.
I had never been so relieved to see two people leave. Their grief must have been bottomless, but I needed to move forward. My first step would be to finally take my story to the university police.
With Sybil Todd at my side, I went many times to the university police, a privatized police and security group, employed to deal with campus crimes—mostly break-ins, theft of personal property, and any sort of student protest. They were housed in an ugly salmon-colored building far from campus. Dean Todd and I went and I told my story once again. But, once again, I noticed that no notes were taken. The officers sat respectfully and listened to me, but they weren’t hearing me.
A couple of months later, we returned to the station for a follow-up meeting, to see if any of the witnesses whose names Dean Todd provided had been questioned, or if the officers had done anything with the statement I had made in our previous meeting. I wanted resolution. Dean Todd conducted her own interviews with the people at the party whom I knew. The university police completed an “investigation,” but there were no reliable witnesses. No one at the fraternity was speaking, and Beebe was gone. At Dean Todd’s suggestion, I spoke out in another way—the student press. I gave anonymous interviews to the student newspapers, and they wrote about my rape as one of many. The fight against campus rape was very much a grassroots movement at this point. I wanted everyone to be put on notice. Most of all, I didn’t want other college girls to suffer similar fates.
Still, although other students wanted to hear what I had to say, I realized the university authorities had effectively silenced me. My case was cold. Sybil Todd and I continued to meet each week for lunch or coffee, but she was really only there for moral support. She was my appointed “maternal figure,” since Canevari didn’t want to deal with a “female issue.”
I would call the university police every once in a while, but I was always told there was no new information. Finally, they stopped returning my calls and I, too, stopped calling them. By end-of-term exams in December, I focused my attention on my coursework and forged forward with the rest of my life.
It was over. They had won.
One day, perhaps a year later, I found the outfit I had worn on the night of the rape at the bottom of a closet in a new house I was renting off-campus with Caroline and several other girls. I had forgotten about these clothes and I wept as I opened the bag. This would never be evidence. I told my housemates that I was going to study and jammed the bag of clothes in my backpack. At the Lucky Seven convenience store on the Corner, I bought some lighter fluid. It was dark and cold as I walked across the Grounds to a cemetery on the fringes. I found a trash can and placed the bag in it. Dousing everything with fluid, I lit a match and dropped it. My clothes ignited in a ball of billowy flames as I sat on the cold red dirt and cried.
CHAPTER 5
The Legacy of Rape
I had been determined not to let the rape destroy the rest of my college years, and the remainder of my time at Virginia was pretty typical. I made lots of friends, partied, dated a little bit. I went to football games and movies and fell in love with Latin American literature. I even joined a sorority, Alpha Phi. I didn’t want the horror of that night at Phi Kappa Psi to preclude for me the close friendships and community that had made Greek life on campus appeal to me