Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [6]
We have been home for a few days, and I have been lulled into the routine of work, laundry, and preparing for the start of preschool for Ava, when Beebe e-mails a response to my last round of questions. I have asked him about his talks with the university officials, whether or not he was aware of the rape epidemic on campus, and if he had happened to see an interview in the college newspaper, the University Journal, shortly after his attack on me, with an anonymous victim, speaking about her horrific rape. That was me, working with college journalists to bring some awareness to a grassroots cause.
SUBJECT: More answers I hope will be useful …
Hi Liz,
From what little I remember of Dean Canevari’s talk w/ me, I don’t recall any words from him one way or the other about dismissal from UVA.
He just knew, he says, that he had to leave. He reiterates that he now has “no excuses, no defense.” He wants to understand my hurt more fully.
What’s hard is, pray and ask direction though I have, and continue to do … I just sense such inadequacy to the task.
As if he expects it to be simple. “I’m sorry.” And “It’s all okay now.”
He tells me more about life after leaving school. Back home with his parents after rehab, then back to Charlottesville, where he delivered pizza for three years. He didn’t see my story in the press, but he saw others.
Perhaps you started something that no one else had the courage to do before. I like to believe that about you.
And why is he contacting me now? He quotes to me steps 8 and 9 of the AA program. Step 8: “[We] made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Step 9: “[We] made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
In 1993, he was sober, he had a sponsor. He wanted to reach out to me, but his sponsor told him it was not time yet, that it could dredge up old pain, that I might not be “ready to receive the approach.” Of course, his sponsor was right about the pain, but he was wrong that it was just a matter of time.
In 1998, a new sponsor told Beebe to pray about the matter, and to start looking for me. Now living in Las Vegas, he has been in touch with a woman in AA in Los Angeles. She experienced an “incident” like mine in her life, and he is currently consulting her on every move with me. When his sponsor told him to look for me, he went through the UVA Alumni Office. They gave him my old address in another city, so his letter was sent back. Later, files updated, he got an address in New York, but that letter was also returned.
It sinks in that he has been hunting me down for years—and with the help of the university. This is the last straw—a further violation by him and by the university that never protected or defended me. Sitting on my porch in the fall twilight, I smoke and drink wine as Ava sleeps upstairs in her nursery. I vow not to write back ever again, and decide I must speak to the current university brass about what happened to me, so they will take a good look at their current sexual assault policies, as well as to dig up the files about my attack. But that’s not enough to calm me. I creep into my kitchen and grab a knife. I hold it to myself on the chilly porch, alert, a sentinel, afraid and empowered all at once. I don’t believe I’d know how to use it, but the blade feels comfortable in my hand. Sitting here, I realize the extent of my fear, and the lengths I would go to protect myself and my family, and I understand that I have to write him back, if only to ascertain if he really is in Las Vegas and not hiding in my bushes, lying in wait to attack again. And I have so many more questions that demand answers.
SUBJECT: Therapy
Dear Mr. Beebe:
Part of my therapy in putting this behind me, now that it is currently very much at the forefront of my consciousness, is to get a truer sense of what happened to me that night, as I have most of the details burned into my brain. To that point, I need to know (and please, if