The Roanoker - March/April 2015 - 30

Melissa Harper: "A great
majority of rape victims
are not lying. Society,
though, tends not to
believe them. Victims
blame themselves."

day and told me to sit in the hallway for the period and
contemplate the error of my ways. It was a horror. I sat
in the dark hall just blank. Fortunately, it was the last
class of the day.
"I walked home - about three miles. I'd stopped riding
the bus because of bullying. My parents saw that something was wrong and thought I'd just had a bad day. The
next day, the boys who raped me were full of themselves
and they beat me again.
"Then, in earth science class, the teacher, who was
the husband of the teacher who had punished me the
day before, called me in front of the class, said I had
insulted his wife and proceeded to beat me. I was like
a chunk of wood, numb. I got up and went back to my
seat. Something died in me that day."
A BRUTAL RAPE at the University of Virginia reported in late 2014 brought one of our most savage,
life-changing and hidden crimes screaming to the
conscious surface.
It forced many of us to take a close look at a crime

30 MARCH/APRIL 2015

that for far too long has been hidden, denied. Sexual
assault - of which rape is a subset - is one of the most
underreported and one of the least understood of all
crimes.
Sexual profiler John Perry, a 40-year career police
officer who now consults with police agencies in the
Roanoke Valley, says studies are lacking on reporting
of rape, making it even harder to understand, predict
and prosecute. The generic term "rape," he explains,
implies sexual penetration of the victim who either
didn't know it at the time (because of drugs, alcohol
or other issues) or was unwilling to submit.
"Sexual assault," says Perry, "is a broader topic, a
larger umbrella."
Perry is at the front line with the victim early in any
investigation. He works closely with those pursuing the
case and advising the victim in trying to create a profile
of the rapist when that fact is not known - though most
victims know their rapists.
"Sexual assault serves a non-sexual need," says Perry.
"You have to put sex into the formula because the rapist
chose rape. 'I want to do the worst thing I can to her,'
he thinks. It is a life-changing event."
Perry's best estimate is that 35 percent of rapes are
reported to police. "What chance does the bad guy have
of going to prison? About one in 10," he says.
He says the criminal justice system has to take "some
of the responsibility" for the low level of reporting,
that in his experience, police officers rarely believe the
victim is telling the truth about the rape. His own experience tells him that 60 to 80 percent of officers don't
believe the charge.
"The term 'false allegation' is huge, but research in
false allegation is not politically correct, so we don't
have the data that could help," Perry says.
But "this is broader than the criminal justice system.
It involves society as a whole. The system just doesn't
deal with offenders the way victims believe it should."
Perry mentions, almost as an aside, that there is no
statute of limitations on rape.
FRANCIS' EXPERIENCE STAYED WITH HER for a
long time. She retreated into herself, let her grades slip
and finally graduated high school 400th in a class of 440,
but she made a 1440 on the SAT test.
"I was sleep-walking through school, riding behind
the kids on the short bus, but I was an incessant reader.
I'd read anything to make the pain go away. I skipped
a lot of school and discovered drugs by the time I was a
senior. I hated people. Still do."
It took "20 years of play-acting every day and several
attempts at suicide" in order to "make any sense of it."
She went through "a number of different careers, screwing
up again and again."
She feels free of the rape finally. "It took 41 years," she
THE

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