This is part 4 of a series of posts about what happened after I was raped.
When Austin asked me to tell him about the rape, he kept asking questions to get more details out, and taking notes, as I repeated what had happened. I didn’t see a recording apparatus anywhere, just him and his notepad. In this room full of children’s toys.
I told Austin, during my retelling of the events, that I had read a lot of true crime books and murders and rapes. I explained that when I realized it was a life-or-death situation but that it might be possible to get out of this situation alive, I began behaving in such a way that I thought would make Rollo more likely to release me alive. And it had worked because he had let me go and he had seemed very sure I would not report what happened.
After the interview was over, Jeff came to get me. He had taken the day off work, explaining to his boss that his houseguest had been brutally assaulted. Austin told him to make sure I slept; I’d been so tired towards the end of the interview that I’d lain my head on the table. Jeff took me to IHOP for a dawn breakfast, as I had had nothing since lunch at the museum the previous day. We went back to his apartment.
I called my boyfriend and told him what happened. He was extremely upset and angry. I assured him that I was holding up okay and that the cops were trying their best to find the attacker. I also called my parents. They were very upset too, and offered to pay for my plane ticket if I wanted to fly home immediately instead of stay another several days as my per my planned itinerary. I refused and said I wanted to stay and assist with the police investigation. I want to say, my parents and my boyfriend have always been very supportive about all this, through all the years. I called my therapist. I eventually went to sleep.
Jeff was extremely supportive throughout my whole time at his apartment, he did all the right things. He is a wonderful person and still a very dear friend, still like a brother to me. He was horrified by what happened and felt guilty because, as he put it, I was his guest and he was responsible for me and this had happened on his watch. I told him that what happened was not in any way his fault and he couldn’t have predicted it or prevented it or done anything to save me once Rollo decided to do what he did.
The next day, basically nothing happened. The police were not able to find anyone. I was feeling numb and feeling eerily calm about it all. Mostly I kept thinking about the fact that I was paying for this vacation and he’d gone and ruined it. I was not able to acknowledge at the time that this was far bigger than just a disrupted vacation.
Jeff had to go back to work and I stayed in his apartment by myself. I didn’t feel unsafe there. The rapist knew the apartment building but not which apartment. I figured either he didn’t think I’d report the rape, in which case he’d have no reason to try to go after me to silence me, or he thought I had, in which case he had probably left town to avoid arrest. I did believe, however, based on those true crime books I’d read, that Rollo would probably rape other women if had had not already done so before me, and that he might eventually start murdering them as well.
Alone in Jeff’s apartment, I waited for word from the police. To keep my mind busy and for want of anything better to do, I updated my missing persons website. The following day I posted on my blog about the attack. Most of the responses were supportive, but one long time commenter whom I’d also talked to by email and basically thought of as a friend emailed me to say she didn’t believe me. She said I must have made the story up.
It was very upsetting to hear that from anyone, especially a person I knew. Jeff told me I would get reactions like that from people, something which turned out to be true. When you say you were raped there’s always somebody who calls you a liar. But the important people, namely the cops and my family and boyfriend and true friends, all believed and supported me.
Two days after the attack, with no arrests having been made, I decided to try to resume my vacation: that is, I’d go to Washington DC and go visit the places I’d been planning to visit. So I got on the bus to take to the train station, where a train would take me into DC.
A few stops later another man got on. I stared at him thinking: “This can’t be him. No way. He must be miles and miles away by now, right?” But the man sat down on the seat directly behind my own and smiled at me and asked how I was and I knew it was Rollo.
I felt I needed to take advantage of the situation. I weighed my options, then smiled back at him and acted pleasant. I acted as if our previous encounter had been really fun and said I wanted to see him again, and asked for his number. He gave me a phone number and I put it in my phone. Then I pretended I had a problem with my bus pass and said I needed to speak to the driver.
I walked to the front of the bus and said very quietly to the driver that the man in the back had raped me two days ago and the police were looking for him.
“That man rides my bus all the time,” the driver said. “If the police pull the bus over, I’ll stop.” He didn’t seem to take what I was saying seriously and didn’t offer to help me.
Well, I thought, fuck you too. I sat down in the first seat and dialed Austin’s number. No answer. I dialed 911 and explained the situation to them. But as I was talking to them, Rollo got off the bus. He didn’t seem to suspect anything, it was just his stop. He waved at me as we passed.
911 instructed me to get off at a certain stop and wait for the police. I did, and then ended the call. As it would turn out, I really should have stayed on the line until the police arrived.
At the bus stop, as the minutes went by and no police car arrived, I started pacing and became visibly agitated. Several people were at the stop waiting for their bus, and one of them, a woman, asked me what was wrong. I told her.
She then asked, “Was he [the rapist] black?” I said yes.
She pointed. There was a man walking alone a good distance away, two or three parking lots away, hands in his pockets. The woman asked, “Is that him?”
It was, and I told her it was and immediately began to panic. I felt as if I might faint and sat down on the sidewalk where I stood, not even trying to make it to the bus stop bench. I was hyperventilating. The woman said she knew the man from the neighborhood, not by name but by reputation, and knew a woman who had been raped by him. She said the man had threatened to have the woman killed if she reported the attack and that the woman was now pregnant.
I called 911 again, hysterically telling them I had just seen Rollo again and the police had not arrived. It came out that they didn’t know where I was and had gone to the wrong stop. The woman ran inside the nearest building, a bank, to get their street address for me, and I provided this to 911. I was really frightened and kept repeating “Where are the cops” and “He said he was going to kill me”. The 911 person asked if I was having a panic attack and did I need a paramedic. I said “No, I need a goddamn squad car, where the fuck is it?”
Eventually a police car pulled up and I ran to it and dived inside it. The patrol officer driving it took me back to Jeff’s apartment and told me to stay there. The police were looking all over for Rollo; there was even a helicopter involved.
Later in the day, Austin arrived, accompanied this time by his female partner. I only met her this one time and don’t recall her name. She didn’t say much.
Right away I noticed there was a difference in Austin’s attitude towards me. I couldn’t place it but something had changed.
They sat down with me alone in the apartment (Jeff still wasn’t home from work) and asked me to tell them what happened. So I told them. Then they basically asked me to tell them again, and I did. Then I had to go over the story a third time, and Austin kept asking these questions like if perhaps I’d gotten confused. If maybe the guy I had seen on the bus was possibly some other man.
“No…” I said. Well, why not, Austin asked. “Cause I spoke to him?” I put a question mark in that response I was thinking more like “I already told you, why are you asking?”
Then Austin revealed the reason for his change in attitude: the cops had talked to the bus driver and he had told him there had been no conversation or any interaction at all between me and Rollo, that I had just sat there till suddenly I got up and told the driver that one of his passengers had raped me.
I was shocked, stunned. Mentally I cursed at the driver again. I told the two detectives that what the driver had said was not true, that I wasn’t going to get confused about THAT, and I had definitely had a short conversation with Rollo.
“But why would the driver tell us this, if it wasn’t true?” asked the female detective. This was one of the few times she spoke during this interview.
I thought a moment. I suggested perhaps the driver really hadn’t seen our conversation. It was only a few sentences and me taking down that phone number, and the driver had to focus on driving the bus. I suggested also that maybe the driver knew the rapist and was protecting him.
Then Austin said he had to use the bathroom and he went off and did that. I was left alone with the female detective who smiled benignly at me. I felt as if they were playing “good cop, bad cop” and she was supposed to be the good one, that I’d been left alone with her on purpose.
Except I had nothing more to say. Being suspected of lying to the police really sucks, particularly when you are innocent. Guilty people think of cover stories in advance, lies and more lies to cover their guilt, but all innocent people have is the truth.
Austin returned from the bathroom and said, “The bus has CCTV cameras. We are waiting on the footage to check it.”
I was absolutely delighted to hear that, and was like, “So check it, that will soon settle this.”
(The bus driver, his lies, and the CCTV cameras were never mentioned again. I can only assume the cops did check and found out I was the telling the truth, because Austin’s attitude towards me subsequently changed back to what it had been when I first met him.)
After this, before they left, Austin and his partner asked me to look at a photo lineup. It was not done the way I had seen it on TV. Instead of showing me a page of photos I was shown one picture at a time, with the other pictures concealed as I looked at each man individually. I thought one of the photos might be of Rollo but wasn’t sure at all and was concerned about possibly picking out the wrong person.
The phone number Rollo had given me turned out to be fake.
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