Emily Winslow - Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and Justice

Relief is first. After twenty-one years, the man has at last been identified. Tabs fill my browser: news articles describing his arrest in New York by a Fugitive Task Force at the request of Pennsylvania police. Googles image search has called up many different faces, but I know his immediately. His chubby cheeks make me flinch. I find his Facebook page, but dont dare friend him to see what hes posted, even though Im desperate for information.

Jealousy is second. The other victim is going to get it all: a solemn courtroom, a sympathetic jury, an avenging judge. For more than twenty years, thats what Ive wanted: to get to say what happened, to be who hes punished for. Now she gets the detectives who need her to prove their case; she gets the attorneys who need her to perform on the stand. She matters. Im still the beggar Ive been for two decades, calling the police every couple of years to ask them to look again; always talking to new detectives because none of them stay; always having to explain who I am, explain the case, because no one remembers, except for me. And her. And him.

This is good news. This is terrible news. This is everything Ive wanted, but for someone else.

Hes been arrested for what he did to her. I want him charged for what he did to me.

I practice, just in case.

I pace; I talk to myself. If I get to court, if I get my chance, I want to tell everything in an orderly way. I want to get it right.

In 1992, I was a junior at Carnegie Mellon Universitys elite drama conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was an intense program, the goal of which was to turn out actors who could transform. Being safe was looked down on. Freshmen and sophomores were forbidden from playing characters with which they were comfortable. No elegant, witty Restoration ladies or innocent ingnues for me anymore. In acting class, in voice and speech class, in movement class, I was challenged to play against type: be physical, be sexual, be angry. I accepted the challenge, but clung to churchgoing and Bible study in my personal life as a counterweight. I was proud to have made it into the program. I was proud at the end of each of the first four semesters to make it through the cut. More than thirty young actors had been admitted to the program in the fall of 1989. Four years later, after aggressive cuts and a handful of students ditching the program to go straight to New York, only thirteen of our original class would graduate.

In our third year, we were past the cut. We were also supposed to have been sufficiently stretched by the experiences of our first two years to be given back our comfortable roles that we would now play better, deeper, and with real choice. Underclassmen looked up to us.

I lived in a little studio apartment off campus, in Shadyside, the most posh of Pittsburghs college neighborhoods, full of restaurants and shops. I had worked at the nearby Victorias Secret briefly over Christmas break, as holiday help, enjoying the over-the-top femininity of the job. All my life Ive vacillated between enjoying and eschewing dress-up; I was then on a dressy upswing, wearing makeup and girly clothes daily. Classes were going to start up again that week in January. I had two monologues to memorize. I needed to do laundry, but had no change for my buildings coin-operated machines. I went out to get some.

It was early evening on a Sunday. I saw a man watch me exit the building, and was wary. The fancy ice-cream shop on the corner was open and I got quarters for the washer and dryer. People were happy in there, chatting and choosing flavors. Outside, the man was still there, still hanging around. I hesitated. He started walking toward my building, not behind me, but from the side. That seemed to make it okay; its not as though he were following me. Hed started from farther away than me, which timed him to reach the building just after me. I wanted to make the door click shut behind me, but it had a pneumatic closer and moved slowly. I couldnt pull it any faster. He caught it.

Again, I hesitated. I sort of knew the woman who lived in the other apartment on my floor. I could knock; safety in numbers. But he passed me and went up the stairs, clearly on his own way, again not following me. He passed my apartment door, and trotted up more stairs toward the next floor.

I knew he wasnt the man who lived up there, but I assumed he was a friend. This was a college town. Confident nonresident visitors were normal to me, even if they werent common in this particular building, which was more full of yuppies than students.

I passed, without knocking, the apartment of the woman I sort of knew. I unlocked my door. He sprang from the stairwell behind my shoulder, pushing me inside my apartment, covering my mouth. He shut the door and pressed me up against the wall by my face. He asked me, Do you wanna die?

Do you wanna die? was the phrase that made detectives sit up straighter when they interviewed me in the hospital later. An attacker had said the same to another student three days before, in nearby Oakland. She, the detectives told me, had escaped before the man could do what he wanted to do.

I did not escape. He had me for exactly as long as he wanted me, which, it turns out, wasnt that long. He seemed to have a mental checklist of foreplay that he cycled through efficiently: Do this, now do this... I had never done any of it before. I had only ever kissed, and not even that since high school, except for onstage. I was waiting for love and marriage.

Later, my attempts to describe him to the police were pathetic. He was big, I said. He had a childish face and voice. That vague big could have meant any number of things, and at first they brought me a tall man, a jogger theyd found nearby. He looked terrified. At the hospital, a tall detective had towered over me and asked, Was he as big as me? I had never meant tall. Id meant fat, broad, strong, heavy, powerful, and terrifying.

I did what he said, but I begged him to please stop. He persevered through token touches of all the bases: kissing, hands and mouth above the waist, hands and mouth below the waist, him to me then me to him. He didnt linger at any of those places, just claimed each intimacy as if he were winning points for it and moved on to the next.

I balked at the fucking. As much as I wanted to live, I screamed. He had to put his hand over my mouth, over my nose and mouth together, and push down hard. I couldnt breathe. He told me he would move the hand if I promised to stop screaming. I nodded, desperately. Anything for a breath. His hand moved; I sucked air and screamed again, unstoppably, overriding any logical sense of self-preservation. He had to smother me again, longer this time. He taught me how much I want air, how much more important it is than anything. I nodded again, promising, begging. I was able to mean it. He released my face. I didnt scream anymore.

He positioned my feet on his shoulders, my knees squished up against my chest, and pushed. I told people later that this part took a long time. I know now that it was actually a pretty standard amount of time, but to me then it took surprisingly forever for him to finish. While he was doing it, something splashed from his face onto mine: either a shower of sweat from his forehead, or maybe he was crying. Maybe it was tears.

I remember all of this easily, having told it so many times back when it happened. But some details have faded; for example, I realize Ive forgotten the name of the street Id lived on then, and have to look it up in an archived news report. I reread the poems Id written then and which I havent looked at in years. Theres a lot that haunted me then which surprises me now.