THE DRUGGING & RAPE OF SUSAN HUNTER- CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

So I have had just over a week off. It was intended to be a time for soothing and healing. I got to go hiking and be around horses with A. We hiked to a place that has waterfalls and went swimming in one. It was freezing and soul cleansing all at the same time. I have hung out with friends and had dinner, or drinks, or caught a movie. I had a small close friends gathering at a local bar (way out of Naylor and Ed’s territory), for my birthday. I’m 35 tomorrow and almost didn’t live to see it. I’m glad I did. The free birthday shots alone make it worth seeing. I went out to a lake and went lake swimming with my friend and neighbor N. We were in the water a good five minutes before he realized his phone was still in his pocket. He has been a real rock for me thru all of this. He has been here since the beginning. His was one of the first shoulders I cried on. He just grabbed me and let me sob on his shoulder when I was still trying to process the rape. It must be hard for an ex-marine to deal with all this emotion, but whenever things got rough, I could show up crying on his doorstep and he would put a beer in my hand. If anyone knows PTSD, and the anger associated with it, it would be an ex-marine. He declared I needed to hit something and took me out to the batting cages. He helped me a lot in identifying what I felt to be anger outbursts or if I was standing up for myself. His phone lived. It actually lived. It dried out and he charged it up and it started working. Even an ex-marine phone has to suck it up. N has promised me a thirty second head start if we ever run into Naylor. Thirty blissful seconds before he pulls me off and stops me. Now that’s a friend. 

There was one fight mixed in with all of this lovely down time. It was with the witness victim’s assistance program. It is the state run agency responsible for helping to pay my therapy costs and any other reimbursements as a direct result of my rape. I had originally been given the phone number of a woman that was supposed to help me from the rape clinic. She never returned my call, except one time to ask for a case or incident number. I gave her the two numbers I had. She left me another voice mail. The original incident report was thru the Hollywood station, try calling them and see if someone there can help you with the application. Click. I had to fill out the paper work on my own. Compared to the courthouse paperwork, this seemed like a breeze, except for the lawyer stuff. Just fill it out and send it in so we can get you in the system, says some lady in Sacramento. Since I have insurance, I will have to use that as the main form of payment, but they will cover my co pay. I sent in my application with a frantic letter. I haven’t looked at it since, but I know it was crazed. A lot of “Can I just get some help getting some fucking therapy?” That kind of crazy. 

I’m on my break, but I am still sending emails and trying to call the DA aka Wizard of Oz who can apparently wave a magic wand and fix these detectives once and for all. Good luck getting to them though. I receive an email response from a lady in the DAs office. I think I am finally being heard. I call her on the phone. “Well, have you gone up the chain of command?” If one more person asks me that, I am going to put them on hold, get into my car, drive to downtown, park my car in a parking garage, walk to their office, take the elevator to the appropriate floor, walk to their office, punch them squarely in the face, validate my own parking, and drive home. I have an entire rape center trying to work their way up the chain of command. They train the LAPD, and doors are being shut in their face. I am asked by them to write certain people outlining the behavior and attitude of the detectives involved for the center to be able to follow up on. It’s so whoever it is I am writing, knows I am advocating for myself too in case mythical rape victims become all to prevalent. Yes, I am working my way up the fucking chain of command. “Well, there really isn’t anything I can do for you anyway. I’m with victim’s assistance. We only handle the financial reimbursement and help with therapy.” Wonderful...Thanks for the waste of my time. And they pay you for this, right? “I don’t have your application on file, it was probably lost. Call Sacramento, and see if it’s lost, then call me back.”

Is it really any wonder I went crazy?  

“I am so tired of this fucking system”. I’m starting to cry again. I hang up the phone on her. Then I think no, every time I hang up the phone, they just get off the hook. I am tired of letting people float merrily on down the river while I’m stuck in so much red tape; it’s probably removed a couple of layers of skin, like a really bad sunburn. No more letting them have a happy little day when I have all this to deal with. My day gets to be screwed up, well let me share the wealth. I call her back. She answers.

“Exactly why do you think I should be calling Sacramento, and not you, if you work in this system and know all the lingo?”, “Well, you filled out and submitted your own application, so you will have to call and check the status of it, then call me back.” I had to because the first lady dumped me. She doesn’t know who I am talking about, so she would have no way of tracking her down. Well, it’s a good thing I hang onto all this information. She still doesn’t see any reason to call the ladies supervisor about case dumping. “So even though you know this lady is dumping cases, you won’t do anything to stop it?” “No. The most important thing is that you call Sacramento, and then call me back so I can help on your application”. “I don’t want your help” I tell her. “You don’t help, you only make things worse and make me do the leg work. I want someone else to help me who is actually going to do their job”. She gets in a huff and gives me a number to call to find a local office. It’s finally the triumphant hang up on her that I originally wanted. Yes, I have finally managed to screw up someone else’s day for once. No merrily down the river for you. That’s right, no successful pat of your own back. You don’t help. I will ask my therapist at the rape center. She has taken on a lot with me as I have obviously become the difficult case. She is advocate and therapist now. I have six precious visits with her. These are not to be wasted as I wait for her to help me with a new chain of command. The victims fund. She will call someone to see if she can get me an advocate in a real office. Unfortunately, most of these people are located in police stations. I’m not walking into a police station any time soon. It’s like being shocked with a cattle prod every time I have walked into one and the thought of someone asking me into a small room or thru a door already brings tears to my eyes. I start shaking. No way in hell am I walking into a police station. And the bottom line is, even after all of this, victims fund can still deny my application.

I did manage to get to a secretary at the DAs office. “We can’t help you, you don’t have a case number”.

You remember earlier when I said what happens if you keep going into shock? Well, the answer is you go numb. You really do. I think it’s so you stop feeling shock so you can just slide more easily into angry. It also means its slowly melting away at your processor, but I’ll get into that in a minute. “But I have two detectives sandbagging my case” I try to explain to her. She transfers me to an investigator, and I get hung up on.

I have found out a couple of facts from this phone call and two precious therapy sessions. I am still listed as an incident number. An incident is what happens when someone keys your car, or bashes in your mailbox and you call the cops. They give you an incident report. That’s all I am. I’m not even a real case number yet. But, every girl has to have dreams, right? Maybe someday two blissful letters will precede all those numbers and then I can be a real case! Oh joy! 

Oh yeah, that and the detective of the case, err incident, gets to determine the level of importance for testing 

my rape kit. If it is at the lowest level, then it just has to be tested sometime before the statute of limitations is up. Five years. Yup, my rape kit might not even get looked at for four years.

Remember what I said about not feeling shock anymore. Welcome to it.

I also made a not so healthy but relative to everything else going on, who really cares decision. I bought a twenty pound bag of gummy bears. I have almost finished off the bag in less than a week. I am convinced if I grab the fat around my thigh I will see the outline of all those gummy bears. As though they have their own little tenement in my thighs. That’s right. I have built an internal defensive wall of high fructose corn syrupy bears to help defend me.

I think this helped to spawn the two awesome dreams I had. The first night I dreamt Naylor showed up at my work. We have these 80s tall looking lamps at work. The kind with two metal rods and the white bulb holders that rotate up and down. Yeah, those... Well, Naylor decides to walk into my work and try to talk to me. I grab a lamp and start swinging. The first hit nails him square across his head and nocks him down. The splatter of blood arches in the air. I keep going. I don’t stop until his face is unrecognizable. For all he has done and put me thru, I make sure it will have to be a cremation. His skull is concave instead of convex. And no mortician in the world will be able to put him back together. Oh well, I think. He’s finally dead. Nothing else to have to worry about. Then I slowly wake up. I would have thought I would have woken up in a panic at the thought of losing the one chance of putting him in prison, and now knowing that would be my fate instead. Nope. Slow and relaxed and feeling peaceful. I am realizing it was a dream, but a sweet one none the less.

The next night, I dream I had been drugged again. That Ed was trying to break into my place as I was coming to because he is angry about the journal. He is literally trying to bash my door in. I am groggy from the drugs and think, “Oh God, not again, don’t let me have been drugged again”. Ed is almost thru the door as I open a desk drawer next to my bed. In it is the German Luger my Grandfather brought back from WWII. Just as Ed gets thru the door, I shoot a bullet straight between his eyes. The blood gracefully splatters on the wall and the guy behind him who takes off in pure fear and in slow motion. No need to go after him, I think to myself. Ed was breaking in, and all the evidence and all the law is on my side. Now get his dead body off my floor before he bleeds everywhere. God bless the little gummy bears and the sugar filled dreams of redemption.

Now, what I said earlier about the broken processor. I can’t process things right. I really need people to understand, it’s not about you, it’s about my broken processor. I watch a kid’s movie and watch a mouse get sad and I want to punch a kid in the face for making a mouse sad. I don’t react well to thinking something or someone who can’t defend themselves is being hurt. I also have a hard time when people, even people I love are trying to tell me what I should be doing, or how I should be handling things. I know it is done out of genuine concern or love, but what seems like a simple solution to you, is a long hallway of phone calls, paperwork, insurance and having to tell my experience over again and all the feelings it drudges up to me. I am in numb mode still, but I do get emotional if I feel another fight coming on. The bottom line is, the bad guy did something bad, and the good guys didn’t do their job in doing something about it. No matter what you say or do, nothing but the people above them is going to change that. That’s right, it’s scary to know the safety bubble of what you think the world should be and how things should be is not. It’s a scary thing to do, but telling me what I should be doing about it is more work than what my broken processor can handle and not even for a sure bet that it will help. Making the bosses of these two detectives listen is the sure bet. That is why I have asked that you, the reader, call the numbers listed at the top of the blog and try to help me. It is the reason why there is a small group of friends that form a safety bubble around me and help me get the word out, but won’t let other people in. The bottom line is, I’m not trying to be a jerk if I don’t accept your friend request or acknowledge you on twitter. It’s just my processor can’t handle all the information. People want to help, and I need that help, but only in a form that I can handle. Support and words of encouragement is it, unless you are the few, and the proud that are knee deep with me in this.

It is also concerning that people want to take the law into their own hands. Friends hint at it and honestly all it does is stress me out. You would make me waste everything that I have been thru so you can feel some sort of satisfaction that you have now robbed me of. What I want is Naylor in prison. If he meets a tragic end at his own doing, then that’s his own doing. If you are my friend or a supporter, you will not take it upon yourself to do the cops jobs for them. I will not notify the bar this happened to me at, or post photos of Naylor on the street declaring him to be a rapist. I will not endanger my own sliver of hope at a real investigation, and if you have any respect for me and all that I have been thru, you won’t either. Don’t make all that I have suffered thru obsolete. Please just don’t. Honestly, the stress of the thought of it just melts my already broken processor. Please stop digging around for hints or trying to solve the mystery. When the time is right and it’s allowed, it will come to the light. Writing has become difficult as I can’t spell a word right, and then when I go to fix it, I spell it wrong the same way again. I don’t like that the stress of having to explain this makes the one thing I have control over difficult, so please just let things be as they are supposed to be, and know that you listening and hearing me is the support I need right now. 

And I don’t want to sue the LAPD. That is not even an option for me for many reasons. Trying to take on a lawsuit with a broken processor on top of everything else isn’t going to help my mental health at all. Also, even if I was to sue and win and drain the city coiffeurs, who would it really hurt? The Mayor? No, Sparks and Jenks. That’s who. Remember them? The really good cops who went above and beyond their jobs? That is one thing I know we have in common. The detectives have hurt them to. By being so fucked up, all the hard work that all the good uniform cops have done in this to help, is made obsolete by the detectives. Every uniform cop in this whole messed up situation has done exactly what they are supposed to. Some, like I said, above and beyond. It is these untouchables that are the problem. My therapist says I am in fight mode, which is good compared to flee or freeze mode. Which is also odd because most women choose freeze. I was told about one woman who had such a bad time with the LAPD after her rape, she actually packed up and moved away. I can sympathize with that. But I am in fight. The problem is that fight is usually fueled by anger. By rage. I can’t let myself get stuck in fight mode and I can’t let anger alienate the people I need. I need the help of the LAPD to put away the bad guys. I cannot allow anger to push all of them away. I have written letters as asked by my therapist in a matter of fact and non-emotional way. Such as “I am not attacking you or any member of the LAPD, except for the aforementioned, and screw them in a non-emotional and matter of fact way because all they do is help rapists”. I would say that is pretty devoid of emotion. Well, the best I can do anyway.

So I think that is all that I am able to process and share in this round. I know that my therapist has told me to start thinking about the fact I will have to pull back all the layers of crap I have had to deal with and stir the pot to get to the rape. That it is buried deep inside of me, but I will have to face it and flush it out. I don’t know yet if that is a part of the journey that I am willing to share, but I don’t see why not. I have invited you in for all of this, for better or worse. I will think about it when my processor comes back on line. I am going back to work tomorrow and I look forward to it. It will be good to get into a physical environment, and haul gear around, and be around clients. I can usually compartmentalize at work, and it is a good distraction from all of this fighting. Not that there isn’t fighting at work, it’s just fighting in an arena that I can process. Tomorrow is also my birthday. It will be a good day.