Maria Besadin

I don't like to use the word "assaulted" or "attacked" in cases of rape. To me, it makes the story sound nicer, makes the reader or listener wince less, which I don't believe in doing. So.

A woman was raped in a subway station. Her rapist touched her feet in the subway car, and she missed her stop where the only other passanger got off. She was stuck in the car alone with the rapist between the stop she missed and the stop she ran out to, but he didn't rape her in the car. Her rapist ran after her as she tried to escape to the world above. He wrapped his arms around her and dragged her down the stairs. A station attendant sat in his booth and watched them. He sat in his booth and watched as the man wrestled her to the ground and raped her. He pressed a button to call the police in some station far away from the woman being raped on the ground in front of his booth. The woman was screaming. The rapist stopped, dragged her to the end of the platform, hung her over the tracks, and told her to stop screaming. Then he held her down and raped her again. A subway car pulled into the station, and the conductor saw a woman being raped. But he had to get going to his next stop, so he pressed a button to call the police in some station far away from the woman being raped on the ground next to his train, and drove away. The station attendant continued to sit in his booth and watch. He may have listened to her screams through the intercom. When the man was finished raping her, he got up, zipped up his pants, and left. The station attendant sat in his booth and watched him go, and then looked at the woman on the ground. He watched her cry. And then the police came, and he watched them pick up her pieces.

I wish this angered me. I wish that I could feel angry at the rapist and the people who did nothing. I wish I could feel outraged that the court ruled that the MTA and the conductor and station attendant who saw did nothing wrong. But I am not angry. I cannot make myself feel it. I am too overwhelmed by sorrow and fear. I wish that I, and this woman, and all other women, did not have to feel this fear to which bad men like the rapist, cowardly men like the station attendant and the train conductor, and righteous men like the judge have condemned us.

But Judge Kerrigan says, "This is not the type of egregious situation that offends common sense and decency ... where they watched and did nothing."

You clearly do not know the fear I feel, Judge, the fear that chokes me when it is dark and I am alone. You do not have the slightest perception of the shame and utter despair and horror that hollow out my chest and carve into my organs whenever I am alone and I cannot stop my mind from remembering. Do not speak of common sense and decency, Judge, for common sense and decency have left us. All that we have left to hold on to is fear.