Editor’s Note: Make It Better Publisher, Susan Noyes, recently hosted a private event and book-signing with supermodel Beverly Johnson, who is one of the dozens of women who have accused comedian Bill Cosby of drugging or assaulting them. After the event, one of the invitees contacted Susan to share her story of having successfully, though painfully, prosecuted the man who raped her in the 1970s. What follows is her powerful, raw and unedited account.
In sharing this story, it is not with the intent to elicit sympathy from the reader. I share this with the intent of understanding the mentality of a victim and its ramifications. To create a conversation, even a debate, as many women and men will be on either side. But healing cannot take place without exploration and sharing of emotions. Living in shame creates monsters, whether someone else is abused or you turn the monster inwards and abuse yourself. My wish is to promote healing.
While the events have been recorded as accurately as my memory allows, the names have been changed—not to protect them, but to continue to protect me.
I knew I had been raped. I had talked about it from time to time with my husband. But somehow the words, the story, got placed in a part of my mind that couldn’t touch it. I knew it was there, but I didn’t know it was there. I knew something emotional had happened, something physical that hurt me, yet I forgot it. Clinicians say that your brain does that to protect you. It’s called dissociation.
A person dissociates an experience as a coping mechanism. I had forgotten all about it until one day, 12 years later, I was cleaning out our garage from all the boxes we had brought up due to our basement flooding and ran across a subpoena that had my name on it requesting my testimony in a case. I sat down on my front stoop and looked at the paper. I read it. What was going on?
My body began to tremble, and I broke out in a sweat. As I sat there staring at it I said out loud to no one: “Yes I know this…but I don’t know this.” How could I have forgotten this? I called my husband, but he couldn’t come to the phone. I went upstairs and curled into a fetal position on my bed, and stayed there for the rest of the morning, going over what had happened that day.
I graduated from high school in 1976. Rape wasn’t really discussed much during that time, as we were on the backside of the “free-sex, drugs, rock-in-roll” era. As a female there were concerns, but living in that time and age we generally felt safe going anywhere and doing almost anything.
Up until that point the disco movement was mostly underground and what was being played got little airtime. 1977 started a big disco move in movies, clubs, dance competitions, etc. I was in my last year as a nursing student, which was clinical time three days a week and two days classroom. I also worked two part-time jobs: one at a high-end women’s clothing store called Gantos, and the other was at my father’s real estate business as a receptionist. I usually allowed for one night out, and that was Fridays as I could stay out a bit later and still function at the office answering phones, making appointments, and filing MLS sheets for the realtors to use the next week. I also needed to make room for my chores & helping out with my 7-year-old sister.
For fun, I modeled and competed in disco dancing contests, usually on Friday nights. I had a small group of friends, and we would change off partners based on who could do the latest spins, foot moves, and who had the most current and hip outfit. We won stereos, a trip, movie tickets, all kinds of things. One Friday in September while out at a bar for a dance show, I met a handsome athletic Hispanic man named Eduardo Rodriguez. I never really had a dating type, but he was dreamy. The flawless skin, creamy brown eyes, and perfectly coiffed hair. He was my height without my heals and while I never liked dating someone my height, because he seemed so sweet and genuine as I watched him talk with others and from our brief conversation, I said yes to a date when he asked me out.
He called me the following afternoon and we talked for an hour getting to know each other a bit more. Sunday he called me again and we tried to set a date for the following week, but I had exams, clinical, a family event on Thursday and a dance competition on Friday night. Could I make an exception and go out with him Wednesday night? “No, not really,” I said. I wanted to get my homework done, go for a run, and, while living with my parents & three other siblings, I had a curfew of 11:00 p.m. on weeknights.
“Well I run often, too,” he said. “How about I come over after work and we go for a run?” Well, I guess that would be ok, I thought, because it would allow us to run and talk, and then we could both call it a night and see if we really liked each other.
He came over at 7:00 p.m. My youngest brother and father were in our family room watching TV. I let him in and he shook my fathers hand and said hello to my mother. My father commented on his shape, and he said that he was a semi-professional boxer. I thought “Wow, ok, this guy will be able to run for miles!” Our medium-sized poodle, Buffy, ran down the stairs and right over to him, and proceeded to hump his leg. After a few awkward comments about Buffy, we walked outside. We both had sweatpants and sweatshirts on, as it was about 48 that night. We ran for a couple of miles, then he said “Hey, let’s just head back,” as he had a side cramp. We got to my driveway, and he asked if we could sit in his car, a station wagon, and talk for a little before we called it a night.
Anyone who came to visit us could park two different ways at our house without parking in our driveway and blocking any cars that might be in the garage from getting out. One way was with their car facing our house on a side parking area; the other was parking parallel to our house. Ed, as he asked me to call him, had parked parallel. We both got in and continued talking. Ten minutes into the conversation, I said I thought I should head in, as I was now getting cold. He said: “No worries, I can start the car and turn on the heat.” Problem solved. About five minutes later, he put the car in drive, locked the car doors, and we slowly started moving forward. He said he hadn’t been to this area of town, and he’d like drive around a bit and see what it looked like. I remember glancing over my right shoulder at the door lock as we started to move and thought they looked so strange. Something was missing on them, but my brain didn’t put anything together. I just thought: OK, we will drive around a bit and then I will head in. It’ll be close to 10 and I will be under my curfew and there will be no arguments about how late I was. This will be ok.
We drove through our neighborhood, then ventured out of the development and onto one of the main roads named Hendrick Street, after my grandfather. I remember telling him about my family and the places we had built homes, owned the vacant properties. I showed him the Hendrick house that my grandparents still lived in and houses that belonged to my aunts and uncles. We drove around about 3-4 miles, and he pulled the car over to the side of the street. I was looking straight ahead when I started to ask why we were pulling over. I don’t remember how far I got into that sentence, as the next thing I knew I saw stars. Literally. Stars. White bursts of sparkle and flashes of shiny asterisks. It took me a few seconds for me to realize I was seeing those things because I had been punched in my head and had hit the side window of the car. WHAT? What was going on here?
“Why did you do that?” I said, as I finally looked at him.
What happened next seemed to be out of a nightmare. One that I had never had before. I couldn’t look at him. I was fearful that he would punch me in the nose or eye, so I looked straight ahead again. In my peripheral vision I saw a tie, probably his tie from work, hanging on the rearview mirror. I looked over my right shoulder again and noticed that what was wrong with the locks was that the cover for the door lock was missing. Like it had been childproofed. All you could see was the screw part of the lock, and I knew then he’d hurt me further if I tried to get at that lock. I wouldn’t be fast enough. I looked outside and realized that even if I did get out, I wouldn’t be able to run fast enough. I calculated that I was about 3/4 of a mile from my other grandmothers house, but I also knew she was asleep and would take forever to answer the door. If this guy decided to chase me, he could also damage her, so her house and refuge was out of the question. All these thoughts happened in a matter of milliseconds. Because as I was turning my head back to look at him he grabbed me by my hair on the left side of my head and slammed my head into the window. BAM!! Again I saw stars.
“WHAT THE HELL!” I shouted.
“Put the tie on,” he said in a rushed voice. Then louder as I turned and looked at him: “PUT THE TIE ON!” I took the tie and put it on, tying it the best my shaking hands could manage. Then he pulled a knife out and said get in the back seat. I turned and looked at the back seat. The middle seat had been folded down and there were blankets and a couple of pillows lying around. Why hadn’t I noticed that before?
I started climbing over the seat and my brain was going 500 miles an hour trying to figure out how I could get out of this alive. I noticed blood on one of the pillows and said “There’s blood on this stuff.”
“It’s from a girl I raped last week,” he said, matter-of-factly. I froze on that folded down area, and my jaw dropped open as I realized what was happening. Ok…he may not try to kill you, but he’s for sure going to rape you. Somewhere, somehow my brain said survive. And that’s where I stayed for the next couple of hours.
He held a knife at my throat and demanded that I take my clothes off. And I did. I also scanned the area for anything that I could use to choke him or hit him over the head with. But whom was I fooling? He’s a boxer. He probably had blows to his head and body all the time.
I wasn’t strong enough to fight him so I started talking gibberish stuff. While it was intelligent, it was meaningless. I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to live. So I started talking. I asked why such a handsome guy like himself would want or need to force anyone to have sex with him? He didn’t have to force me; I would gladly have sex with him. He flipped me on my back and placed his knife in me. I screamed. I knew I could not survive a night of this. I searched my brain again and words started flying out of my mouth. “Please, you do not have to do this. I was hoping we’d have sex tonight, just didn’t know how I could with my curfew and living at home.” Boy, I said so much that held no weight. I talked and talked all the while trying not to throw up as I had so much revulsion for him. Somewhere in there I prayed. Dear God… please let me live. Please…
I made shit up. I said so many complimentary things to him. I promised him I would go on a date with him later that week.
“Just let’s have sex and drive me back home. You don’t need to force me. I like you. You’re incredibly gorgeous and strong and who wouldn’t want to be with you?” The lies flowed. And I watched myself be raped. I wasn’t in my body any longer. I felt no pain. I no longer felt like vomiting. I actually didn’t loathe him either. I only felt I had to convince this person that I needed to get home.
“We can be a couple, just don’t kill me.”
At 1:00 a.m., we drove up to my house. I had to contain my desire to start screaming and clawing at the car door. I set a date for Saturday night with him. A movie we would go see then back to his parent’s house, where he had his own room and no rules from his mother. He said he could have anyone over at anytime of the day or night. It was a date.
He unlocked the car. I cautiously started to move, and he grabbed my arm, I turned to him and said: “Can I kiss you good night?” And I immediately leaned in and kissed him with my right leg hanging out of the car. I slid out of the seat and said see you Saturday and walked into my house.
I was hoping someone had waited up for me. No one was up, and I walked into my bedroom and sat in a rocking chair that was in a corner of my room. I rocked in that chair until my alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. I got up, went into the bathroom, and without washing my face, brushing my teeth or combing my hair, decided I looked OK to go to school. I walked in a trance-like state back to my room, changed my clothes into my nurses uniform and drove myself to my clinical rotation at a nursing home about a half-hour away.
Shifts start at 7 a.m. but nurses have to be there 15 minutes early to get the shift information from the night before. At 10 a.m., as I was taking care of an elderly woman, my brain decided to enter my body and inform me of the past night’s events. I collapsed on the floor of her room and began sobbing. My instructor, who was my mother’s dear friend and fellow nurse from their nursing school, came running in and noticed blood on the floor and got me taken to another room.
After some time of shaking and crying she was able to put my story together and said I needed to go to the emergency room and have a rape box done. She would call an ambulance. No I said, no ambulance. I can’t. I needed to be comforted; I needed someone to hold my hand. I called a friend to drive me. He came and took me to the ER of a hospital 20 blocks away.
My journey wasn’t easy after this. I was the victim more than once. The police came to our house and interviewed me and took my statement. And my mother, God rest her soul, said I probably brought it on me; I must have acted seductively. (I don’t blame her. She didn’t understand about rape. But her initial attitude is one that still exists in many people’s minds when they hear someone was raped. They wonder… did she/he do something to bring it on?).
Rape really was no consideration during those times. It happened somewhere, just not where we were. Not to upper middle-class families who drove to school in the mid-‘70s in a Cadillac with a car phone. We were taught to think of others and do charity and go to church and invite lost souls over for dinner and clothes if they needed it. But rape has no boundaries.
I was the only one strong enough to prosecute. I was the third rape that week by Eduardo. His mother never said anything about who he brought home and when he came home because he beat her often. His violently explosive temper occurred at any moment. His defense was that he needed glasses and he suffered from migraines.
I got calls (back then no one had unlisted phone numbers) from the other women he had raped asking that I not prosecute, for fear that he would come after them again. In court, they filled the last row. Five of them. Not his mother, but five other rape victims who would not stand up against him.
My confidence was shattered and I lost my liberated, respected self, I was made a victim even at the last day when they ruled in my favor and gave him only six months and said he needed prescription glasses to help his vision and his migraines and therefore his angry outbursts. Even that decision made me feel like the victim.
What did my life matter? Didn’t what I’d lost mean anything? I lost my innocence about mankind and openness to others. So what if I was courageous. I wanted to live!! But I also wanted to be supported and held and believed.
I understand Beverly Johnson and all the other victims who don’t speak out at the time of their injustice and humiliating crime. One feels alienated from everyone and everything. We do not hold up the victim of rape. We look at them skeptically and wonder what did they do to provoke such a scene. We keep them as a victim. We keep a distance from them. And then no speaks out. Because they know the outcome. They will be raped again as they try to defend themselves. And why live through that again? Once is more than enough for anyone. Ever.
To this day, I always look over my shoulder; my radar is always piqued… checking if the situation is safe.
