Kill the Silence

by Monika Korra

  I’m not a completely sappy romantic, but I’d always associated candlelight with romance or church. When I took the candle offered me, and a few moments later when the participants began to pass the flame from person to person, my eyes welled with tears. When Kristine helped to light my candle, my hand was unsteady, so she held it still. The three of us linked arms and joined the others in the walk from the quad to the Student Center. It seemed appropriate that the two of them were with me. Though Silje hadn’t been at the party or with me in the weeks after the assault, she had become a big part of my life that semester.

  Every time I felt down because of a bad performance on the course or when a phone call with Robin didn’t happen or didn’t go well, they were both there to lift me up. Our training runs together always ended up with us saying this: “We won’t give up no matter what.” Giving up wasn’t a part of our nature, but we all had moments when we were tempted; in a way, that Take Back the Night event was an extension of what my friends and family had been doing for me the last ten months. Bit by bit, I was taking back my life from the fears and the anger and the frustration.

  When we gathered outside the Student Center, a man I didn’t know, who didn’t introduce himself, stepped in front of the marchers. We gathered around him in a semicircle. He made a few remarks thanking us for attending and said, “Have you heard of anyone who has been sexually assaulted? If so, then blow out your candle.”

  We did.

  I looked around, and almost without exception everyone’s candle was out; wisps of smoke trailed into the night sky. Before the candles had been extinguished, I’d noticed how their glow illuminated everyone’s face, how cheery the atmosphere seemed, like we were all sitting around a campfire. In the near dark, people still talked, but there was more of a hush than when we’d been walking.

  Everyone relit his or her candle from someone whose hadn’t been extinguished or had already been lighted again. The beauty was that despite the ugly truth of how many people were affected by sexual assault, there was always someone there to offer you help. No matter how dark it got there was always going to be some light. Those lights were out there to help us and guide us; we just had to turn toward them and be open to the experience of getting help.

  As the ceremony continued, the leader asked if we had an acquaintance who’d been victimized, then if we knew a family member or friend. Each time the number of candles being snuffed was fewer and fewer and the communal glow remained brighter. Each time my candle was relit, I thought to myself, “Thank you, family and friends.”

  I anticipated what was coming next, and I felt an unsettling sensation in the pit of my stomach. I looked at my candle. It was a white taper that had lost about half of its length. A coated paper cone kept the dripping wax off my hands, and it was nearly full with the melted wax. I could see across the way from me a woman I thought I recognized from one of my classes. She stood with her candle raised, almost like I’d seen our pastor do when conducting the Eucharist. The light from her candle reflected off her glasses, making it impossible to see her eyes, just the flame fluttering in the wind, and to each side of that other pinpricks of light.

  A gust of wind came up and my light flickered but didn’t go out. The rape had strengthened my faith and my belief that all things happen for a reason. It sometimes takes us time to figure out that reason, and this event was helping me make better sense of the attack. I think that image of my flame nearly going out was symbolic. It reminded me how grateful I was that I’d survived that night. I’d felt that way in the beginning, but as time passed, I had spent more time thinking about what had been taken from me than thinking about how glad I was to still be alive. In that moment, I felt a profound gratitude that I could be there, holding that candle and standing between my good friends. I felt myself release something; perhaps it was anger, or frustration, or simply the question of why this had happened to me.

  When I heard the speaker ask us to blow out our candle if we ourselves had been a victim of a sexual assault, I hesitated. In my meetings with Erin and Brandon, they’d told me that it wasn’t a good idea for me to go public with my story before the trial began. That would generate more publicity and could possibly give the defense an advantage. Blowing out my candle wasn’t the same thing as going to the media, but I was still publicly acknowledging the fact that I was one of the ones for whom we were gathered to take back the night. I hesitated and then took a deep breath before blowing out my candle.

  Tears balanced on my eyelids when I looked around at all the other people who stood with their candles still aflame. I blinked to try to clear my sight, and a young man I didn’t know stepped forward to relight my candle. My throat was so tight I couldn’t even get the words out. I shut my eyes and another tear leaked down my cheeks. Silje and Kristine each put an arm around me and hugged me. I took another deep breath and looked up into the night sky and the stars, more light.

  I wished that I could have said something to the man who lit my candle that last time, but he had resumed his place in the circle. I whispered the words “Thank you” to the stars, to everyone there, to my friends and family.

  People started to file into the Student Center for the next phase of the evening. I told Silje and Kristine that I would join them in a minute. I needed a moment alone. I wanted nothing more at that point than to be able to share my story. I knew that I couldn’t, but I promised myself that when I had the first opportunity to do so after the trial I would. I wanted to relight candles. I wanted to let people know, no matter what happened to them, that they could get back to the place they wanted to be. I didn’t just want to be the one whom other people gathered together to support. I wanted to be the one who did the supporting.

  Inside the Student Center, an open microphone session had begun. People were encouraged to share their stories. At first no one stepped forward. I fought the urge to do so. Finally a young man stood in front of us. At first he didn’t speak. He wore a ball cap, and he stood alternately tugging at it and then thrusting his hands in his pockets. The room was silent. We could hear his stuttering breaths through the microphone. When he began, it was as if I was watching someone pull back his bandages to reveal a horrific wound. I felt so bad for him, and yet I so admired him for his courage to speak about how he’d been sexually abused as a child. When it was clear that his story was coming to an end, I wanted to rush up there and thank him for being so brave.

  I don’t know what came over me, but even before he was done, I quietly slipped out of the Student Center unnoticed. I think that I was frustrated by not being able to speak at that moment, but also frightened by the thought that someone might come up to me after, or even just look at me and know that I was one of the few that night who had blown out that final candle. I wasn’t strong enough to deal with that kind of attention yet, and I was overwhelmed.

  Instead, I hustled home and changed into running clothes. I ran through the streets, taking back the night in my own way, my tears taking me back to all those months ago when on another night I’d wondered if I would ever see a star again, if the constellation of broken glass and dirt on that carpet and on that roadside was the last image I’d ever see.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

  After numerous postponements, the first of the three men’s individual trials was scheduled to begin on December 13—just past a year after the attack. I spent a lot of time talking with Erin and Brandon about how the trial process would go. In Norway, a trial like the one Arturo Arevalo was facing would be conducted by a panel of judges and what we call “lay judges”—citizens who essentially act in the same capacity as the professional judges. There would be only five people total who decided the defendant’s guilt or innocence. If someone wanted to appeal a guilty verdict, then they would face a jury of their peers—five men and five women—who didn’t have to agree unanimously on a verdict. Seven out of the ten voting in one direction would uphold or overturn a lower court’s verdict. In the U.
S., in most states, the verdict has to be unanimous. I thought of my experiences with people generally and how hard it was to get everyone to agree on what pizza toppings to order or what movie to watch. Unanimous scared me.

  Erin and Brandon explained to me a concept that they wanted to make sure the jury also understood, a principle that the whole American system of criminal justice was founded on. A person was considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which meant that the state (or, as I thought of them, “my lawyers”) was going to have to prove their case. The defense didn’t have to do anything if they didn’t want to or, more accurately, if they felt that the prosecution hadn’t done their job. Erin and Brandon explained to me that the defense not putting on a case was nearly impossible to imagine. They’d have to show the jury the ways in which the state had failed to prove that Arturo Arevalo was guilty of the charges made against him.

  The tricky part for me, and the two district attorneys assured me this was the case for everyone, was what “beyond a reasonable doubt” meant. Everyone had a different interpretation of that concept, so there was likely to be some doubt in every case. I thought of it this way: If you placed the facts of the case that you were sure about on a scale and weighed them, and then you placed the things you were unsure of on that same scale later, depending on which weighed more—certainties or doubts—you’d vote for guilt or innocence. I have since learned that my understanding was incorrect and that the burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt was much more difficult than I thought. I’m glad I didn’t know this at the time.

  The DAs also reviewed with me some of the other things specific to my case. I assumed it was a good thing that Luis Zuniga had told police that Arevalo was the one who came up with the idea and had forced his cousin and him to take part. Brandon explained that it was, but there were certain limitations. There was something called the Accomplice Witness Rule. That had to do with cases like this one where one person charged with the same crimes was going to testify against someone who participated in the illegal activity. Because accused people are sometimes given a break on their sentences, some jury members might look at that testimony and dismiss it. They might think that one person turned on another because that person was getting a good deal from the state, or that one person had just made something up in order to incriminate another. On the other hand, for a different juror an accomplice saying that someone else committed the crimes would be enough to convince him or her beyond a reasonable doubt of the accused man’s guilt.

  As a result, the Accomplice Witness Rule instructed the jurors that they couldn’t vote guilty if the only evidence that convinced them was the accomplice’s testimony against the accused. They could factor it in, but if that was the only testimony they believed, then they had to vote not guilty, that the state hadn’t proved its case. I had a bit of trouble with that idea, but Brandon and Erin urged me not to get too concerned about it. They felt like they had a strong case that they would prove, and having Luis’s testimony would only make the case even stronger. They reminded me of the scale: The DNA evidence would be one piece that weighed a small or large amount depending on the juror and the juror’s beliefs about DNA and scientific evidence. Another piece of evidence was Kristine’s testimony, and of course my own. And my lawyers told me that they were going to do their best to make sure that anyone with a bias that might hurt our case wouldn’t be on the jury.

  All the references to potentially, possibly, bias, and all the rest made it hard for me to feel confident about how the case would go. I knew in my heart and in my mind that Arturo Arevalo was the Worst One, but would twelve people’s hearts and minds agree?

  I can see now that, for me then, the idea of hearts and minds potentially not being in agreement was a real possibility. I was living that out in another part of my life. Robin and I had continued our long-distance relationship for about three months when he came to see me in October. Seeing him again made me feel wonderful and it made me feel sad. Those three months had been filled with ups and downs, times when I could see that things would work out between us, that the distance wasn’t too great, and other times when I felt like I was running a very hilly course, struggling to rally enough resources of energy to get up that next incline. When I was being honest with myself, even from the crest of one of the hills when things were going well, I could see another series of hills and valleys stretched out toward the horizon. Did I have what it took to continue on that course?

  We knew what it was like when we were together and things were so good, and this new version of how we interacted wasn’t even close to what that had been. In running terms, we set a PR together when we were both in Dallas, and now it felt as if we were struggling to even come within minutes and hours of that time. After a few months of trying to make it work, we agreed that we both had too many obstacles ahead on our own paths to be able to support each other the way we should, and we ended things again.

  We’d been through so much together, and now for it to end so badly made me incredibly sad. I held on to the hope that once things were better in his world and in mine, we’d be able to get back together. I had opened up to him in a way that I had never revealed myself to anyone else, but I didn’t look at our breaking up as any kind of rejection.

  My focus was now entirely on school and the trial, which was finally almost ready to start. I also knew what I needed to do for myself to power through my days leading up to it, when my anxiety was climbing. I got up at six in the morning and went for a run to clear my head of the clutter that accumulated overnight. Something about getting my body moving, that constant race between thoughts and legs, gave me the energy I needed. I wasn’t happy that the trial would take place while I was still focused on classes and final exams. In mid-November, I once again found myself facing the prospect of talking to or e-mailing professors to let them know that I’d be missing classes and would need to reschedule some finals.

  One of the strangest parts of my experience at SMU was the disconnect in perception I had about those who knew who I was and what had happened to me and those who didn’t. The attack had dominated the news back then, and even though I’d never been directly identified by name, I still walked around thinking that everyone knew that I was the one. I was shocked when a couple of my professors admitted they had no idea that I was involved in that case. I’d been assuming that everyone knew, but clearly I was wrong. I guess it made it easier for me to think that, but at the same time, I felt like I had been walking around carrying an ugly secret. The effort to hide from people who knew had been sapping my energy. Now I wondered if that had been a wasted effort.

  I wondered about other potential wastes of energy and the effects they had had on me. I had worked every day to get rid of those terrible images from that night, but I couldn’t do that completely because I had to testify about them in court. I knew that I was going to be asked about those events, and as much as Erin and Brandon tried to assure me that the case didn’t rest solely on what I said in my testimony, at times it felt that way to me. And on top of all that, I wasn’t sure how I was going to react when I saw that man in the same room with me.

  Fortunately, I had plenty of reinforcements to help back me up. My mother and father were together with me in Dallas. It hurt me to know that the first place they were going to see of my new hometown was a courtroom. But they wanted to be there and support me if things got tough. Silje, who had been together with Kristine and me, supporting us every day, never hesitated to go with us to court that day. My Norwegian friend Wenche, who had been living in Dallas for more than twenty years, immediately offered to be there taking care of my parents. It was so good for me to know that they had someone whom they could speak Norwegian to and who could answer their questions. Two of the loveliest women in Dallas, Kelly and Sidsel, who had taken on a mother’s care of me after the incident, also wanted to be in the courtroom to support us. I felt so grateful that everybody wanted to be there for me. It made everything so muc
h easier, and I was able to appreciate all the nice things surrounding the trial. I couldn’t believe that so many people cared so much that they wanted to get together in this way just for me.

  The night before the trial, I lay in bed feeling like I was pinned in one uncomfortable position by all my concerns, large and small. Would I be able to remember that in court I was Jessica Watkins? Would I accidentally state my real name? Would I break down completely and not be able to tell my story? Would I go blank? Would I appear too cold and unemotional?

  I drifted into brief moments of sleep and then woke up thinking that hours had passed. My clock told me a different story. When the first gray light of the morning of Tuesday, December 13, leaked across the ceiling, I got out of bed and pulled on my running clothes. It seemed appropriate that a light rain was falling; low clouds and fog haloed the lights of the passing cars, and the streetlights and the rainbows on the wet pavement signaled a promise that better days could be ahead. My thoughts slowed and quieted while I ran on in the rain, my effort warming me, the sound of my steps soothing.

  Once back at the apartment, I felt sodden and chilled. As I let the shower stream bring warmth back into my body, I couldn’t help but think of that first shower after the attack, Robin outside the curtain, when I felt so sure that I’d never feel clean again. How might I feel if Arturo Arevalo, the Worst One, wasn’t convicted? Would I ever feel safe again? Would I go back to feeling like the attack was meaningless, that everything I’d been through that night and after in order to put my life back together had been without purpose? Would I go back to being that girl on the side of the road, naked and blinded, wondering whether the next step would bring me salvation or more pain?