Reversible Error Read Online Free PDF

question of belief. The state legislature changed the rape law last year, so you no longer need independent corroboration of the crime, but you do need evidence that force was used and consent not given.
    "So the cops look for certain things-was it a stranger, was there breaking and entering, was there beating of the victim? Places-in a back alley is good, a parking garage, a park. Also they look at the social stuff. Cops like big differences in the ages. The eighteen-year-old and the grandmother, or the forty-year-old guy and the twelve-year-old girl.
    "And, I'm sorry to say, they also like black on white, although that's a lot rarer than most people believe. In any case, they like a middle-class victim. What they definitely do not like is when it takes place in the woman's bedroom, and she let him in and she knew the guy. Like in your case, a guy she met in a bar."
    "You don't believe me either!" the woman said in a small voice, accepting it.
    "No!" Marlene nearly shouted, and the woman jumped. "I do believe you. But that's not what matters. What matters is do we have a case." She tapped her stack of five-by-eights. "That's what these cards are for. If he did it to you, he did it or will do it to other people, and probably in the same way. We establish there's a pattern, a serial thing, it gets the cops interested. They put more energy into it. Also, we have a pattern that makes it a lot easier to convict, and to get a decent sentence when we do.
    "I know the system sucks, but it's the system. I've got to play in it the best I can. But believe me, I understand what you're going through…"
    At this, the other woman's face, until then a frozen mask, twisted into a hostile grimace. "You do?" she spat. "Why? Did you get raped too?"
    Marlene's stomach churned. She understood why many of the women she interviewed took out their rage on her. She was available, and the rapist wasn't, but it didn't make it feel any better.
    She took a slow breath, folded her hands on her desk, looked Paula Rosenfeld straight in the eye, and said, "Actually, Ms. Rosenfeld, I believe I can sympathize with your situation. Not too long ago I was drugged and kidnapped by a bunch of crazed satanists, stripped naked and presented as a toy to a mentally defective child murderer, given the starring role in a variety of depraved rituals, during which I was masturbated upon by a substantial number of men and had various of my personal orifices penetrated by demonic instruments wielded by my charming hostess. So yes, I believe I can sympathize with your situation."
    The other woman's eyes had gone wide and her jaw dropped. "Oh, my God! You're that one! It was on TV."
    "Yes, dear, I'm that one-my fifteen minutes of fame."
    Pause. Marlene waited for what she knew was coming. "You killed that guy."
    Marlene nodded. "Yes, I did. He was going to shoot a couple of friends of mine, had shot one of them already, so I killed him."
    "I'd like a shot at that bastard too," the woman said bitterly.
    "Yes, you would. But it's no fun killing somebody. It doesn't take away the violation." Marlene gestured widely toward the four corners of her tiny office. "This. All of this, the courts, the system, is supposed to do all that for you. It doesn't, but we keep plugging anyway. What else can we do?"
    Paula Rosenfeld, rape victim, had no answer to this question, and she wound up the interview and left shortly afterward.
    Marlene lit a Marlboro and watched the smoke eddy up to the ceiling high above. The office was an architectural oddity, having been constructed out of a dog-leg end of a hall corridor on the sixth floor of the Criminal Courts Building. Its height was therefore nearly twice its other dimensions, so that Marlene worked in what was effectively the bottom of a narrow shaft.
    Office space was scarce in this era of New York's perpetual losing battle against crime. The building at 100 Centre Street had been constructed in the late thirties, a period when the poor knew