The Right to Not Be Raped

Date: 10/19/2000 8:56:00 PM
Written By: A Father Whose Daughter was Raped
The Right to Not Be Raped

by a Father whose daughter was raped

Dear Angel,

I just need to tell you that the kind of honesty you exhibit is not only refreshing, it is healing for me. Even as a liberty-conscious gun owner, I’ve become one jaded human being when it comes to the political process and the war against our freedoms, but your willingness to say what you just said spoke right to the bug that was keeping me from getting in people’s faces in defense of our freedoms.

My daughter was raped. He came in her own apartment, which she could barely afford because we’re just not a very rich family. I’ve been working all my life, and I’m still finding ways to make extra money to put my other daughter through college. My beloved wife works too. We raised our children with values. You don’t hurt people, you be kind and generous, helpful. You don’t invade people’s space, their dignity, their spirit. (She didn’t get pregnant, Thank God.) I’m crying as I write this, 14 years later: This guy darn near cut one of her nipples off, Angel. THAT ROTTEN-SOULED PIECE OF HUMAN TRASH DESTROYED THE VERY PRECIOUS INSTRUMENT OF NATURE AND GOD THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SUCKLED BY THE TWINS SHE HAD 8 YEARS LATER! Angel, the “man” who disfigured my daughter – physically, emotionally and spiritually [editor emphasis] – made her do some other things that, when I found out about them, prevented me from sleeping for over a year.

I could tell you more details, but let’s just say that my daughter knew how to use a gun quite well. I raised her to be able to protect herself, like any good father should do. And here comes my point of all points: she was not allowed [editor emphasis] to carry a gun to stop this from happening to her where she was living at the time, and he caught her as she was going into her apartment. What goes through my mind every time I think of this – and every time I hear someone like the late Governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan denying the right of a woman to stop such an attack – is this: the guy approached her by cornering her in the squared section leading up to her door, trapping her, but with plenty of time for her to have pulled her gun and stopped the attack. All he had was a knife, the same one he used to make her lose a pint or more of blood from her breast.

Angel, the media would not print a word about the disfigurement. In fact, they only gave this story four lines in their regular reporting of local crimes. I guess it was just too terrible for them to say, but their refusal to warn other women that this mad “man” was at large made me so mad I thought, many times, about going and killing the legislator who spearheaded the drive to block the legislation that would have – at the time – allowed my daughter to avoid years of agonizing emotional turmoil. (Honestly, and I hope you print this, I still think about killing that son of a bitch, and he’s even more powerful now, too, and still making people believe it’s right to deny a woman the right to not be raped. [editor emphasis]) And I also thought about, literally, killing the “editor” who said to me these exact words, “I’m sorry this happened to your daughter, but we cover a lot of news every day, and we have to pick and choose, and we don’t want to scare the community.”

I couldn’t believe it either, and I won’t repeat what I said to him because I don’t want to turn people off who are offended by four letter words. But I did tell him that God is just, and His memory lasts forever. Think of all the other rapes that guy could have committed against an unaware community of women in a city where everyone is told not only that they can’t protect their own lives except inside their homes, but they are told by misguided people that guns are bad. Guns are not bad if you’re a good person with gun training; they are lifesavers — and DIGNITY savers.

So keep telling it like it is, Angel. Some people may not want to hear the truth, and some people will probably turn against you for being so direct as you just were, but the people who really and truly understand this issue can probably imagine a cargo plane full of anti-self-defense people like Mel Carnahan going down in the Pacific Ocean, and all of us being better off for it as far as our lives and our safeties are concerned. I feel for the pain Carnahan’s family went through and is going through, I honestly do. But I refuse to let him die under the same false notion that he lived under: that his life is more important than that of the citizen he was hired and paid quite well to serve.

Respectfully, and in Gratitude,

A father with a daughter who is finally outliving the memories of the people who know this story, and who doesn’t wish to ever rekindle a painful flame in her life and thus chooses anonymity…but I sure hope you print every word.

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