If this was a normal story about victimization, I would not be telling a story about this twenty years after the fact.
This story is far more complicated, and the nightmare was only beginning. It seemed obvious to everyone so far - me, the police, the witnesses. I was the victim of a violent crime, and with the perpetrator leaving behind her phone, the police would find the perpetrator.
That is how this story should have proceeded.
Please, dear reader, let me imagine you are with me as I tell my horror story and try to imagine the comfort that I need when I am so scared, like now. Just telling this story decades later is terrifying.
Within just more than an hour, with the sun getting low now, the police showed up again. The most disturbing nightmare of my life was about to begin. It wasn't enough to violently assault me. The perpetrator of this crime had done something far worse, and I was about to find out about that.
I noticed lights outside. The police were back.
Then in my next memory, there was a female police officer in the doorway of the building next to the stairway that led to the second floor.
It was a warm day, October 1, 2004, so I had not changed out of the bloody shorts and t-shirt. The door to my apartment was about 8 feet away from where this officer was standing.
I heard something repeated on the police radio that this police officer was wearing. The words I heard were that a woman had been sexually assaulted out here!
What! Oh, my God!
On any normal day in my life I would not have considered that they could possibly be talking about me… not in the context of hurting another person.
This is not happening! No, no, no.no.
The police were just here. They knew what had happened. They witnessed the extensive nature of my injuries… my cuts. How badly I was bleeding.
I was thinking, your fellow police officers were just here. They know what happened.
Time moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. I was waiting to speak to someone and clear all this up. Surely, they would know what had really happened.
Part of me wanted to talk and get this cleared up immediately.
Another part of me was utterly terrified. I had already seen how the justice system works when John F. had claimed that I called and threatened him. That was characterized in this book earlier as harassing phone calls. I left out of this book that he falsely claimed that I threatened him. It was not relevant. It never happened. There were no recordings and no phone records.
I may have left out of this narrative that when my public defender got the phone records, he had proof – according to him – that John had fabricated the story for one of the two days when I was alleged to have called John. He never could explain why he couldn’t get the phone records for one of the days, including the day prior and after, but he couldn’t get the records for the other day which was just within the same week.
So, part of me wanted to talk to this police officer in the hallway watching over me, but most of me was dissociating from the reality of this. When I said, “This is not happening” to myself, I was being literal.
The physical assault was experienced as less of a threat to my survival than the notion of what it would mean to be falsely accused of a crime of this nature - my freedom and my sense of self as a person in a social world were threatened.
I had known about derealization and depersonalization. When Lynn was suddenly at risk of dying, I had experienced both derealization and depersonalization. I had entered a dream-like state (derealization) and as I remembered those events, I was at times floating outside my body and looking down at Lynn (depersonalization). More specifically, in my memory, I am talking to Lynn in the doorway to our bedroom and I am looking down at Lynn as if from somewhere near the top of the door and the ceiling.
To be clear, I had NEVER fully taken on the symptoms of dissociative identity disorder, where I would have amnesia and another personality would take control of me. This is relevant to the events that occur next. I NEVER had a dissociative disorder of any type but briefly during traumatic events, I did dissociate.
At this point and for some time after, I was not feeling anything. I was detached. I was not angry at Ana for making this up, nor was I angry at the police for ignoring evidence from their own fellow police officers who had just been out here.
It seemed like time was frozen. I was desperately waiting for some opportunity to clear this up. However, I was simultaneously frozen and shut down like a zombie, and the zombie part of me was more in control.
I was repeating the words in my mind "this is not happening." "This is not happening."
I remember another police officer who entered the building.
I struggled to speak. My mouth was dry, and I could barely draw a breath. I wasn't sure my words were being said out loud, “No, I was attacked, I am the victim.” I don’t think that was vocalized.
The male police officer explained that he was going to have to put me in handcuffs.
I was terrified beyond belief. I wasn't shaking, but I was frozen. I felt dazed and confused. Aware and not aware of the shame of walking to the police car in front of the house while in handcuffs.
This public humiliation, even in this neighborhood, of being in handcuffs required that I detach from the reality of what was occurring.
I walked as if somehow on autopilot.
I noticed that I was shaking as I was led into the police car. He placed me in the front seat.
I was thinking about the last time I was in handcuffs, which at that time involved chains in addition to handcuffs, when I was taken from Durham to Wilmington – which had once been home, which had once been only associated with good things… falling in love… being the president of the local society of clinical social workers… being recognized at the mental health center as that person worthy of respect.
Could life get any worse? These events proved that there were no limits to how bad life could get.
It was hard to believe that I was on top of the world just four years ago. I had a sense of being part of a family with Lynn. Her cousin had two little girls, and I was like a big brother or uncle to them… All excited, taking the younger girl in my arms out into the ocean… because “of course, why would you not trust me” to take care of the little girl. That is what I still remember at this very moment while walking out to the police car and being led into the police car.
I was still in a fog as I had been for the past few years. I could recall the wife of the couple I moved in with when I first moved to Durham. She was offended that I was considering getting onto Social Security Disability Insurance when I had never been brutally tortured as a child as she and others with dissociative identity disorder had been.
On the ride with the policeman beside me, I noticed my phone ringing.
It was the friend I had been expecting that afternoon or early evening.
My hands were shaking as I tried to pick up the phone, which had bounced out of my pocket onto the floor of the police car. My heart was beating so fast, and I was fumbling with the phone. My voice was shaking as I said, "Hello."
I began to explain what happened to me. I wanted the police officer to hear me and the sincerity of my words.
I told my friend on the phone, "Earlier today, just a few hours ago, I heard a woman ask where Bruce is, and I thought that was you, but when I looked outside my door, I saw a white woman."
I continued talking to her, “I said, I am Bruce, even though I knew it was not you.” I then described how she walked right into my room, locking the door behind her, and then she started punching me in the face.”
I told her I wanted to see her soon and that this would get all straightened out, but I didn't know about tomorrow. Part of me held onto the hope and belief that this would get straightened out once I explained things. Another part of me remembered the many hours that turned into days and weeks while I waited for things to get cleared up in the past when that never happened.
My friend was shocked. I can imagine that she was desperately out of words to say to comfort me.
Choking on my tears, I said, "I'm scared. I don't know how this happened to me."
She knew some things about me, so she recognized the concern in my voice. I heard compassion in her voice as she said how sorry she was that this was happening to me. I would never see or hear from her again, but the moment of comfort she offered me was unforgettable.
I then hung up the phone.
She had heard the utter desperation in my voice, which the police officer should have heard and understood as well. Yet he was inhumanly unresponsive… seemingly devoid of humanity, like a robot programmed with pre-existing instructions.
The police officer was a large white man who seemed incapable of emotions. Humans are not perfect but this guy driving the car was especially lacking in human reactivity. The police officers that took me down to Wilmington a couple of years ago seemed to lack a capacity to understand that they didn’t need to treat me like an animal as I was offering no threat when they put me in the back of their metal cage.
The inhuman police officer, who I would soon learn was a detective, parked his car and led me into the building - the police station.
Immediately upon entering the doorway, I saw the woman who had attacked me, and I said in a matter-of-fact tone, "She's the one who attacked me."
I was still holding onto reality or rather I was holding onto the truth and verbalizing it.
He led me down into the building, and we turned left. Then, I was directed to sit down in a chair outside a room.
I was asked to wait and wait and wait.
I did try to call a lawyer. I had a subscription to pre-paid legal which I NEVER imagined needing for a criminal matter. I couldn’t process what the person who answered the phone was saying and ended up not asking to speak to a lawyer.
Anyway, this was still October 1, 2004.
I had never imagined a scenario even remotely like this in my worst nightmares.
I was naïve enough to still think that the police wanted to find out the truth.
I was directed to sit at a table with one police detective on the left and one on the right. The room was rather dark.
After that fact, one might ask me if I was aware of a camera or a two-way mirror. At this moment, I didn’t register the existence of a camera or if there was a two-way mirror.
“Let’s talk about what happened,” I heard.
Fine, I thought, finally. I not only described what happened with my apartment room door open but I re-enacted this. The door to the room was not locked, so I could re-enact precisely what happened.
One of them said, “That is not what happened.”
I wanted to argue because I was there, and they were not there.
Instead, as if we were not speaking the same language, I repeated the same exact statement as if they had not heard what I said. I even re-enacted everything precisely as it happened. I opened the door to the room with the police officers with my face looking in the direction of the woman on the stairs and said, “I’m Bruce.” … just as it had happened.
Again, I heard those words, “That is not what happened.”
I was so frustrated that I wanted to scream, “Why are you saying that? You were not there!”
At this point, I was not thinking that they wanted me to confess to a crime. It honestly felt like I was leaving out some details about the crime that had been committed against me.
One might think that I should be aware that I was believed to have sexually assaulted a woman, but my mind didn’t go there. I knew precisely what happened. I was there. It had just happened. They were not there, so how could they possibly know what had happened better than I?
This was beyond bizarre. I was still wearing the bloody clothing from earlier, from the assault. Did they think I kept blood-stained clothes around for moments when I wanted to claim to be a victim?
Their questioning continued. At no point did anything they said seem to get us to a point where I would be brought down here in handcuffs.
At some point, I had briefly seen her in Jimmy’s pickup truck, but when she showed up and attacked me, I didn’t recognize her, I told them. To which one of them said that he would not forget someone who looked like her. In my mind, I thought about Grace who was a friend of the family, or I thought Grace was a friend of Jimmy, and Grace was someone that a person would not forget – she was attractive. I couldn’t figure out why they thought Jimmy’s wife, Ana, was attractive.
It is many years after the fact as I write this but honestly, I don’t think my mind ever was consciously able to process what was happening. I had been in jail and the shame it caused was so memorable. This was experienced as traumatic, and my mind was doing what so many clients of mine had described. I was not consciously aware at that moment or consciously choosing to do this, but I was using derealization. This means that I was not overly responsive.
I did not feel anything either.
Police officers asking me questions in a dark room after hearing the words about a woman being sexually assaulted when I was at the house… Nothing in life had prepared me to offer an intelligent response to such a line of questioning.
The only possible reaction for me was derealization – to experience this like a dream, or a nightmare might be more accurate.
However much it might seem to not be happening and just a dream, I was simultaneously awake and so not everything slipped by without conscious awareness. I was aware of feeling a profound sense of shame that would go along with anyone accused of a heinous crime.
I was aware of how much I did not want to spend another second in jail. Symbolically, these were both the antithesis of all the reasons and events that had led me to experience the courage to be noticed, to gain name recognition in Wilmington.
All the countless times I wrote down answers to the question of what was the worst thing that could happen if I left my proverbial shell as a shy person..., I suddenly was being smacked in the face with the worst possible answer to what was the worst possible thing that could happen - the most shameful type of event that someone like me could not have dreamed up if I had tried.
At some point, I registered the words “and things got out of control?”
I responded with a bewildered look while thinking, “yes, when she suddenly entered the room, locked the door behind her, and started punching me in the face, things were out of control, but what are you talking about?” I didn’t say that, but I was thinking about it.
After I told them what had happened, it became increasingly clear that the truth did not matter.
This would have characterized the hours that passed with the two detectives trying to get me to tell them something they wanted to hear but since I had no idea what they thought happened, I could NOT satisfy them. My responses were characterized by me despondently shaking my head “no” or saying nothing more than “no.”
It was like some surreal game of “guess what we want you to say?”
My initial impression that the truth would emerge when I got a chance to talk, that the police were genuinely interested in finding the truth — that belief had evaporated at some point.
Then I heard one of them ask to speak to "Brucie."
I was speechless at first.
Now, I knew that Jimmy and his wife, Ana, had devised an intricate plan that was well thought out.
I suddenly remembered how I had spoken to Jimmy, the landlord and husband of my attacker, just a few weeks ago. I remembered how I had discussed dissociative identity disorder (DID) and used the example where if I had DID, maybe one of my personalities might be named "Brucie."
In my conversation with Jimmy, I used the name my grandpa called me as a child. In this interaction with police, logic and rational thinking were absent and it felt like a disturbing game. The detectives were not benevolent like my deceased grandparents, but playing out a sick and perverted game at my expense.
Therefore, I said, "I'm Brucie" in a soft voice that a personality that was a child might have. I was not trying to be play games. It was just a last-ditch effort to make these two detectives happy. At this point, I would have done whatever these authority figures were asking me to do.
When that didn't satisfy them, they showed me a statement that one of them on the left had created. They wanted me to sign this.
I looked at what was written, and I was shocked. He was asking me to sign a confession.
I asked both of them, and I was sincerely incredulous when I asked them, "That is what you think happened?"
"I'm not signing that," I answered. "That did NOT happen."
I could easily rebut everything and explain how it was impossible… I could direct them to their fellow officers, who would have known that what they thought happened could not possibly have happened. Now, we were getting somewhere.
Unfortunately, it was too late, or so it seemed. Why didn’t they just tell me what she had said and what they thought happened hours ago? The only thing that frustrated them now was the fact that I would not sign the statement.
The statement of confession did explain why they were so frustrated throughout the questioning. Since I had no idea what they wanted me to say or what they thought happened, I could not have said anything that came close to what they thought happened. This statement was a giant leap from anything that they asked me or anywhere the questioning had gone.
Any account of any interrogation by the police will point out the hours that police detectives are willing to go at the alleged perpetrator trying to get a confession. I write this fact as someone who has had 20 years to listen to stories about the ways police detectives conduct themselves. However, in almost every other interrogation, it seemed like the person being questioned would have a better understanding of what the police thought happened.
It was just after midnight and now Saturday, October 2, 2004, when I was handed the statement by one of the detectives that they wanted me to sign.
They could not have considered any other evidence. I don’t remember where they left the room, but this questioning had been going on for a long time, so I might not have noticed, nor would I have remembered every tiny detail.
I had assumed that their fellow police officers who initially responded to my 911 call would have spoken to them. However, if they had spoken to the police who first responded to the call, that I made after Ana assaulted me, the questioning would have had to go differently.
I learned what they thought happened, and then the discussion was over.
The next thing I remember was that they brought me in front of a magistrate. I felt a feeling of horror unlike anything I had ever experienced. Do I need to remind you, dear reader, of every experience from trying to overcome shyness to the shame that went with being in jail to the sense of how unending that had seemed, and now this was so much more serious?
I was taken in front of the magistrate, and I learned what the charges were. I was being charged with second-degree kidnapping and second-degree sexual offense. This was so terrifying that I could not process the events that were transpiring.
I was the innocent victim, and now they were charging the victim with a crime - no two different crimes!
I still didn't know the extent of Ana's lies.
They were arresting, charging, and jailing the victim of a brutal crime!
These two detectives surely had ignored every single iota of evidence collected by their fellow police officers who arrived in response to my 911 call because one could not square what the first responding police officers saw with what these two detectives thought happened.
This was serious! Second-degree kidnapping and second-degree sexual offense.
I was barely processing how strange this was. Doesn’t kidnapping involve seizing a person and bringing the person somewhere else?
Now, I was thinking about how long I would be held captive. I had seen fights the last time I was in jail for missing a court date in Wilmington after I had demanded that my lawyer appeal the ruling where John F. falsely claimed that I made harassing phone calls. This was Durham, with gangs, and I had already been robbed, as I mentioned earlier.
I wanted help, so I couldn’t think of anything other than declaring that I was suicidal. However, stating this didn’t help me at all.
They only heaped on more humiliation.
I was stripped down and put into a strange, padded outfit that I guess is for people who are suicidal, which barely covered my underwear. This seemed like a purposeful effort to shame and humiliate me. The only thing missing was a chance to taunt me.
This was like a crucifixion. The Romans had designed this method of punishment as a form of humilitation to add to the punishment of the condemned.
The next thing I remember was being taken to the hospital, where they drew blood. I wasn't worried about that. However, I was deeply and profoundly filled with shame because I was in the garb of a person coming from the jail in handcuffs.
However, I was thinking that the blood evidence would have confirmed and supported my account of being the victim. She had left without a scratch. The lack of blood evidence on her would mean that I was NEVER standing over her. It seemed like they would have to account for that.
I didn’t know all the evidence that they were considering or how long it would take. If they had investigated the crime scene, they would not have found any of her blood in there. So, having my blood should have only helped my case.