Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice

by Bill Lueders

Overview

Cry Rape dramatically exposes the criminal justice system’s capacity for error as it recounts one woman’s courageous battle in the face of adversity. In September 1997, a visually impaired woman named Patty was raped by an intruder in her home in Madison, Wisconsin. The rookie detective assigned to her case came to doubt Patty’s account and focused the investigation on her. Under pressure, he got her to recant, then had her charged with falsely reporting a crime. The charges were eventually dropped, but Patty continued to demand justice, filing complaints and a federal lawsuit against the police. All were rebuffed. But later, as the result of her perseverance, a startling discovery was made. Even then, Patty’s ordeal was far from over.
     Other books have dealt with how police and prosecutors bend and break the law in their zeal to prevail. This one focuses instead on how the gravest injustice can be committed with the best of intentions, and how one woman’s bravery and persistence finally triumphed.
 
Courage Award Winner, Wisconsin Coalition against Sexual Assault

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299219642
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	02/01/2007
Edition description:	1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Bill Lueders is news editor for Isthmus, a weekly newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Erwin Knoll and president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments     ix
Perfect Victim
The Rape     3
Emergency Response     12
Under Examination     19
Detective Woodmansee     28
One on One     36
Misty and Dominic     43
Another Suspect     50
The Confession     58
Fighting Back     64
The Need to be Believed
A Story to Tell     83
Checking It Out     89
Up against the System     96
The People's Lawyer     102
Discovery     110
"The Enemy"     116
In Search of the Truth     122
Honest Mistakes     129
A Question of Standing     135
Losing Battles     139
Against All Odds
Healthy Outrage     149
Filing Suit     157
Patty's Depositions     165
The Police Defendants     174
A Strong Case     180
"Shocked and Hurt"     189
Vindicated?     193
Wishing It Were Over     201
Final Judgment
For the Defense     213
"Expect the Worst"     222
Patty Takes the Stand     229
Burden of Proof     235
Star Witness     242
Closing Arguments     248
The Verdict     256
Afterword     265
Chronology     271
Recurring Characters     275

Editorial Reviews

Lueders, news editor of a weekly Madison, Wis., paper, opens this real-life drama in the wee hours of Sept. 4, 1997, when Patty, a 38-year-old legally blind single mother sharing an apartment with her pregnant daughter, was raped in her bedroom by an intruder who held a knife to her neck. The rape was the beginning of a seven-year nightmare in which police, saying they couldn't find evidence of the rape, bullied Patty into saying she had lied, and she was charged with obstruction of justice. Patty almost went bankrupt trying to salvage what little was left of her reputation and sanity. Lueders spells out how Patty suffered from incompetence and bias at every level of law enforcement. The DA eventually dropped the charges against her, and DNA evidence helped convict the rapist, but some law enforcement officials continue to insist they did nothing wrong. This account by Lueders (An Enemy of the State: The Life of Erwin Knoll), one of the first people who went to bat for Patty, is a shocking revelation of the abuse rape victims are sometimes subjected to by the very people who should be seeking justice for them. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Think cops are your friends? If you're a rape victim, think again. Lueders, news editor of a weekly paper in Madison, Wisc., follows Patty (no last name given) from the night she was attacked, through the final, riveting trial of her rapist. The legally blind single mother woke up one night in her Madison duplex to feel the point of a knife against her cheek and hear the man in her bed whisper, "Don't say anything, and no one will get hurt." When the assailant finally left, she called the police, expecting help. Instead, Patty herself came under suspicion. Detective Tom Woodmansee, on a one-man crusade to punish women who made up sexual-assault charges, quickly decided she was lying. Claiming he needed another hair sample, he summoned Patty to the police station. "I know you made this up," he said, refusing to let her leave until she confessed. Desperate to get away from Woodmansee, she recanted and then called a rape crisis center to report her forced confession. Patty was charged with obstruction, a misdemeanor that potentially carried a sentence of nine months in jail or a hefty fine. Eventually, DNA evidence helped vindicate her. Lueders was by no means a detached reporter of Patty's travails; he championed her in the press and helped her connect to legal advocates. Nonetheless, he makes an effort to be evenhanded here; though he depicts Woodmansee as an unambiguous villain, he also acknowledges that sometimes women do falsify rape charges. The text contains a few embarrassingly amateurish moments, as when Lueders opens a discussion of trial strategy with a quotation from NYPD Blue, and too many chapters end with such breathless cliffhangers as, "It was an exercise that would provehelpful to Patty's case but be devastating to Patty." The well-developed cast of characters and vivid dialogue compensate for these gaffes. An important, if imperfect, account that will captivate and outrage readers.

Kirkus Reviews

"Cry Rape provides a chilling example of how tunnel vision can lead even well-meaning police officers into forming conclusions that are flat-out wrong, how powerful interrogation techniques can lead innocent people to confess to crimes they did not commit, and how DNA can correct mistakes for the lucky few."—Barry Scheck, Innocence Project

"In a textbook example of how not to investigate rape, Patty was disbelieved, humiliated, and treated like a criminal while promising leads were ignored. Her fight for justice is an important and inspiring story, as well as a warning that old ways of thought about women persist in surprising places. As full of twists and turns as a mystery novel, and as tightly written, Cry Rape lays bare the underside of one of our nation's most liberal and attractive cities."—Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation

From the Publisher