MuD & PHuD

The (previously mentioned) raping scumbag trucker who grabbed a woman on I-84 in CT has had bail set at $1 million.

This most recent article includes something for which I would like to publicly thank the unidentified woman who was victimized by this dirtbag. Thank you for sharing some of the details of your ordeal. I have no doubt that talking about it is an extremely difficult thing to do and so I hope you know that your candor is appreciated.

I also want you to know that nothing I write here, or anywhere, will ever be intended to disparage anything you may or may not have done before, during or after this assault. My sole purpose for commenting on this topic is to help people face reality, specifically that there are bad people in this world who absolutely cannot be reasoned with. Those bad people will take advantage of anyone who is unable to physically resist, and so it is incumbent upon all good people in the world to prepare to do just that.

It is the details of the account that I want everyone reading this to focus on. I know that it's a very uncomfortable thing to do, but living in denial is no substitute for being prepared mentally and physically to face such a situation. Here's what happened:

It was her first day at a new job as a buyer, a promotion at the company where she has worked for years. She had picked up Chinese food at a place in Tolland and was in plenty of time to pick up her two young daughters at day care.

When she saw the man waving, she stopped and rolled down her window. The hood of his white 18-wheeler was up, and it seemed he was having truck trouble.

"I was talking to a friend on my cellphone, and I said, `Call me back.'"

The truck driver told her he needed to use her cellphone, but first he asked her to help him with his truck by getting in and holding down the clutch.

"You're on your exit, you're almost home. You're comfortable. Life is good," she said, now shaking her head at the decision to help him. But everyone she knows has stopped to help a stranded motorist on that rural portion of the highway.

She got into the truck and noticed she could reach the clutch. Later, she would realize it was because her attacker was short, only 5-feet-6. A moment later, he attacked her.

"He pushed me in, and I was still holding onto the steering wheel," she said. "I could feel the pistol in my back."

She could hear cars driving by, locals on their way home from work. But no one else stopped. She hoped someone would recognize her car.

Meanwhile, her son called her husband and said, "Mommy hasn't picked up the girls from day care."

She was always meticulously on time, and her husband knew something was wrong. He got into his car and headed to the day care.

When the attacker forced her into the truck, the woman struggled with him, but he struck her on the side of the head and ear so hard she saw stars.

She pretended to be knocked unconscious. But opened one eye as she lay there.

Then she spied her cellphone, which had fallen in a crack of the center console during the initial struggle. She saw a pen and tried to grab it, thinking perhaps she'd stab him with it, but she fumbled it and it fell. Finally, she clutched the phone and dialed 911. She screamed for help.

He struck her in the face. He took the phone. And he blindfolded her and tied her hands and feet after that. She remembers the reek of a sickly cologne, and that the inside of his truck smelled like maple syrup.

Then, the truck began to move. It left the exit ramp before state troopers could get to the spot where the 911 call was made..

"OK, I'm dying," she thought to herself. "How is he going to kill me? Is it going to be torture?"

Her arms tied, she prayed.

When the truck stopped, her attacker took off her pants and sweater. She knew what was going to happen next.

"You try to think of someone else, anything," she said softly. "I told him I had AIDS and he punched me."

He put on a condom to avoid his DNA being detected, she said.

After the rape, he told her he was going to "dispose of you because I don't want to go back to prison."

"I bargained for my life. I told him I never saw him," she said. "I told him I won't tell anyone. You bargain."

He told her to go to sleep, and the truck began to move again.

"I just laid there. I prayed from that point," she said.

The truck stopped near the truck stop at Exit 71. She recognized where she was. She could hear trucks passing by.

Her attacker untied her feet, allowed her to put her pants and sweater back on. Then they walked up a hill to some trees. He tied her hands to the front of a tree, and warned her he'd kill her if she moved. But as soon as she heard the truck start, she began working on the rope.

It didn't take her long to get free. Shakily, she grabbed a cigarette from her pocket, lit it and began to walk down the hill for help. The first vehicles she saw were all tractor-trailers. She was terrified.

Finally, she saw a car coming down the road near the truck stop and she stood in front of the driver, waving crazily, the way her attacker had.

"I was just raped," she managed to blurt out. Then the tears came.

These words paint a terrible picture...but go back and read them again. Try to put yourself in her shoes. I know it's difficult not only because it really is an uncomfortable exercise but also that it's easy to think that something like this could never happen to you. You're not alone:

"It's like a movie. You think it doesn't happen to real people," she said. "But it does."

|