Fight Like a Girl

She was outside the battered duplex home when I arrived, her thin arms hugging her shoulders as she ran to my patrol car. Wide-eyed and crying, she pointed towards the road. “He drove off that way,” she said through tears. I had been sent for an attempted rape report at a rental house behind a well-known restaurant, with minimal information given to me by dispatch. Quickly exiting my car, I asked if she was hurt in any way, looking her over for injuries as I did so. She was a young woman of about sixteen, petite and stunningly beautiful. Other than her tears, I noticed no physical sign of anything amiss as I spoke to her. As gently as I could, I told her she was safe now and asked her what had happened. In a halting voice, she recounted her story, and a picture of quiet strength emerged that I would not be able to forget. Hers was a tale of courage and grit that has never left me.

She told me how she had returned home from school that afternoon, entering the house through the rear door by the kitchen. A few minutes later, as she sat at the dining room table doing homework, she heard a noise coming from the kitchen and realized she had not locked the door behind her after entering the house. Looking up from her books, she saw a man step through the kitchen doorway into the dining room. She quickly recognized him as one of the carpet installers who had been working in the other half of the duplex. He was large, almost six feet tall and thickly built, over 230 pounds, and easily twice her size. In his right hand, she saw a large pair of carpet shears, which he now brandished, saying, “don’t scream, and I won’t kill you.” She told me of her paralyzing fear as he roughly grabbed her from her chair, pushing her to the floor of the dining room as he held the shears to her throat. On her back now, she lay frozen in terror as he began fumbling with the front of his pants. Painfully aware of what was to transpire, she began to blaze with anger at what was happening to her, a plan forming in her suddenly clear mind.

Waiting for the man to shift his weight as he fumbled to remove both his pants and hers, she thrust her knee violently up into his exposed groin, causing him to cry out in pain. Angered, he raised the shears over his head as he prepared to stab her. Despite no formal training in self-defense and with a weight disadvantage of perhaps 100 pounds, she calmly reached up with one hand, grasping his wrist and stopping the downward thrust of the shears at its apex. Then, with a technique that could have easily been taught in a martial arts class, she reached over his wrist with her other hand and ripped the shears from his grasp. Fumbling for an instant with her grip on the shears, she then buried them up to the handle in his lower back, over his left kidney. Her assailant stiffened in pain, crying out as he rolled off of her. Up to this point in her tale, I remained mostly silent, but I could no longer hold my tongue. “You…you stabbed him?” I asked, staring at this tiny girl in awe. She proudly nodded, her tears subsiding now. For just a moment, I lost all of my professional demeanor, making a quick fist pump in the air before regaining control of myself and continuing to take her account of her ordeal.

We walked carefully through the crime scene then as she continued to recount her remarkable tale of survival. We followed the wounded man’s blood trail into the parking lot as she told me of her escape to the restaurant at the front of the lot. Seeing her distress, a cook who knew her had taken her inside and called 911. A few minutes before I arrived, the suspect had fled in his work van, and I quickly put out a multi-county bulletin with the vehicle description. Soon after, the girl’s mother arrived home. She was a disheveled-looking woman in her late thirties, with the dead eyes of a drug addict. Our investigation would later reveal that she had been partying with the carpet installers the previous day, smoking crack cocaine and drinking throughout the afternoon. Her daughter’s assailant, a paroled rapist, had spotted the daughter and formed his plot to return the next day.

We would find our suspect later that night, parked off the road in a neighboring county. Near-death from blood loss, the result of both of his stab wounds and several self-inflicted cuts to his wrists, he survived and was later convicted of attempted rape. He would serve seven years in prison before being released yet again to prey upon the women of our community. Within weeks of being paroled, similarly armed with a pair of carpet shears, he sexually assaulted a woman in broad daylight at a local health club. On this occasion, his crime was interrupted by an off-duty probation officer who happened to be in the area. He was eventually arrested and convicted, and he remains in prison as I write this.

I hesitated at first in telling this story, as I would never wish to imply that anyone who does not violently resist sexual assault or any other crime is somehow complicit or blameworthy in any way for what they have suffered. In any criminal act, the burden of guilt and responsibility lies solely on the perpetrator. I have investigated enough sexual assaults and other violent crimes to understand that there are times when one’s survival requires compliance, either for one’s own physical safety or for the protection of others. The tragic aftermath of any sexual assault is nothing to be taken lightly, and I remember every one of the cases I investigated. Nonetheless, I have always regarded this young woman and her story with a mixture of admiration and awe. Her quiet resolve in defending herself and her life stayed with me throughout my career.

In Africa and parts of Asia, there is an animal called a honey badger, a compact, ferocious mammal similar in appearance to a weasel. Small and lethal, these beautiful creatures are well known to outdoorsmen and biologists for their feisty temperament, often backing down animals such as lions and hyenas in their fight for survival. I came to think of this young woman, probably middle-aged now but forever sixteen in my mind, like a honey badger, fearless, beautiful, and indomitable in the face of terrible odds. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, especially if you are willing to pay attention. She was, and is, a hero to me. I remember her whenever I drive by that address, and I hope her fiery spirit has continued to carry her forward as she has faced life’s many adversities.