Suspense Magazine's Blog Site

Anxiety at the highest level!

1.  You may already be in love with your rapist.

When we think of rape, we tend to picture a stranger lurking in the bushes.  But most sexual assaults I saw as a prosecutor were committed by a man the victim knew intimately: an ex-boyfriend or stepfather; a doctor or minister; a teacher or coach; a professional colleague or the guy brought home from a bar.  SVU honed in on this theme in Season 13.

Personal Fouls featured a youth basketball coach who molested his players.  Theatre Tricks included a tech-savvy stalker who was the victim’s neighbor and friend.   The victim in Blood Brothers wouldn’t name her wealthy assailant because she hoped he would marry her.  Many of us worry about someone breaking into our homes – but what you most need to worry about is who you invite in.

2. Look out for your sons as much as your daughters.

Personal Fouls was a remarkable episode paralleling the Jerry Sandusky / Joe Paterno case.  (And it aired before the real scandal broke – I’m still wondering how the writers managed that one.) The episode highlighted sex crimes against boys.

While sexual assaults are the most under-reported crimes in America, assaults against male victims are the most under-reported of all.  It’s estimated that 1 in 4 American women and 1 in 6 American men will be the victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime.

But hardly any of the male survivors come forward, principally because of the perceived stigma attached to being a victim.  SVU’s Detective Amanda Rollins got it right when she said, “Male victims today are where female victims were 40 years ago.  It’s the dark ages.”  Kudos to SVU for getting people to talk about this subject, and helping male survivors realize they’re not alone.

3.  If you are sexually assaulted, tell the police the truth.  Immediately.

SVU opened its season with Scorched Earth, a riff on the real Dominique-Strauss Kahn case. The episode featured a fictional hotel maid who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a powerful European politician.  When inconsistencies surfaced in her story, the case tanked.  In real life, it’s nearly impossible to prosecute a he-said/she-said sex assault when the victim has made seriously conflicting statements.  If you’re worried about telling the police something, it’s better to get it out up front.

Delays in reporting rapes are also a common challenge, as highlighted in the episode True Believers, where a college student didn’t come forward immediately, because she was in shock and had her final exams the next day.  Victims often have understandable reasons for not making an immediate report of rape, and cases involving delayed reports often can be successfully prosecuted.  But the sooner a truthful report is made, the stronger the case.

4.  Lock your door.

Michael Moore might disagree, but the simple act of locking your door could save your life, and it’s surprisingly often overlooked.  Double Strand featured a serial rapist similar to the real-life East Coast Rapist – a man charged with sexually assaulting multiple women by walking into their homes when a door or window was left open.  True Believers featured a rapist who got into a home by slipping in while a woman was bringing in her groceries.  When stranger rapes do occur, these two scenarios are often how they start.

5.  There is no florist-client privilege.

Frequent TV mentions of the attorney-client and doctor-patient privileges have made viewers believe in other privileges that don’t actually exist.  A florist in Blood Brothers argued (unsuccessfully) that his delivery of roses was confidential.  I’ve had people argue that information they told their hotel concierge, postman, or yoga instructor was privileged.  Not true.  You may have a privilege for confidences you tell your doctor, spouse, or religious leader, but in the right circumstances, even those can be circumvented.  Keep your secrets between yourself and your lawyer.

6.  Never shake a baby.

In Missing Pieces, the detectives considered Shaken-Baby Syndrome to explain the mysterious death of an infant.  As a prosecutor, I saw too many cases of babies who were killed or brain-damaged from being shaken by a frustrated parent.  If you feel like you can’t take your baby’s crying one moment longer, set him down in a crib, go to another room, and give yourself some time to recoup.  Crying can’t kill a baby – but shaking can.

7.  The police can lie to you to extract a confession.

In Home Invasion and Strange Beauty, the SVU detectives extracted confessions by lying to the suspects.  The Supreme Court has approved of police deception to get a confession.  If you’re ever interrogated by the police, you have to tell the truth – but they don’t.

8.  Use caution when mixing work with romance.

One of the more interesting continuing plot lines this season involved Detective Olivia Benson’s romance with a dashing ADA played by Harry Connick, Jr.  Interoffice romances can always be dicey, and it was heartbreaking – and realistic – to see Olivia lose her first good relationship in a long time after she and Harry crossed some ethical lines in Justice Denied.  But the worst thing about it was that Harry was in the show all season, and he didn’t sing even once.

9.  Don’t have sex with people under your supervision.

Educated Guess featured a mental-hospital guard who had sex with a patient in his ward.  Many  jurisdictions have laws making it illegal for prison guards to have sex with prisoners, teachers to have sex with their students, and mental hospital employees to have sex with patients.  Even if the prisoner, student, or patient is saying “yes,” there’s too much of a power differential.  Don’t mix it up with your clientele.

10.  One more reason not to become a prostitute.

Prostitutes are eighteen times more likely to be killed than other women.  They often don’t call the police if someone robs, assaults, or rapes them, and many have no family to look for them if they go missing.  Predators know this, and serial killers have often preyed on prostitutes. Hunting Ground highlighted this dynamic with a harrowing mash-up of the real-life Long Island Serial Killer and the Craig’s List Killer.  My second novel, “Discretion,” is about the case of a high-end escort killed at the U.S. Capitol.

Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend, and that these tips help you have a fun and safe summer!

Best wishes,
Allison

www.allisonleotta.com

Postcards From the Streets

by Debra R. Borys

            Chris sits on the silver guardrail at the side of the parking lot exit. Bowed forward, his head droops so low he looks like he would tip face first with a push from one finger. The long black coat he wears sucks up all light from the nearby lamppost. He has shaved his head again.

*

The paragraph above is actually taken from a journal I kept while volunteering on the streets of Chicago with homeless youth and adults.  It is also one of the scenes I witnessed that influenced my suspense novel, Painted Black.  In the novel one of my main characters actually finds himself similarly posed, not only physically but in personality as well.  Melodrama was Chris’s way of communicating emotions too strong to express outright. When immersed in the depth of his darkness, he used flagrant outward displays of despair to disguise a very real fear and vulnerability.

In my years of  meeting street people in Chicago and Seattle, I was struck by how their lives could seem like fiction, their world some dystopian underworld, if you didn’t actually experience it physically like they do.  We prefer it that way.  We enjoy being readers and observers of the dark and scary, but prefer them in the form of a noir detective novel, perhaps, or a gritty action movie.  By doing that, we can remain, for the most part, untouched by the reality of the darkness.

The fiction I like best is that which not only shows me the darker side of life, but makes it so real I want to step inside and do something about it.  Authors do this by drawing from within, either by extrapolating on emotions that touched them somewhere in their lives, or by twisting real life experiences enough to make them universally understandable.

For me, being inspired by real life wasn’t difficult.  I have memories in my mind and my journal dropped like postcards from the streets, mementos of a journey I took.  Take the scene below, for instance, also taken from my journal.

*

            The blue couch on the Night Ministry bus is built above two storage units.  The fabric covering the solid perch is discolored and stained from many years of dripping jackets, spilled coffee, and cookie crumbs ground into the fibers by damp rear ends.  There is a ledge behind it where I put my water bottle.

John leans forward, obscuring my view of the water bottle. Crumbs spill from his mouth as he speaks. “You knows what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

I do not know what he is talking about. His black face shines from the oil on his skin except for the patches that are gray and flaky from wind burn. He forms words and uses language in a way that would be condemned as stereotypical if written into a script.

“Shore you do,” he tells me despite my denial. “You know, down there on Belmont. All them kids hangs out there. You know that.”*

John, combined with other people I met in similar situations, became Samuel Walker in my novel.  I do this not only because it makes my work more authentic, but in an attempt to tell the stories of these people I met, to make them more real.  Yes, that’s right, my goal is to make real people more real through fiction.

There are a lot of people out there who aren’t willing to take a good look at that homeless guy with a paper cup in front of the coffee shop.  They dismiss homeless people as less than human, as worthless, as deserving of their fate.  But that is not the reality.  By framing the reality as fiction, I hope to reach people who normally could care less about street people.  If I can hook the reader with a fast paced plot and twisted mystery, they might not even stop to think about how the characters they are rooting for are just like that kid on the corner they cussed out to get a job.  And maybe next time they see that kid, they’ll think, “Hey, he reminds me of Chris in that novel I read.  I wonder what his story is?”

Former Chicagoan DEBRA R. BORYS is a freelance writer who spent eight years volunteering with homeless on the streets of both Chicago and Seattle.  She is a freelance writer and the author of several published short stories.  She is currently working on a second novel in the Jo Sullivan series which reflects the reality of throw away youth striving to survive.