Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice (11 page)

Patty hadn’t. One of the local TV stations had reported that a woman on Fairmont Avenue had admitted making a false report about having been raped the month before. Patty got a copy of that morning’s
Wis
-

consin State Journal,
one of two local dailies, and a story was there too: Police Say Woman Was Not Raped

madison—Police say a rape and home invasion reported by a Madison woman last month never happened.

A 38-year-old resident of the 700 block of Fairmount [
sic
] Avenue falsely told police a knife-wielding man came through an unlocked front door on Sept. 4 while she slept, officer Tom Snyder said Tuesday.

She claimed he raped her in her bedroom.

Detectives got suspicious when they couldn’t find physical evidence and when the woman’s statements were inconsistent. Snyder said they confronted her . . . and she admitted fabricating the story.

The Dane County District Attorney’s Office is reviewing the case for possible charges against the woman, police said. Calls to the office were not returned.

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The other daily newspaper,
The Capital Times,
had run an article the day before under the headline, “Woman Admits Lying about Rape.” It quoted Snyder saying such cases have repercussions for the entire community: “It affects the real, legitimate victims, the officers who spend hours investigating the case, the citizens who pay for their overtime and the neighborhood residents who were upset by the idea of a stranger assaulting this woman.” Both stories were prompted by a police department press release issued October 21.

Patty did not see the
Capital Times
article until much later. The one in the
State Journal
was enough. Being publicly branded a liar with such specificity as to identify her to anyone who knew she had reported being raped—all her friends and family members—trumped Patty’s concerns about taking actions that might call attention to herself. And so she adopted her posture of last resort: fighting back.

The first thing she did was contact Jill Poarch, the SANE nurse at Meriter, something she had wanted to do since October 2. Patty asked about the representations Woodmansee had attributed to Poarch. That there was no evidence of sexual assault. That Patty’s injuries were all consistent with self-infliction. That even the test for rubber residue had come back negative. Poarch told Patty she had never said any of these things and that, so far as she knew, there wasn’t such a thing as a test for rubber residue. Poarch also related that Woodmansee’s approach had caused her discomfort. “She said she felt interrogated,” Patty later recalled. “She told him there was nothing unusual about my case but he was arguing with everything she said.”

Later that day, Patty wrote a letter to the
State Journal.
At the time, the printer for Patty’s primitive computer was not working, so she wrote it out by hand in large letters in her distinctive script, in which every line tilts downward, and had Misty type it up. The letter, addressed to

“Editorials Department,” was angry and abrupt.

“I cannot believe you would release such a story,” it began, “without hearing from the victim. Have you asked the detectives in this case why I suddenly changed my mind and said I made it up? For one thing, the detective has met me only twice and claims to know my entire psychological make-up. I was interrogated for two hours in a closed room, without any possibility of leaving unless I said it did not happen.”

The letter, without mentioning the detectives’ names, listed some of what Patty described as the “many threats” made against her, including 70

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the comment, “If you think I was good working for you, you should see me working against you.” She said she was told the matter would “go away quietly” if she admitted to making it up.

“What would you do?” Patty wrote. “The only answer is to say what they want to hear and get out of there so I could start trying to prove what happened. I am trying to do this with no help from the police department. The detective made the statement [that] ‘women do this all the time.’ Now, we have to wonder if this is true or if most women drop their case even though there is physical evidence because of the brutal treatment from the police and the court system.”

The letter concluded, “The investigating detective on my case was not only unprofessional, but he may have put myself as well as other women in danger by not taking my complaint seriously. He is sending out the message that we are not to be believed.” The letter was dated

“10-22-97” and signed, “Sexual Assault and Police Brutality Victim.”

Patty also penned another letter, this one to Woodmansee’s boss. As with the first letter, she wrote it out by hand across several sheets of lined notebook paper. Misty was no longer around, but Patty’s brother Bobby stopped by, and he rewrote her missive in smaller though still urgent block letters that filled two pages. It read, Dear Supervisor:

Enclosed is a copy of the response [Patty’s letter to the
State
Journal
] to the irresponsible article that your detectives released to the press.

I’m sure that you’ve asked your detectives what led to my confession and
if
they were honest with you, they would have told you that I had no choice but to do so. It was completely obvious to me that they were not going to let me leave until they heard what they wanted to hear. When I told him 11⁄2 hours into interrogating me, after trying to answer questions I couldn’t possibly answer, that I was just saying these things to get out of there, he threw a fit, said it was break time and periodically left the room. When I offered to leave my purse and package in the room and step out for a cigarette, I wasn’t even allowed to do that. I was allowed to smoke in the “non-smoking”

interrogation room.

It has been proven that just about every thing these people said in that room was a lie.

I am very concerned about how your people treat victims of sexual assault. Before this happened to me I would have strongly
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recommended to any assaulted woman that she report it. Now I would strongly recommend that she settle down immediately afterwards, gather her thoughts, think about her next step, and prepare to be victimized again, especially if, heaven forbid, she has any history at all with depression or any minor mental illness that WILL BE used against her.

I’ll tell you right now you can use this as you wish, but Tom has caused me more harm to my mental health than the entire rest of my life has.

Patty signed the letter, and wrote down her phone number. The next morning she called the Madison Police Department and got the name of Woodmansee’s supervisor, Lieutenant Dennis George Riley. She missed his first name, addressing the envelope to “Lt. George Riley,”

adding “Please open immediately” in the upper right corner. She en-closed her letter to him, as well as a copy of her typed letter to the
State
Journal,
and had it delivered to police headquarters by cab. She sent the letter to the paper via regular mail. It was never published.

Riley received and reviewed Patty’s letters on the day they arrived, October 23. Madison Police Department rules require that all complaints about the conduct of police officers be forwarded to what was then called the Professional Standards Unit. Instead, Riley left the letters for his rookie charge, after affixing a Post-it note that said, “Det.

Woodmansee, see me on this.” That afternoon, they met to discuss the letters and what should be done with them. Riley would later say he intended that the letters be forwarded to the district attorney’s office.

The department was probably obligated to do so, since Patty’s accusations that her confession was coerced arguably fell into the category of exculpatory evidence. Woodmansee later said that if this was Riley’s intent, he misunderstood it; he put the letters in his case file and left it at that. This oversight was all the more glaring considering
when
Woodmansee referred the case to the DA’s office for prosecution. But this information would remain hidden for years, known only to a handful of people with a vested interest in keeping it secret.

After sending her letter, Patty waited anxiously for a call from Woodmansee’s supervisor. The number she had given was the one at her Fairmont Avenue address, where she still had her answering machine set up. She checked it every day. But he never called.

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Patty continued to see Moston, going over the details of the assault and her experience at the hands of Madison police. Worried that her rapist was on the loose, she wracked her brain for details that might aid her effort “to prove what happened.” Moston suggested hypnosis. Patty subsequently had two sessions with a Madison psychologist named Elizabeth Lindner, but never went under. Lindner’s office was in downtown Madison, and Patty was distracted by the sound of traffic from the street outside.

On November 17, Patty visited Charlene Ackerman, a hypnotist in Janesville, a city about thirty miles from Madison. This time it worked.

Patty felt as though she were in a dream state. She tearfully remembered the assault from the first moment to the last. Toward the end, as Patty was describing how she stood at the foot of her bed, alongside her assailant, Ackerman asked her to look at him. Patty tried but still couldn’t tell who it was. Ackerman recorded the session and gave Patty the tape.

She couldn’t bear to listen and gave it to Moston, who did, taking copious notes. Moston was struck by how various bits of recollection—the cologne, the white sweatpants, the color of the assailant’s skin—pointed to Dominic. In her mind, it seemed obvious that he was the one.

Patty felt pressured from all quarters to resolve her doubts about Dominic. From Brenda, from Bobby, from her other siblings, and now from Moston. Even her deteriorating relationship with Misty pushed her in this direction. Whereas throughout Woodmansee’s investigation she was always less than certain, and even in her letter to the
State Journal
referred to Dominic as “one of the suspects,” Patty now concluded that it must have been him.

Around this time Patty wrote some thoughts in a notebook, framed as though it were a letter to Dominic. It began: “You and I both know what happened that morning, I don’t have the slightest doubt anymore.” It said that although “the system is letting you off,” Patty was not. “If you harm 1 hair on my daughter’s head you will know power as well as what it’s like to live in hell. Beware.” She never sent this note to Dominic or anyone else. But, due to her daughter’s greatest act of be-trayal, it would be delivered nonetheless.

One night toward the end of the year, Patty got home past midnight with her friend Xavier. She thought she heard sounds coming from Misty’s bedroom and reacted angrily. “Who’s in there?” she demanded.

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“No one,” insisted Misty. But Misty’s door was uncharacteristically locked and she refused to open it. Patty began pounding on the door and yelling. Xavier, in the spirit of chivalry, offered to kick the door down. Misty finally opened it, and Patty searched the closets and under the bed. No one was there.

Patty was disintegrating—mentally, physically, financially. She was drinking more than ever. She was gaining weight. She was angry with the police, with Misty, with Mark. She was paying rent on two apartments, which was at least one more than she could afford. Misty’s ability to help out with household costs was about to end; her baby was due in early January. And Patty’s businesses were still struggling. One bright spot: the Business Enterprise Program where Patty worked had finally authorized payment for five sessions with Connie Kilmark, the financial counselor she had met the day before the rape.

Kilmark, a frequently quoted financial expert and regular guest on Wisconsin Public Radio, had taught classes on the psychology of money for the University of Wisconsin Extension and supervised graduate students from the UW School of Social Work. Her approach in helping people with financial problems went beyond teaching tradi-tional money-management skills to addressing underlying psychological forces. She was part financial counselor and part counselor. Kilmark and Patty got together, this time without the program reps, on January 7. At the start of the interview, Kilmark remarked that it had been quite a while since their initial meeting, wondering rhetorically when that had been.

“It was September 3,” said Patty. Kilmark was taken aback. How on earth did Patty remember that? At first Patty was quiet. But, after further prodding, she revealed what had happened that night and later, during the interrogation by police. Kilmark was shocked—the forced recantation struck her as the kind of thing that could never happen in Madison—but she got a strong sense that Patty was telling the truth.

Kilmark also felt it was important, not just for Patty but in the interest of justice, that the truth come out. Patty mentioned that she had written a letter to the detective’s supervisor, complaining about how she was treated, but had never heard back. That gave Kilmark an idea.