Life after sexual assault

Becky Altringer was only 6 years old when she was molested in Los Angeles County in 1969. A cousin, who was almost seven years older, sexually assaulted her continuously for the next four years, she said.

Altringer did not report the abuse. Lacking the vocabulary to identify what was happening, she suffered in silence and felt depressed for most of her childhood.

“My world began to crumble,” she said, describing the abuse she endured when her family lived in El Monte, a San Gabriel Valley city 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. “It may have been sooner, but I can’t recall any memories before that…. I wonder if I just blocked it out.”

Altringer, who is now 55 years old, recalls being forced to sit on her cousin’s lap while going on family drives. While a bunch of children, both siblings and cousins, were scrunched in the back seat of the car, her body was violated.

“He would always put his finger in my vagina,” she said. He touched her inappropriately under the dresses it was customary to wear.

Altringer was paralyzed with fear. “I wanted to just scream,” she said, “I was trying to say something but it wasn't coming out…. I would just sit there and not make a sound…. I [didn’t know] what to do.”

This was “Initial shock,” the first common stage after a sexual assault, according to the Women and Gender Advocacy Center at Colorado State University.

Sometimes, he would also babysit her. “‘Please don’t leave us here [with him],’” she recalls pleading with her mother and aunt. But they ignored her and went out anyway, leaving her and her two siblings alone with him. Afterward, he would take Altringer into a bedroom where, again, she was brutalized.

“He would put his hands in my vagina and say sexual things to me,” she said, “Then, he would take his fingers out and put them in his mouth, and say things like, ‘It tastes good.’”

These experiences traumatized Altringer, whose name was Rebecca Pruitt Dragicevich Houle when growing up.

“I just always felt dirty,”

she said, “At that time, I didn’t know what he was saying. I didn’t know what all that meant.”

Altringer was 7 or 8 years old when she tried to tell her aunt, her cousin’s mom, about what happened. “The only reason I told her was because we were at her house,” she said. “It had just happened in the bedroom.”

But all her aunt said to her was, ‘Boys will be boys,’ and to just let it go. “She didn’t believe me,” Altringer said desperately.

“I remember always thinking, ‘What does that mean?’ Does that mean that this is the way it’s supposed to be?’” she said, as she recalled her efforts trying to make sense of the phrase.

This was “Denial,” the second common stage after a sexual assault.

Altringer carried the burdens of her secret alone, because she felt like this was just the way life was supposed to be. “I just clammed up and I never said it again,” she said. Reporting was not an option.

The violence only escalated. “It was something you just never forget,” she said, “He actually raped me with a tree branch [at his brother’s wedding].” Altringer was only 10 years old when she said this happened in Azusa, a few miles from her home.

“There was that feeling of being alone and feeling like everything that could go wrong for me, did go wrong,” she said.

Today, almost five decades since the abuse allegedly first began, Altringer still tries to make sense of why it happened to her. “Why me? Why did he do this to me? Why did he choose me?”she pleads, “Did I make him think I liked him?”

For every survivor of any kind of trauma, trying to make sense of the circumstances is instinctive.

“That’s how we’re built,” said Kristen Zaleski, a licensed clinical social worker and a clinical associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California’s Department of Adult Mental Health and Wellness, who focuses on sexual assault victims and psychotherapy. “Our prefrontal cortex wants to understand what happened. ‘Why me? Why now? Why? Why? Why?’ All kinds of self-denigrating ideas.”

When Altringer was 10 years old, her cousin, James Edward McClure, whom she calls “Jim,” vanished from her life. “For me, it was a blessing,” she said, “because he wasn’t able to hurt me anymore.”

She did not anticipate how her traumatic childhood would keep haunting her throughout adulthood. Nor could she have predicted her horror the day her cousin resurfaced--decades later.

Hundreds of Americans experience the cruelty of sexual violence on a daily basis.

Every 98 seconds, a member of U.S. society is sexually assaulted, according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, a predominant anti-sexual violence organization in the country. Every eight minutes, the victim is a child.

Sexual violence is perpetrated against women and men. One in three women and nearly 1 in 6 men will be victims at some point in their lives, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. Published in 2017, this report uses survey data from 2010-2012 to produce national and state victimization estimates for intimate partner violence, sexual violence and stalking.

Nationally, nearly 23 million women and 1.7 million men have been the victims of rape or attempted rape.

“I have seen people as young as a few months and as old as in their 90s, so it’s hard for me to say that there is a typical profile… or presentation of a survivor [of sexual assault],” said Zaleski.

Yearly, there is an average of 321,500 victims of rape and sexual assault in the United States who are aged 12 years or older, according to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Surveys (NCVS) from 2010 to 2014.

While violent crime rates rose in California in 2016, they remain at a historic low. A total of 32 of the state’s 58 counties—including 10 of the 15 largest—saw increases in their violent crime rates in 2016, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonpartisan, non-profit research institution.

Los Angeles County, with the largest population, saw a 10 percent increase in violent crime.

The same year, 8 percent of reported violent crimes in the state were rapes, 1 percent were homicides, 31 percent were robberies and 60 percent were aggravated assaults.

In 2016, the total violent offense arrest rate decreased 1.5 percent from the previous year, totaling 108,977, according to the Crime in California report that was released in August 2017 by the California Department of Justice. The rape arrest rate increased 2.5 percent during the same period and included 2,558 arrests–the highest number within the six years of data represented in the report.

While sexual assault has been a subject of widespread national and international discussion in the wake of the #MeToo movement, this type of violence is not new. In fact, it was a common theme in classical antiquity.

The word rape has its roots in the Latin word rapere (supine stem raptum), “to snatch, to grab, to carry off.” The first known use of “rape” was in the 14th century, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Since then, the term has come to mean “to seize and take away by force.”

Historically, a victim had to manifest extreme resistance to indicate lack of consent. Now, physical resistance is not required on the part of the victim to demonstrate this.

A modern re-evaluation on the perception of sexual assault emerged in the 1970s. This was largely due to the feminist movement and its public characterization of rape as a crime of power and control in addition to sexual violence.

“Everyone is worthy of dignity and respect and autonomy over their own bodies and we all need to advocate for one another,” said Jessica Klein, a Los Angeles-based licensed clinical social worker, who practices psychotherapy, and an adjunct faculty member at USC.

During this time, rape statutes underwent many changes. The most prominent amendments included eliminating the marital rape exemption and requiring evidence to corroborate the rape victim’s testimony, creating rape shield laws to protect the victim and relaxing the necessity for the defendant’s use of force or resistance by the victim, said attorney Lisa M. Storm in Criminal Law by Storm which was first published in 2012.

Many jurisdictions also changed the name of rape to sexual battery, sexual assault or unlawful sexual conduct and combined sexual offenses like rape, sodomy and oral copulation into one statute.

Although some states still have statutes that provide the death penalty for rape, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that rape, even of a child, cannot be considered a capital offense without violating the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause, rendering these statutes unenforceable.

Sodomy law, which relates to anal intercourse, has also been updated to make sodomy a gender-neutral offense and preclude the criminalization of consensual sexual conduct between adults.

In modern times, rape is a crime with elements of criminal act, criminal intent, causation and harm, according to the University of Minnesota’s criminal law department. Rape also has what is referred to as an attendant circumstance element, which is defined as a lack of consent by the victim.

“One of the major conversations around sexual assault is consent. Everyone needs to understand what consent looks like and how it is an ongoing phenomenon,” said Emily Austin, a senior policy and advocacy associate for CALCASA, the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault. “You can’t just consent to a sexual act in one moment. You can always withdraw consent.”

In 2012, the Department of Justice announced a change to the definition of rape for the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s (UCR) Summary Reporting System. The new definition, which went into effect at the start of 2013, replaced the outdated and narrow description that remained unchanged since 1927.

While rape was initially described to only include forcible male penile penetration of a female vagina, it was expanded to be more inclusive. The new definition is: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

The revised interpretation includes any gender of victim and perpetrator, according to the department. It also recognizes that rape with an object can be as traumatic as penile or vaginal rape.

For true consent to sexual intercourse to occur, a victim cannot be under the age of consent stated in individual state statutes, cannot be mentally impaired or physically incapacitated and the consent cannot be based on force or threat.

According to RAINN, sexual assault crime statutes in California state that all forms of nonconsensual sexual assault may be considered rape. Any sexual penetration, however slight, is sufficient to constitute rape.

Consent is about communication—and in California it requires “freely given consent” or “affirmative consent”.

“I think that this [sexual violence] is learned behavior and it can be unlearned,” said Austin, “We have to stop and counteract what we call the bystander effect, which is when you’re in a group of people, someone’s being hurt and everyone assumes someone else is going to do something…. We as a society can stand up as upstanders, interrupt microaggressions and change our cultural norms to say that this is not a way that we interact with each other.”

“And when someone is a bad actor, we have the rehabilitation supports in place so that we can help them [perpetrators] change their behavior,” she said, “to support healthy, thriving relationships, families and community.”

During the last stretch of the 2017 legislative session, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 41-DNA Evidence, Assembly Bill 1312-Sexual Assault Victims Rights and Senate Bill 384-Sex Offenders: Registration, into law.

While CALCASA was neutral toward the first two bills, the organization advocated for SB 384. This law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, will change the current lifetime sex offender registry system into a three-tier system, for periods of at least 10 years, at least 20 years and life, respectively. Individuals will be placed in tier one, two or three based on a risk assessment that measures a person’s risk of sexual or violent re-offense.

As of Jan. 1, 2022, the bill would also revise the criteria for exclusion from the website. Exclusion criteria are characteristics that disqualify prospective subjects from inclusion in a study.

Sexual assault is among the most difficult crimes to investigate and prosecute.

“Getting someone to report the crime is the first challenge,” said Detective Sgt. Frank Diana of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department West Hollywood station detective bureau.

Despite reports of 323,450 rapes and sexual assaults occurring in 2016, these crimes are grossly underreported nationwide. Around 40 percent of violent victimizations were reported to police, according to the NCVS report published in December 2017. Of these crimes, only 23 percent of rape and sexual assaults were accounted for.

“Obviously, we try to be sensitive towards everyone’s needs, but sometimes it [reporting] makes it difficult. A lot of times we deal with issues of rehashing this horrible experience that someone has gone through. And people just don’t want to relive it over and over and over,” Diana said, “But to do a thorough investigation and proceed with criminal proceedings, we really have to get the story and try to make sure that it's thorough, complete and accurate.”

Both he and his partner, Detective Sgt. Jeff Bishop, emphasize the importance of reporting.

“Sexual predators will continue to do it over and over and over, and sometimes, they do progress and get more violent as well,” said Diana, “So, if we can stop a predator at one or two victims compared to 10 or 20, I mean, that’s crucial. And by a person failing to report it and follow through, makes it difficult for us to get that person [sex offender] off of the streets.”

However, while reporting can be healing and productive, it can also be traumatizing.

“For some people, I think there is this incorrect perception that reporting will be some kind of magical experience,” said psychotherapist Klein, a social worker and psychotherapist who has supported hundreds of sexual assault survivors. “It can be healing, but it can also be terribly difficult because of the treatment by law enforcement and the victim blaming.”

“If you report, you might luck out and get a very supportive officer,” she said, “Or, you might get an officer with just a truckload of unchecked biases who believes that because you are a woman of color, drinking or out in a particular part of town that you really were ‘asking for trouble.’”

Two of three sexual assaults go unreported to law enforcement, according to RAINN.

“Reporting has layers of consequences,” said Aliza Amar, a survivor of rape who was repeatedly abused between the ages of 6 and 27 by different people.

In 1981, she was sexually assaulted during her first modeling job interview in Tel Aviv, Israel, that she found through a newspaper advertisement. The assault was recorded on video and distributed internationally as pornography.

Amar, who is the founder of the Breaking the Silence Together organization, strives to break the silence about rape, sexual assault and human trafficking.

She emphasized that it took 156 victims who were abused by Larry Nassar over 30 years, to come forward, for their stories to be believed. A once world-renowned sports physician, he was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison in 2018 for perpetrating sexual abuse for decades. “Abuse is a cycle,” she said.

A victim of sexual violence is not required to report to law enforcement to receive a sexual assault forensic exam, commonly referred to as a “rape kit,” according to RAINN. A “Jane Doe rape kit,” can be done where survivors are given a code to identify themselves if they choose to report later.

Survivors also have the right to request a person of the same or opposite gender to be present during interviews with officials. Assembly Bill 1312, which was approved in 2017, requires that law enforcement authorities or the district attorney notify the victim that he or she has the right to make this request. This law also requires that contraception be provided at no cost to the victim.

Victim advocates, some of whom staff crisis hotlines, run support groups or provide in-person counseling, are professionals trained to support victims of crime, according to the National Center for Victims of Crime. Advocates offer victims information about the different options available to them and support victims' decision-making. They also maintain confidentiality in their communications with victims. Although, all advocates must report certain types of information to the authorities and confidentiality rules vary.

Klein insists on supporting survivors with whatever decision they make.

“I think that as providers, family members, significant others [and] friends, [we have] to really stay one step behind the survivor and really be listening to what they want and what they feel most comfortable with,” she said, “[We have to] remind survivors that they have a choice in what their priority is.”

But it is also important to recognize that in comparison to survivors, law enforcement has a different approach of responding to sexual assault.

“The survivors view is that it happened to them and it is a trauma that they have to somehow figure out how to live with,” said Austin, “For law enforcement it is a crime. And so, they are looking at it from a public safety standpoint of, ‘What rules were broken and how do we get the person that did this?’ to enforce the laws of the land.”

Prosecuting individuals guilty of sexual assault is the goal, the sergeants said.

“If we can prevent even just one [case of sexual assault] we are successful, but if we can save many [people from being victims], that's obviously better,” said Diana. “I think that's a driving force. That we can help somebody and we can get a conviction and put someone in prison for the rest of their lives if they are out committing these heinous crimes.”

“The victim is the one that ultimately can hopefully put this behind them and know that justice was served ,” said Bishop.

This is where the collaboration between law enforcement, the district attorney’s office and forensic science all come together. Then, a case is presented to 12 people on the jury who must decide whether someone is guilty based on evidence introduced in court and the directions of the judge.

The vast majority of perpetrators are not held accountable, according to RAINN. Out of every 1,000 rapes, 994 perpetrators walk free, with only six rapists being incarcerated.

In 2017, law enforcement agencies sent 4,751 reports of sex crimes to the Los Angeles County’s District Attorney’s Office to consider for prosecution. Seventy-five percent, or 3,850 of those cases, were either declined or referred to another agency. By comparison, in 2013, 5,722 cases were submitted for review; 63.5 percent were either declined or referred.

Successful prosecutions typically involve a combination of factors. This includes, “The victim reporting the crime quickly to authorities, cooperative witnesses and the presence of physical evidence and DNA evidence,” the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in an emailed statement.

“Prosecutors are empathetic and reassure victims that we believe their accounts,” the office wrote. “[But] like all criminal cases, to file charges prosecutors must have sufficient credible evidence to prove the defendant is guilty of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”

A deputy’s primary responsibility is to determine whether there is sufficient credible evidence to warrant the filing of charges and to convict the accused of the charges, according to the D.A.’s Legal Policies Manual.

The manual also states that, “The race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, occupation, economic class or political association or position of the victim, witness or the accused,” constitute improper bases for charging. There was no mention of how a victim knowing their attacker affects the decision to prosecute.

“In domestic crimes of sexual violence, such as marital rape, sexual harassment or incest, the prosecutor must prove only that the charged act(s) of sexual violence occurred, and the direct perpetrator’s intent to commit it,” according to a 2011 paper series from the University of California Berkeley’s Human Rights Center.

If survivors do not appear to have a strong enough case to put before a jury, “Prosecutors explain that based on a careful analysis of the evidence and the law [that] the District Attorney’s Office would be unable to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” said the D.A.’s statement.

Additionally, “Prosecutors also let victims know that their accounts [of sexual assault] may assist in the reopening of a case later if additional criminal allegations arise against their assailants or if new evidence surfaces.”

“The problem is sexual assault is historically extremely difficult to get a conviction on because a lot of times all you have are what we call the ‘he said, she said,’ phenomenon where it’s just two people in a room and one person says it was consensual and one person says it wasn’t,” said Austin, “And it’s very hard for us to get convictions with not many eyewitnesses.”

When a crime is committed, authorities may also not be able to locate and arrest a suspect if the legal time limit for pressing charges has passed. This period, called the statute of limitations, varies by state, crime, age of the victim and other factors.

Statutes of limitation were put in place in part to discourage convictions based on “unreliable witness testimony,” including memories of events that occurred years in the past.

Additionally, the statute that applies is the one that was in place at the time of the crime itself. So, while the statute of limitations may have been lengthened in the time since, if the limitation ran out, it cannot be reactivated.

In 2016, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that ended a statute of limitations on prosecuting rape cases.

Senate Bill 813 amended the penal code to allow “the prosecution of rape, sodomy, lewd or lascivious acts, continuous sexual abuse of a child, oral copulation, and sexual penetration.” This applies regardless of how long ago the crime occured. Although, the law affects only sex crimes committed after Jan. 1, 2017, and offenses for which the statute of limitations did not expire by the same date. It also abolished a 10-year limit for rape and child molestation charges.

In recent years, evidence that does not erode over time is often available, such as DNA, audio or video recordings, emails, texts and other digital communication. These forms of evidence play an important role in investigating and prosecuting crimes of sexual violence.

When law enforcement investigates such cases, DNA evidence can make or break the outcome, according to RAINN.

Analyzing the DNA samples collected during the forensic exam increases the likelihood of identifying perpetrators, holding them accountable by helping build a stronger case in court and potentially preventing future sexual assaults from happening by making it easier to connect the perpetrator to a crime in the future.

DNA evidence can be collected from blood, saliva, sweat, urine, skin tissue, and semen. This is why it’s crucial to try to avoid bathing, cleaning fingernails or urinating until after a sexual assault forensic exam has been performed.

Once evidence is collected, forensic scientists compare the profile of the perpetrator against a large database run by the FBI called CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. This way, law enforcement can identify suspects that the victim does not know.

While DNA analysis has had unprecedented impact on the criminal justice system,

in cases in which probative DNA evidence is not readily available or where it may not necessarily be informative where the alleged suspect is not a stranger, an accumulation of non-DNA forensic evidence can be what ultimately leads to a successful conviction, according to a 2017 journal issue from the National Institute of Justice. During such circumstances, consent is pivotal to determining whether an act is legally considered a crime.

While laws about consent vary by state, the California Penal Code says: “Consent means positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will. The person must act freely and voluntarily and have knowledge of the nature of the act or transaction involved. A current or previous dating or marital relationship is not enough to constitute consent.”

“If you’re enjoying someone’s company and if you get to that point where you are both wanting to take it further and have sex, I think that it is okay for a woman or man to change their mind. At that point, that should be where that encounter stops,” said Briana, a 31-year-old social worker and survivor of multiple sexual assaults, who grew up in Orange County.

“I think that initial consent is not a blanket agreement for anything that could happen in the future,” she said. “A person has a right to change their mind and if they begin to feel uncomfortable they should be able to say 'no' and have that ‘no’ be respected.”

Briana was 21 years old when she was attacked by two strangers and raped at the Luxor Hotel around 10 years ago while visiting Las Vegas. She did not report the incident.

“I certainly thought about it [reporting] the first time,” she said, “But, it didn’t seem worth it to go through the process of retraumatizing myself to go through something that seemed so fruitless…. I think that the survivor is really expected to endure a lot for something [reporting] that very rarely, if ever, produces any type of justice.”

Almost three years ago, around 2015, she was raped again by someone she was dating.

“I think he was intoxicated…. We had just gotten back to my car and he couldn’t take the fact that I didn’t want to have sex. He just pushed me up against my car and ripped my pants off,” she said, “I was crying and yelling at him to stop. [But] he didn’t care.”

Briana ended the relationship but she continued to see the assailant frequently because she worked in a community where he always was at. He never admitted what happened but she thinks it would make a big difference if he had. “That would be huge to me. If a person could have that much honesty and self-awareness [to admit what they did].”

Then, once again, her body was violated in the middle of what was previously a consensual sexual experience with an intimate partner.

“Without any type of conversation or consent, he ripped out my IUD. He just pulled it out with his finger. Considering that they have to dilate your cervix to put it in and then he just ripped it out, it was pretty painful,” she said, “He said that he didn’t like the way that it felt and that he wanted to put a baby in me. So he took it upon himself to remove that.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily call it rape, but it was certainly abusive,” Briana said, “Just because I consented to having sex does not mean that I consented to having him rip something out of my body. Me using any type of birth control is my prerogative and my choice, whether or not I want to have children. And someone trying to forcibly take that away from me I think is really wrong.”

While every experience of sexual assault is unique, there seems to be a common thread that stands out among each of the survivors. Every person wished they knew it was not their fault.

“I blame that on human nature and how we are socially sort of created and socialized to believe that we’re in control of our environment at all times,” said social worker Zaleski. “Part of my work as a clinician is to really help a survivor look at their blame and sort of reconstruct that into a more reality-based piece, which is, ‘You didn’t ask for this, you didn’t want this and it shouldn’t have happened.’”

Several misconceptions often shift responsibility and blame from the assailant to the victim, according to the University of Michigan’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center.

Survivors and social workers condemned these rationalizations.

“[In society] there’s a sense of, ‘If I dress right and I do all the right things that nothing bad will happen to me,’” said Zaleski. “But it takes out from the equation that there are bad people in the world and there are sexual predators who scan every environment they’re in for vulnerability.”

“I think [that people should] stop asking stupid questions like, ‘What were you wearing? Did you have anything to drink? What time was it? Where were you? Why didn’t you get away?’” said Briana, a survivor who asked that her last name remain private, “These are not trauma-informed questions. These are ignorant questions and they just perpetuate rape culture, they perpetuate blaming the victim and they perpetuate victims silence.”

In frustration of her experiences with such justifications, Caylynn Simonson, a 26-year-old survivor who was raped while attending UCLA in 2013, listed her responses.

“I was wearing sweatpants. I had my backpack with me. It was 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night and I knew the person [who sexually assaulted me],” she said. “I was completely sober so I was able to remember everything that happened to me.”

Simonson reported the assault immediately.

“I don’t want [the rape] to affect me for the rest of my life,” she said. “Once I told someone, I didn’t let it victimize me and I wasn’t ashamed about telling someone, that’s when I was starting to heal…. I’m a big believer in you ‘Fake it till you make it.’”

“Because I had reported it right away, I was taking back my power. I wasn’t holding this in and blaming myself,” she said, “[After reporting] I felt pretty much empowered right away to keep talking about it.”

“There’s a diversity of responses,” said Zaleski when explaining how survivors respond during and after experiencing sexual violence. “There’s no one way that someone deals with the trauma and there’s no one right way to deal with the trauma.”

“We as a society know it [trauma response] as fight or flight, but that’s not grounded in what we know in science. It’s not just a two-pronged response. It’s commonly a three-pronged response: fight, flight or freeze,” she said, “But, you can’t prepare yourself for something you don’t know is going to happen.”

“You think, ‘If this happens to me and someone goes to attack me, I’m going to scream, I’m going to fight, I’m going to do all these kinds of things,’” said Simonson, “But when you’re actually in the moment, your fight or flight reflex doesn’t necessarily do that.”

Pamela Guest, a 67-year-old survivor who was raped by a director and Oscar-winning composer during an acting audition almost five decades ago, was shocked by what happened to her.

“I froze [when sexually assaulted].... I was not able to fight [the perpetrator] and was completely vulnerable,” she said. “I understand that I was probably conditioned to [react that way] because my dad used to beat me when I was really little.”

“What I did do, which I have always done when uncomfortable, is I cried and I got really hysterical,” she said, “He then pulled out of me, got on my back [and continued to ejaculate after turning her away from him] and then [afterward] proceeded to act like nothing had happened. Like, ‘Wow, that was great and you were wonderful and you're such a talented actress and you know, why don’t you get dressed and I'll be right back.’”

“On a neurobiological level, the first thing that happens after someone is traumatized, is their body goes into a nervous system arousal called a sympathetic arousal of our nervous system,” Zaleski said, “And that creates a lot of common post-assault symptoms that people know as sleeping problems, eating problems, agitation, anxiety, hyperarousal and a general fear of being victimized again.”

“Speak up and get it out of you,” said Guest, who spent decades silenced by the assault, “And what you want your life to be will finally be.”

Altringer grew up withdrawn and depressed. She was constantly afraid of falling asleep. “[The] nightmares frightened me so much that I would wake up crying uncontrollably and [was] terrified.”

This was “Reactivation,” the third common stage after a sexual assault.

At 13 years old, she began to drink alcohol that was readily available at home, to drown her terrors away.

“I never dated and I was afraid of boys and men,” Altringer said. At 18 years old, she met a member of the Marine Corps whom she married in 1981. They had a child in 1985.

Once she and her husband became intimate, those same nightmares of being molested and feeling afraid began again. “I wanted to run, to run as far away as I could [from him],” she said.

When Altringer was 25 years old, she saw a familiar face walking nearby. While she was at a park in Covina with her relatives, watching her son play with the other children, she was stunned. “At that moment, I realized it was [her cousin who abused her] and I immediately began to feel a panic deep within,” she said, “My entire body began to shake, my mouth became dry and the fear that I felt was that same familiar fear from when I was a small child.” It had been around 15 years since she last saw him.

When Altringer’s son was born, she made a promise to herself to never allow anyone to hurt him and to be the best mother that she could be. After seeing her abuser again, she broke that promise.

She began to consume alcohol every night until she would lose consciousness. She would also cut herself.

Her cousin had been released from custody. Her marriage was falling apart. She fell in love with a woman who played mind games with her. She was fed up with her mother, who continued to protect her cousin who molested and raped her. All of this overwhelmed Altringer.

When it all became too much, she couldn’t take it anymore.

“I went into the garage and I swallowed pain pills that I had and drank them down with vodka,” she said, “My thoughts were slowing down and the fear that I had felt for so long was now dwindling away.”

The next thing she remembers was her husband taking her to the hospital. “They pumped my stomach and then placed me in [Santa Ana’s Psychiatric Hospital],” she said. Here, Altringer was restrained in a straitjacket to prevent her from harming herself again. This was the first of a few times in her life when she was restrained.

“I was very angry,” she said, when talking about the treatment process. “I don’t remember ever being so consumed with so much anger.” She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and is still being treated for it.

This was “Anger,” the fourth common stage after a sexual assault.

A week into her treatment, she decided to get a divorce. She also began to consider that she might be gay.

After Altringer was discharged, she stayed at her mother’s house. Her nightmares became a reality again on Sept. 19, 1989.

She had been asleep for a few hours when her cousin woke her up, reeking of alcohol and only wearing shorts. Her mother was in Indiana for a funeral, so no one else was in the house. He knew where she was staying.

“I became consumed with fear the moment I heard him calling my name,” she said. “I got up to see beer cans and a burning cigarette in the ashtray. I thought to myself, ‘How long has he been here? How could I have not heard him and most importantly, how did he get in?’”

The next five-and-a-half hours were some of the worst of her life. This attack was verified in court records.

“I was brutally raped, strangled, choked, beat and almost killed by Jim,” she said, “I did everything in my power to fight back, but the more I fought, the harder he hit.”

So, instead, Altringer laid there and prayed. She dissociated herself from the perpetrator and his mood changed. “He actually let me walk out the door and I went back to the same psychiatric hospital that saved me the first time,” she said. They rushed her to emergency care and her cousin was arrested by Azusa Police Department officers a short time later.

Later, she realized that although her cousin did not have a key, he came through the sliding glass door.

At the hospital, a forensic exam was performed by a nurse and a female detective came in to gather a report. “It was humiliating and embarrassing to sit there and have the nurse swab me, comb through my hair and give me a shot to prevent any pregnancy,” Altringer said, “Again, I felt dirty. It wasn’t my fault, but I still felt dirty.”

“The DNA was his DNA,” she said.

McClure was charged with four felonies. His offenses included: forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, anal or genital penetration of a victim with a foreign object and attempted forcible oral copulation.

While court records show that he initially entered a plea of not guilty, he later pleaded “Nolo contendere” to all counts. This is a legal term that comes from the Latin phrase for “I do not wish to contend” and it is also referred to as a plea of no contest. This means he admitted the facts of the case but not his guilt.

“It was at the preliminary trial when I realized I was really alone,” she said, “My mother was not there to support me. My father was not there. My stepfather was not there, and [her former husband] was not there.”

Her cousin, who has been diagnosed as a “sexually violent predator,” sat with shackles on his legs and handcuffs on his wrists. “I couldn’t and wouldn’t look at him,” Altringer said while recalling feeling him stare at her. “By the time the preliminary trial was over, I felt the loneliest that I had felt in my whole life.”

On Dec. 27, 1989, McClure was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in state prison.

A sexually violent predator is “a person who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense against one or more victims and who has a diagnosed mental disorder that makes the person a danger to the health and safety of others in that it is likely that he or she will engage in sexually violent criminal behavior,” according to the California Legislature.

Altringer’s cousin was imprisoned at California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, a male-only state prison. He was released from prison in 1995 and shared his account of events in a phone interview from his home in Fontana.

“I assaulted her [Altringer]. I committed the crime and I have been punished for it,” said McClure when confronted about the assault that happened almost 30 years ago in 1989.

“I was on drugs and alcohol. I came home and I raped her,” he said, “I thought she was coming on to me. She wasn’t. And when she said, ‘No,’ I didn’t care at that point. That’s all there is to it and I wish I could take it back but I can’t.”

“There’s nothing I can do to try to apologize to her because it’s something I know I did wrong,” he declared, “But there’s nothing else I can do, I’ve already done time for it.”

He denied molesting and raping Altringer during her childhood. “Nothing happened between me and her when we were younger,” he said.

“I never hurt her [at that time]. I have known her all my life and I’ve been away from her since this crime and I think it’s best to keep it that away,” he said, “But people want to keep on trying to punish me behind it…. I did something but nobody’s going to let it die.”

“I committed the crime. I hurt somebody,” he reiterates, “I committed the act and there is no way of taking it back and apologizing to her. If I could, I would. If she would allow me to, I would.”

He attributed his behavior to alcohol and drugs. “I was insecure. I had a lot of issues myself. Those were problems that I had,” he said. “I don’t have alcohol and drugs in my life now and my life is going good, so I don’t have those kinds of issues anymore.”

McClure is a registered sex offender. His charges can be viewed online at California’s Megan’s Law website. The California Sex and Arson Registry is the source of sex offender information. This database contains registration information provided by the offender to local law enforcement agencies.

All states now have some form of Megan’s Law. In California, the law was enacted in 1996 and mandates that the California Department of Justice notify the public about registered sex offenders, in keeping with Penal Code section 290.46. It also authorizes local law enforcement agencies to notify the public about sex offender registrants found to be posing a risk to public safety.

This information is provided so that members of local communities can protect themselves and their children, according to California’s Department of Justice.

Megan’s Law is named after 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and killed in New Jersey in 1994 by a known child molester who had moved in across the street from the family without their knowledge.

While information about victims is not made publicly available, court records show that the sex crimes registered in California’s Megan's Law website were committed against Altringer.

In California, unless otherwise noted, the penalty for sexual assault is punishable by imprisonment for three, six or eight years, according to RAINN. In circumstances where the victim is a minor, the charges are more severe.

McClure said it took sobering up for him to come to terms with his wrongdoings, to accept reality and to take responsibility.

“I have gone on with my life and I wish she would go on too,” he said. “I want her to live her life…. She doesn’t need to be a victim. I know I made her a victim, but she doesn’t have to be a victim for the rest of her life…. I don’t want [her] to be a victim at all. But once you are, you need to find a way of changing that so you don’t feel like are a victim or like somebody is bothering you. And believe me, I am not trying to [bother her].”

According to court records, Altringer filed for a temporary restraining order in 1998 to protect herself, her current partner and each of their children. This was granted and then expired three years later in 2001.

A personal conduct order required that her cousin: “shall not contact, molest, harass, attack, strike, threaten, sexually assault, batter, telephone, send any messages to, follow, stalk, destroy the personal property of, disturb the peace of, keep under surveillance or block movements in public places or thoroughfares.”

The stay-away order mandated that he remain at least 100 yards away from her, her partner, her home and place of work and the children’s school or place of child care.

This action was filed in Los Angeles County because the defendant, her cousin, “has caused physical or emotional injury to Altringer, the plaintiff. He both threatened and committed acts of violence against her.

In a written testimony from 1998, she documented the assault.

While Altringer still grapples with all the trauma she has endured, she began to learn about a new way of life when she met her partner of 28 years, Cheryl Howell.

“[Her] family took me in, loved me and became the family that I had always wanted,” she said. “I have come to learn that what family really is about is unconditional love, understanding, support and about always being there when the ones you love need you the most.”

This transition did not happen with ease.

“When she came into my family she would be uncomfortable,” said Howell, “She would say, ‘Your family is like a TV family. It’s not real.’ And it’s like, no, this is what a typical family should be like.”

When they first got together, they fought a lot because Altringer would defend her family. “That’s what she thought was normal... She thought that that’s what love was, that that’s what family was, that that’s what loyalty was…. [But] it’s an ugly world for a child to grow up in…. [It’s] not healthy.”

Some people also don’t understand what it is to live with a rape victim. “Someone recently commented to Becky, ‘Oh, I knew you were a rape victim but it was that many years ago,’” said Howell. “So, basically, now you can be over it. But you’re not over it, you’re broken forever.”

“But it’s not just the rape that destroyed her life… He [her cousin] has been hurting her, her whole life,” she said. “It’s a never ending cycle. I asked her recently, ‘How are you going to feel when someone calls you and tells you he’s dead?’ I said, ‘Is it going to end then?’ I don’t know. I guess we’ll see when he dies… hopefully soon.”

Howell, who is 64 years old, says that in spite of all of the years they have been together, she is constantly reinforcing trust in their relationship.

“She has good reason to be distrusting,” Howell said, “But it takes a lot of patience to remind her that the world is not all black, that there is goodness in it…. You’re forever trying to reassure her that, ‘You can trust me.’ That is difficult to live with sometimes because how much do you need to do to prove that you’re not [going to hurt her]?”

In recent months, Altringer has reconnected with her sister, Rhonda Waychoff, after being estranged for three decades. Since coming back in contact they have been instrumental to each other’s well-being.

“Being molested and raped by a family member supersedes everything [Altringer] went through,” said Waychoff, who is 52. “I want to do what I can to take her pain away.”

Altringer has struggled for so long and she still slides back into the time of the abuse, but now she’s at a point where she can get out of it quicker. Until recently, she did not know if healing was even possible.

But experts insist it is.

“The truth is, you did experience that injustice [sexual assault] and it’s not okay. But, there’s a place [of healing] that you can go to from here,” states psychotherapist Klein to survivors, “It isn’t like ripping off a band-aid. Sharing the narrative is not about getting the story over with. It’s very much about trying to share in a way that there is some potential for healing.”

This process is unique for everyone.

“In the longterm, I believe that men and women and gender non-conforming individuals are really resilient and do overcome,” said psychotherapist Zaleski, “And [they] lead wonderfully beautiful lives after a trauma.”

“I look at her [Altringer] as being a strong, independent and successful woman,” said Waychoff.

Altringer, who became a private investigator, founded Ariel Investigations in 1998. She has dedicated her life’s work to help other victims of crimes, “so that they will never have to feel that loneliness that I felt when I was raped,” she said.

She decided not to join law enforcement because she would kill the first sex offender she came across.

Altringer still constantly looks over her shoulder. She owns two guns and installed security cameras around her home. These are safety precautions she takes because of her life experiences.

Now, she lives in New Mexico with her partner. They left California in 2014 to get away from the dysfunction that has surrounded Altringer for most of her life.

“I don't take the place of, ‘They won’t get better.’ I really don’t believe that to be true,” said Zaleski, “Recovery is possible. I truly believe that I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I didn’t think that people are able to move through this [trauma] in a way that’s profoundly life changing.”

“I have now found that love makes up for all the pain that ever crossed my path,” she said, “I am worthy of being loved and the pain in my past has made me who I am today–a person who is a loved, recognized, cared about and a person who finally has a real family. It is a family that completes me.”

This was “Integration or closure,” the fifth common stage after a sexual assault and a product of support, education and the passing of time.

Altringer and Howell said that neither they nor anyone else ever thought they would come as far as they have in their relationship.

“Where does the time go? It’s been such a ride that neither she nor I thought we would last this long,” said Howell, “Maybe in some ways I can say she’s my obsession too… We just fit, like a hand in a glove. It just worked.”

But Altringer continues to struggle with how much the people she most cares about have suffered because of the trauma she has spent most of her life lugging around.

When she asked her partner why she puts up with her, Howell joked, “It’s because you have great muscles.”

At that moment, Altringer, whose voice was trembling and teetering on the verge of tears, shrieked with laughter. At least for an instant, Howell reminded her that the world indeed was not all black.

If you are in immediate danger, go to a safe place and call 911.

To report assault, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline 24 hours everyday at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)

Getting help after an incident of rape or sexual assault: