You stay alive. Yet it never ends. 35 years ago, today I was
supposed to be dead. But here I am currently sitting behind a computer writing
this to you, the reader. This would not be an ordinary death. No. Not one that anyone
would like to talk about—your spouses, your family, your friends and so forth.
This death would be filled with rage. I will say rage enough to take out Putin
and all his armies at least. I still feel that today, deep down in the basement
of my soul. That rage still moves me. Oh, I’ve gone to and gone through the best
therapies. Yet it remains. Perhaps my business here is not done. I might be a
conduit of some sort. Who knows.
I thought this morning as I gently stretched after chores,
hoping my pain would not entice me to withhold my desire to run. Yesterday’s
run was brutal. I eeked out 1.31 miles in a 8:23 per mile pace feeling pain the
whole way. Thank God, I decided not to work my way through a local
ultra-marathon today. It would have been the race I’d treat myself to, to
celebrate my living, love for running and my pain tolerance. Two days ago, I
contacted the race director, thanked him and let him know I was too injured to
run for hours on end today. Too, it was for a charity, which I always love
doing. It’s been my mostly, quiet, side-thing that I do.
Sure, there are emotional scars, but the physical ones last
many times just as long; which then increases the scarring emotionally. This
crime wears on a person, day and night. In the middle of a stretch this
morning, I stated out loud, “What gives anyone the right to just come in and
take what’s not theirs? What’s that about?”
I think that’s a great question. The attack done to me was
considered a ‘Stranger Danger Attack’. At least back then it was the one label that
was stated of the said crime. The crime prevented me from attaining many levels
on much I’d worked for in my first nearly twenty-nine years of life back then.
In turn it profoundly affected my husband, also my marriage; however, my
husband had probably never complained or said so. I know it’s difficult for
another human being to have insight and desire to hold enough compassion—to
truly understand the breadth of what a victim of violent crime goes through. Yet
I can say my husband was an exceptional human being. I’m thankful for that.
Every day whether I run or not has been painful, surgery,
nerve damage, dental work, and a slew of physical rehab that have quite rarely
taken away my physical pains and the debilitating effects of that crime done to
me on August 1st, 1991. Never mind the financial burden placed on
the victim.
I can say, after the attack people blamed my running in the
morning, though it was after six on a sunny summer morning. They blamed my running
alone. They blamed me perhaps for my wearing a T-shirt that said New York City
on it and that I wore shorts. Or blamed my looking youthful or maybe even
beautiful as I ran. At least that’s what my attacker said to me, after raping
me twice. He said, “You were so beautiful I had to have you.” Then twenty hours
later as he was getting arrested, he said, “If I was going to rape someone. She
would have looked like Farrah Fawcett.” Well, I see that statement as
incriminating. If you weren’t a rapist, you wouldn’t rape anyone. And how did
he know I was not a blonde? Too, he should’ve known better not to speak, for it
was the 8th time he’d been arrested. Three priors were felonies
reduced down to misdemeanors. Apparently, he’d spent no time in jail, maybe a
day or so in the past before his attack on me.
Before and during the trial, the newspapers and the defense
attorney compared my case to the Glen Ridge, New Jersey case. In which a young
woman was sexually assaulted by her high school peers in a basement—go look
through those court filings, it might make you vomit. They also compared me to
the Central Park Jogger from 1989. They’re both cases filled with vile and horrid
information of crimes done to women; however, neither were like each other, nor
were they anywhere near like the crime committed against me. All three of us were
damaged, perhaps beyond repair, I’m certain of that. But somehow, we exist. We
exist and so do the crimes.
People blamed color without knowing anything about the
case—they assumed it was a man of color—None of the sort. My attacker was a big
fat white man. Weighing over 260 pounds and standing just over six feet. One
female runner who’s written for popular running magazines, books too, stated to
me that she wouldn’t have taken the damage I had. She claimed, “I would have
just let him rape me.”
People blew off the attack as purely sexual, including many
medical personnel who treated me on the day of the attack in a hospital and
thereafter. I remember having problems with my eyes about ten weeks after the
attack. I went to see my mother-in-law’s ophthalmologist. He shrugged his
shoulders and declared I was fine. He implied that a sexual assault couldn’t
produce eye damage; however, my internist at the end of 2014 stated clearly, he
felt the multiple blows to my head I’d taken on August 1st, 1991, more
than likely could have affected the tendons in one eye. He was astonished at
the lack of depth the ophthalmologist that he’d known had lacked the foresight
in his examination of me in the autumn of 1991.
Doctors I’d gone to see within 18 months following the
attack, did brief orthopedic exams of me, with quick shabby efforts in x-raying
my spine. They then sat me down and told me it was all in my head. That there
was nothing wrong with my right leg. I tried to explain that it didn’t feel like
it was my leg, as if the leg were detached somewhere. The spasms were brutal
and had increased rapidly by mid-October 1991. The dental damage revealed
itself too. My dentist told me that I at least had temporary nerve damage that
caused me to have a root canal months later. I couldn’t turn my neck without
pain for nearly a year, that was at the very least from the initial
strangulation in the attack on me.
The spasming in my upper right leg from my groin and gluteal
areas began to strike at about ten miles, that was when I’d gone under a six-minute-fifteen
second mile pace about seven weeks after the attack. Eventually the spasms then
occurred when going under a six-minute thirty-second pace per mile that initial
strike I could ignore for ten miles, hanging on. Though to start slowing down
greatly as I couldn’t control my right leg completely.
Eventually by January 1992 the detached feeling with spasms would
strike me usually between the 2nd and 3rd miles after I’d
gone under six-minute miles for shorter races. Soon the next demotion from my
right leg was between the 2nd and 3rd miles trying to
maintain a six-minute-thirty-second pace. The only thing that helped break up
the spasm was when I had to stop and stomp my right foot down and do a ten
second standing hamstring stretch. Then I’d continued the run/race for a few
miles and eventually the detached feeling along with the spasming would return.
I’d stop again, stomp and stretch. Yes, in the middle of a race.
One thing I knew was, I could run further, yet slower to not
have to stop. So, there went my marathoning aspirations. Although I kept
trying. But I knew, my husband knew and Tom Fleming knew it was physical. I’d run
at least three Personal Bests after the attack. They were filled with anguish
and heartache. By the seventh set of x-rays and my sixth doctor and fifth
orthopedic doctor exam—as luck would have it, this orthopedic doctor, who my chiropractor
sent me to, happened to be a long-distance runner and so was his wife. To boot,
he was following the case in newspapers.
It was now about late February 1993, I sat before him on his
exam table. I held six sets of x-rays. I said, “This is private information.
The trial for what happened to me on August 1st, 1991, will be
occurring soon. Nobody understands why my right leg spasms and feels
disconnected.” His jaw dropped, “You’re that woman in the newspapers. I’ve been
following the case.” He was gob smacked. I nodded and said, “I think so.” That
day, he set up x-rays for his x-ray tech to do in a way that had not been done
before. They found fractures in my back. And then he sent me for an MRI.
Before the MRI, that day the orthopedic running doctor found
that the level that holds the nerves in the area of my back that he felt caused
the right leg issues was fractured. They call that diagnosis, ‘a laceration of
the spine’. And then they found out another thing about me, after they received
the MRI results of my spine. They found out that it appeared I was born without
a disc in my lower back. Now, I understood why I had hamstring problems as a
child and balance issues, it wasn’t just the hormone my mother took while I was
inside her as a fetus, which caused internal issues I experienced by age fourteen.
It may have been the problem that caused a left lower leg and foot deformity
that was revealed to me, by the physical therapist I went to three months after
the repair of my lower spine with hip graphing.
As a child, I was told to always wear tight, tied types of
shoes. Never a sandal, never a high heel shoe. And certainly, to keep the
wearing of sneakers to a minimum. It was considered that high top tied work
boots were best for my feet as a child, as I had the problem in both feet, the
left much worse than the right foot. Also, as a child I had hip pains since I
could remember. At that point before I began running long distances, I was told
not to. However, I later found out that long-distance running strengthened my
lower legs and feet. Long-distance may not have been the cure—yet it’d already
given me a better life, and I knew so innately.
Too, my husband and I experienced the social ramifications
of the attack on me. Never mind how my own family reacted. After the attack, female
runners rarely if ever attempted to talk to me about it. Women who claimed to
be feminists, who were writers. Who had power. White women, who were writers
who had a lot more power than I ever had. They knew me and all they could do
was find fault with me. Why? Because it could have happened to them, and they
didn’t want to think about it.
My husband stated three years after the attack, “Wow. You
know who your friends are and aren’t when you’ve gone through something like
this.” He’d just gotten off the phone with someone who he’d thought was his
friend for years.
A coach’s wife stated she could have thwarted the attack,
she thought she would have overcome the attacker. The coach who knew me well
told me this. And thus, he told me his response to his wife was, “You don’t
know Jody. If anyone could have stopped this guy during an attack, it would
have been Jody not you. You have no idea what you’re talking about.” And for me
to now think of who I was back then, and who she was. She was privileged and
came from that and had no military training. I came from nothing, I had
military. I know what it’s like to worry that you might not have a home
tomorrow as a child. I do. Too, not have a mother. I do. Food and Safety as a
child. I do.
Yeah, she was much taller than I. But that doesn’t mean you
have more power or know how to use it under such an attack. The way I’m trained
now, as I’d gone for extensive forms of hand-to-hand training for years—my then
self-defense/fight coach said to me one day in 2009, in front of some men in
his all men’s fight gym basement, “The badger may die today. But tomorrow, its
attacker will die of the wounds the badger inflicts.” You betcha.
I blamed my lack of not listening to my intuition. I blamed
three people who heard me yell, “Fire!!” multiple times that sunny summer
morning. I saw the light go on in their bathroom upstairs. I was close to their
driveway. And yet when they were initially questioned by the police, they
denied hearing anything. Only later for two women to retract their denial and
give statements of hearing me. Apparently stating, “We didn’t want to get
involved. We thought it was a domestic affair.” The man withheld and stayed
with his denial. Apparently, he was the one who turned on the light I saw go on
in the bathroom, so I was told.
Another person to blame was the woman he was after. She knew
it. I never gave that runner my phone number and yet some how she called me two
days after the attack, and said, “It should’ve been me.” No.—‘It wasn’t ‘it
could’ve been me.’ She stated, “It should’ve been me.” I played dumb, as I was
advised not to make who I was publicly known by law enforcement. I didn’t throw
her the scent. As a matter of fact, I said, “Oh. I hope she’s okay. That’s
horrible. Hmmm.” Then she had the audacity to not wanting any involvement. I
knew she must’ve known this man. The one detective when attempting to interview
her felt so too. He thanked me. I figured out how she’d gotten my unlisted
phone number; she worked for someone part-time that we both knew. It gets
better, over 18 months later she was subpoenaed for the trial. She saw me upon
my way to a physician’s office and pulls me into the corner of a building near the
bottom of staircase, “Jody! How could you?! You had me subpoenaed?!” She was
pissed. I replied, “Well, if there’s nothing to hide. Then hey. It’ll be okay.
Right?” She had no answer. She was steaming. I walked away. Unfettered by her
fears. I had a job to do.
Next, my then running coach brought a fairly well-known
lawyer into his store as I sat in the back room on a Saturday, weeks before
trial. My coach stood behind this suit-vested man, a lawyer. “Listen to him.”
My coach said. The lawyer said, “Don’t testify. You’re going to lose. It’s not
worth it.” I replied, “No. I’m testifying. I believe in God.” He responded,
“Jody. God has nothing to do with it.” I remarked, “Well, I should have been
dead. So, I believe I have a 92.3% chance of winning and getting this guy 30
years in prison.”
The lawyer stood there dumbfounded. He’d realized he
couldn’t stop me. He looked at me like I was a fool. You know that look.
Everyone knows better than you. Yet, they hadn’t experienced all that you had
in your short 30 years.
I blame white
powerful men at the top of the helms of the rulings in this country. Those who still
haven’t changed the laws to create equal justice for victims of such crimes.
Yes, I do.
Years later, one fellow runner asked me a great question in
the desert in 2004. He saw me struggling. I just smiled and said, “I never
thought about it.” I’d trained with this man on a 73-mile training run just the
month before that day in the desert in Parsippany, New Jersey. He’d come out
from Long Island to run with my ultrarunning coach and I that day. He’d asked
if the metal in my back made my body temperature higher than someone not
dealing with such. I can say that I could not be uncertain of that; however,
having part of my right hip’s bone marrow taken out along bone matter, having
my right gluteus medius sliced in doing so and not having the right gluteus
medius reattached which formed into scar tissue had much to do with my physical
imbalance and struggle. I don’t mind the pain that still resides there. I mind
the lack of gluteal muscle usage that occurred and now remains from the attack
of August 1st, 1991.
… August 1st, 2026… 4:55pm EST
After a brief respite from writing, enjoying a protein
banana non-dairy almond ice cream shake, having a less hampered 5.8 mile run at
8:07 per mile in the late morning, I had a nice long chat with our oldest. Day
201 of my new running streak. I do not know what lay ahead for tomorrow. Life
is at times unpredictably scary, weird, and a wonder. I continue to run now, by all means necessary.
One thing I know is women better come to the realization
that if you are unwilling to push the government to open the Epstein Files and
have Epstein Trials—putting away our current POTUS, and all involved. Then I
say to you, I think you need to have some Taylor Farms bagged salad with some
cyclospora in it, at the very least.---Jody-Lynn Reicher
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