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Katie Feifer is many things: a mother, a wife and the owner of her own research firm. She is also a rape survivor who actually helped bring her rapist to a final justice, years after he attacked her.
On the evening of September 15, 1988, a 17-year old member of the work crew painting Katie's home broke into her house and raped her at knifepoint. "After he raped me he left me tied and gagged in the basement - I felt so much panic when he did that, I am a very verbal person and losing my voice was horrible. I felt like I had died, but I lived. My whole life just changed."
Katie believes that at the core of whatever healing she has experienced is the belief and support of those around her. A defining moment came when she first voiced the words, "I was raped" and those words were met with belief and support from Carl Brader, the police officer who arrived at her home shortly after she was attacked. "He was perfect - my knight in shining armor. I had a horrible thing happen but the thing about it was people believed me. I did not have to live with the horror of being doubted. Detective Brader made me feel safe immediately," Katie says. "He never made me think it was my fault."
Katie's rapist was caught and sentenced to fifteen years. He served seven. For Katie, life in the wake of the rape was difficult. She struggled with sleepless nights, problems at work, a deep sense of hopelessness and grief, and a fear of the young white men who reminded her of her attacker. Her family, friends and co-workers helped her get through. When a friend at work confided in Katie that she too had been raped, they forged an immediate bond. Katie recalls, "One day I went to her crying, and she told me not to try to tough it out - to just go home and lie on the couch. Just having permission to bail on that day gave me what I needed."
Then there were the neighbors that let her sleep over when she didn't want to stay at home alone; the CEO of her advertising agency, who gave Katie a garage parking space for added safety; the bosses who offered to bus people to the courtroom to support Katie when her rapist was sentenced; the husband of a friend who showed up to wash her windows so she didn't have to hire an unknown crew. Today Katie says simply, "There were so many people, so many supportive actions. Acceptance, compassion, kindness and thoughtfulness. That was all. And it was everything."
Fifteen years after her rape, Katie received a surprising call from the Deputy District Attorney in Las Vegas. She learned that when her rapist was released from prison he committed a string of crimes in the Midwest before ending up in Las Vegas where he committed a murder. Katie was asked to testify at her rapist's sentencing, and in the wake of her unflinching words about the violence her rapist inflicted on her years earlier, he was sentenced to death.
Katie feels that her experience after her own rape had made it easier for her to testify. "I felt that I would do anything to help the DDA because of how many people helped me. I do think it's that simple: I wanted to pay back. I wanted to pay forward."
Most rape survivors never know that support that Katie experienced, and that fact is not lost on her. "We need to create a world where all survivors are treated the way I was. I don't know if I could have made it through without that. So I'm speaking up and telling my story so families and friends of women and men who have been raped understand what a difference they can make."
Please click here to read Katie's full story as it will appear in a chapter of The Voices and Faces Project book.
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