23 Is Old Enough

23 Is Old Enough

Old enough to own a firearm. Old enough to get a CCW permit. But not in Manhattan. And not if you attend Columbia University. No, in that case you have no option but to rely on the State for your protection.

And the State failed a 23 year old woman, a student at Columbia and resident of Manhattan. And, like Linda Riss, she has no legal recourse against the state for that failure to protect.

Bad things happen to good people, but read what she had to endure:

Over many torturous hours, she had been repeatedly raped, sodomized and forced to perform oral sex, a prosecutor told a jury on Thursday. The accused, Robert A. Williams, 31, had doused the woman’s face and body with boiling water and bleach, forced her to swallow handfuls of pills and to chase them with beer, sealed her mouth with glue, and bound her wrists and legs with shoelaces, cords and duct tape, said the prosecutor, Ann P. Prunty. And now, Ms. Prunty said, he was asking the woman to gouge out her own eyes with a pair of scissors.

And so the woman, sitting on the floor of her studio apartment in Hamilton Heights and holding a pair of scissors between her knees — the blade pointing toward her face — tried to stop the suffering. She lowered her face to the blade, but turned her head at the last moment, trying to stab herself in the neck instead of her eyes.

The scissors slipped from her grasp, the suicide attempt failed, and the woman suffered several more hours of torture, Ms. Prunty said.

But wait, there's more.

The woman survived the nearly 19-hour ordeal, which ended, Ms. Prunty said, when she used a fire started by Mr. Williams to burn the cords that secured her wrists to a futon.

Mr. Williams went on trial Thursday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, where he faces 71 criminal counts, including attempted murder, rape, arson and assault. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Could but probably won't. Here's his previous rap sheet:

Mr. Williams, who was homeless at the time of his arrest about a week later at the scene of a burglary in Queens, has a lengthy police record dating to his childhood, the authorities have said.

He was charged in a murder as a juvenile, though the outcome of that case is sealed, a law enforcement official said, and he spent eight years in prison for an attempted-murder conviction in 1996.

Why was this guy even on the street?

Here's how he got her:

On the night of the attack, the victim, a month from graduating with a master’s degree, was at Columbia, putting the final touches on her résumé for a job fair the next day, Ms. Prunty said. When she arrived at her apartment building, she got on the elevator and found Mr. Williams inside, Ms. Prunty said. She rode with him to her floor, and could hear him follow her as she navigated the long L-shaped hallway to her apartment.

As the woman entered her apartment, Ms. Prunty said, Mr. Williams asked her if she knew where a Mrs. Evans lived. The woman stopped to answer.

"Her kind moment of hesitation would cost her," Ms. Prunty said.

Mr. Williams forced his way into the apartment, Ms. Prunty said, put the woman in a chokehold, and slapped her cellphone from her hand. Mr. Williams slammed the door behind him, and "her Friday the 13th nightmare began," Ms. Prunty said.

The anti-gun people tell victims to "give their attacker what they want." He wanted her body. He wanted her to gouge out her own eyes. Instead, she attempted to end her own life.

How can anyone believe that it is morally superior to submit to a rapist rather than carry a gun and have at least the chance to shoot the bastard?

This could be you, your sister, daughter, wife, mother. Please, take a "Refuse to be a Victim" course. Learn how to spot the danger signs. Learn how to protect yourself, even if you are unable to be armed. Don't let anything like this happen to you, or someone you love. No one should have to endure this. No one should have to deal with its consequences.