It was just after 2 a.m. on a pitch-black Friday morning when Bernadette Greene-Placentia’s life changed. The Democratic candidate for Congressional District 8 strolled across a parking lot to repair a damaged campaign sign. It was a routine she’d followed all summer. This time, she only made it a few yards.
An attacker smashed her over the head. She blacked out. She woke up to find a strange man on top of her.
Greene-Placentia struggled to open her eyes. She felt a sharp pain below her waist. The attacker was pulling his penis out of her.
She heard him mumble something like, “-ic bitch, not a very good fuck,” which her mind filled in as “Democratic bitch,” she recalled. She wasn’t sure that was exactly what he said.
One leg was out of her jean capris. She wore brand-new tennis shoes and a campaign t-shirt. Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. “Not even worth it,” she heard the man say as he moved away. He wore black boots and had small feet, she recalled.
The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running. She heard music.
She doesn’t remember pulling up her pants or picking herself off the asphalt parking lot. She doesn’t remember closing her Jeep’s hatch and putting her foot on the gas. She doesn’t remember pulling her car into the driveway and collapsing into her bed.
“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” Greene-Placentia said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”
What’s needed is not stronger laws so much as consistent and motivated enforcement of the existing laws. If nobody is bothering to investigate the crimes that are reported, fewer victims are going to report crimes, and the perpetrators are going to be emboldened.
Exactly. Ask any cop about their untested rape kits.
They get them and then they don’t do shit with them.
If it’s not murder, it didn’t happen on camera, and it didn’t happen in a car cops couldn’t care less unless it’s really easy. Like easier than testing a rape kit and matching it to a database of sex offenders and other rape kits (which should be pretty damn easy). Speaking as a victim, I knew cops were fucking useless, but I’m very vocal since my experience about how brazenly they don’t care. Like, to the point they didn’t notice the footprint under a window with a cut screen and insisted we must’ve left the door unlocked.
I have no doubt that there are serial rapists out there with many samples of their DNA sitting in police offices untested with none of the victims knowing that the rapist has targeted a lot of people already.