Teen Faked Rape and Her Cry for Help Hurt

Congratulations, Palos Heights, Illinois, you are not home to a "creepy" terrorist/rapist who would stalk, abduct, and rape a seventeen-year-old girl working a night shift at the sandwich shop down the street.

In case you hadn't heard, on September 16th, a five-foot tall, 100 pound young woman from South suburban Palos Heights reported she had been abducted from her job at a sandwich shop called T.J. Grinders by a "creepy" man she described as being "between the ages of 35 and 40, olive-skinned, with a mustache, jeans, and a white T-shirt," according to a statement by Palos Heights police Sgt. Dave Delaney.

She reported that this man had made her fearful early in the night and that at the end of her shift he grabbed her, forced her into his car at knifepoint, took her to a neighborhood she didn't recognize, and sexually assaulted her for three hours before dropping her off about a mile from her home.

The girl showed up at her house - again, according to initial police statements - bruised, partially clothed, and shoeless at about 12:30 am after horrifying her friends and family who had received her frightened text messages and subsequently found her discarded purse, cigarettes and phone lying near the sandwich shop.

Last Friday afternoon the girl admitted the whole thing was a hoax. All of it.

The part about being scared at her place of business - after the shop owner was skewered in the press for the perfectly legal act of letting an underage employee work a shift ending at 9 pm.

And the part about the frightening "olive-skinned man" - which stoked anti-Arab-American sentiments in a town that has been nervous about seeing its population change significantly in the last few decades.

The statement her lawyer released - after she copped to her lie in order to avoid being prosecuted for obstruction of justice when the physical evidence gathered after the alleged attack failed to substantiate her story - gave "deepest apologies" for the "unnecessary concern and time and effort from everyone involved." Which would presumably include the part where she terrified an entire community and cost the taxpayers and police an estimated $250,000 in investigation costs.

The statement did not mention anything about being sorry for making the lives of all the "olive-skinned" people in the Chicago area tougher than usual due to her lapse in judgment.

It also didn't speak to the irreparable harm that she's done to the perception of young women in trouble. Honestly, who among you can't imagine a naysayer speaking up next time a young girl actually does get assaulted by a rapist? Classic "little boy who cried wolf" but projected onto some other truly hurt woman.

The only ones who came out of this looking good are the residents of Palos Heights who, to their great credit, recognized this stunt for what it really was and didn't, as an angry mob, insist the girl be prosecuted and her parents charged for the costs incurred.

And what was this, really, then? This terrible, elaborate, and destructive ruse was a desperate cry for help. A cry that should be answered with the appropriate interventions but not one that can be let go without a community-wide discussion about not turning on our neighbors when struck by fear.

Surely most Palos Heights residents will hear about the ultimately positive conclusion to this bizarre case and know that the dark-skinned people who live and work in their community aren't to be mistrusted, but the damage has been done.

It may be difficult to understand why that is - unless you happen to have dark skin and dark features, of course. But it's not difficult for those of us who get the twice-over look wherever we go, the one that in a fraction of a second says, "Are you illegal? Are you a terrorist? Do you speak English?"

One misguided young woman who cried wolf just set us olive-skins back to somewhere around this time in 2001.

Comments

[emh]

as a rape victim, i am glad that the authorities took this girl's case seriously. but she cannot possibly understand the damage she has done. it is estimated in polls that 1 out of 5 women have been sexually assaulted, but in rape crisis hotline training, the estimates from people who actually work with survivors is closer to 3 out of 5. unfortunately, for a reason i cannot fathom and that i myself fell prey to, the victims are the ones to whom stigma for being raped is attached, and so many females do not report rape out of shame. there are also situations where relatives, friends or acquaintances are involved, where the victims are people who would on the surface be accused of "asking for it," where victims are afraid for their safety if they report, and the overwhelmingly negative reaction of the authorities to rape victims - who often say that going through the system feels like being violated all over again. there are already so many obstacles to rape victims attaining any sense of justice, let alone finding proper help to guide them back to "normal" lives that situations like this absolutely incense me. as i said, however, i am still glad that the palos heights authorities took the girl seriously, investigated and uncovered the girl's ruse. i can only hope that this bad experience doesn't cause them to be skeptical of victims who report rape in the future.

[ORSunshine]

This is sad. The fact that no one had PREVIOUSLY noticed that this child was crying out for help is pretty classic in our fast-paced workaholic society today. I see many teens who are defacing their bodies, outward signs of their inner feelings... and yet no one seems to understand what they are saying when they do this.

It is even more sad that the girl lied to this degree and potentially stoked the racism in the community. I think the community should host "healing circles" to embrace the diversity and put this chapter behind them...

[LeftRight]

While I thank god that the girl wasn't hurt, I am very angry about the lie.

When I was in the US Navy, we had a female corpsman claim that a male Marine had beat and raped her. In the week that it took for the shipboard authorities to determine that she had not been beaten and raped, the Sailors and Marines became very tense around each other. At least once it was all said and done she was court-martialed and thrown in the brig, and the rest of the ship was able to come back together....