Amanda Sandberg, “My Story”

Shortly after 7 a.m. on October 4, 1999, I, an eighth-grader, walked alone to my school bus stop on a busy street corner. A white utility van pulled up beside me and as I started to walk away- the man rushed out and kidnapped me from behind with a gun to my head and a knife to my throat. I was thrown into the van and driven onto unpaved roads leading nowhere. He stopped the van, put duct tape and a beanie over my eyes and wrapped it around my forehead in order to blind me from any sight of him or what was near me. I was then brutally raped more times than I can count by him. This man saw what house I had come out of earlier that morning and once he was done brutally raping me, he decided to take me back to my home where he broke in and hurled me onto my mother’s bed where he raped me one last time. He locked me up in my mother’s closet as he stole everything we had ever owned and put it into his van. He came back and threw me in the bathtub, told me to tell them “it was a black guy” but told me that if I peeped, just once, my family and I would be dead. He finally left me, my broken self, in the bathtub. All of this in a matter of a day. The instinct to survive and the power of my mind were the only things I could depend on from that moment on.

I was rushed to the hospital where a SANE nurse would preserve the last bit of strength I had left in body by giving me a glimpse of support. Thankfully, with her response and gentle process, I was able to have less things to worry about in the coming years by reducing or completely reversing my risk for pregnancy, STDs, and HIV/AIDS. The things I did have to worry about were the social and emotional aspects of recovery. Freedom, innocence, security and sanity were no longer thought about. Trust was an impossible ideal. I felt scared every time someone was near me, no matter who they were. They never caught the criminal, the case was closed, and me with my needs were cut out officially of the justice system. Soon, finding the rapist became backburner to my everyday struggle to stay alive past the suicide attempts, the nightmares, the hallucinations, the anxiety attacks.

Little did I know three years later, with a ‘cold hit’ DNA match, the state of Washington would attempt to give back my lost freedom, innocence, security, and sanity. This ‘cold hit’ was found because Washington State changed its laws so that more criminals would be entered into the state DNA database. The detective that was assigned to my case told me that the rapist had been entered into the DNA system about 1-2 years back for a different criminal charge and with a run through of backlogged DNA, they managed to find the ‘hit’ years later. He was currently serving time in the state penitentiary and after two brutal years in the courtroom, he was convicted and sentenced. For three years, I lived in and was consumed by fear that my rapist would find me and kill me. I never forgot to look over my shoulder, had an intense fear of white utility vans, and became immobilized when I saw a man with similar resemblance. All those years of fear, worry and anxiety could have been reduced if the DNA match was an instant match rather than a ‘cold hit’ match which implies unlikelihood. I could have had a ‘normal’ high school career. Regardless, ‘cold hit’ or not, if it weren’t for progressive changes in legislature, like the Debbie Smith Act, or the existence of DNA databases, I would still, to this day, have those immobilizing fears and anxieties.

I am a survivor; courageous and resilient but nonetheless, an ordinary girl that simply has gone through an extraordinary trauma. My story, in terms of stranger rape and prosecution, is a hopeful one. The important thing to identify though is that there are many more potential, hopeful stories of survival here in America that can’t be told yet because of DNA backlog. There are criminals, sitting and fattening up on the glory of not being caught, in that DNA database while there are victims, living in absolute fear, uncertainty and worry at the same time. This is why Congress must continue to support acts like the Debbie Smith Act, and provide funding to these programs. To do otherwise would deny rape victims the closure and justice that is so necessary in their recovery.