Coping with a sexual assault
Martine Savage never imagined herself moving out of California in the middle of her senior year at high school. She left behind her role as Abigail in “The Crucible,’ her spot on the school soccer team, her part-time job at a beauty salon, her friends. She won’t be attending her prom or her graduation.
Savage accused three classmates at San Rafael High of sexually assaulting her after a house party Jan. 15. One was on the baseball team. One on the basketball team. All three were in the popular crowd. Savage wasn’t. She is the kind of girl who gets good grades and dresses a little eccentrically and can be abrupt when she’s annoyed. She went to parties on the weekends with her friends, had a couple of boyfriends over the years, and had planned to go to beauty school instead of college, at least for a couple of years.
After word spread across campus that she went to the police, she became an outcast. She was a liar, a slut, a wannabe. She was hounded by classmates, threatened and harassed and ostracized, blamed for ruining the lives of three well-liked boys. She is talking to me because she says people ought to know what happens to girls who tell. They should know why so few come forward. What good does it do? You end up being hated and leaving school, and the boys stick around, popular as ever.
The boys spent more than 50 days at Marin County’s juvenile hall awaiting trial. In the midst of the trial, after Savage testified for six hours against them, they agreed to a plea. Two of the boys pled to felony sexual battery, the third to a misdemeanor of aiding and abetting sexual battery. Their pleas got them released from juvenile hall. Within hours of their release on April 1, they showed up on the high school campus.
Four days after the boys’ release, fearing for her safety after hearing rumors of retaliation, Savage left school for good. She is now living with an old college friend of her mother, finishing up courses in advanced-placement English and government.
The boys’ dispositions — the juvenile equivalent of sentences — are scheduled for later this month. They are likely to be given probation, counseling and possibly house arrest.
The assault occurred at a party that was like so many high school parties. The parents at the Novato house weren’t home. There was lots of alcohol, about 40 kids. Savage remembers drinking three beers. She believes now that her third beer was spiked with a date-rape drug.
“I felt like a blob,’ she says. Two of the boys, whom she knew from school, escorted her to an SUV and got into the back seat with her and the car took off, driven by the third boy. “I thought, ‘Where am I going?’ Savage remembers.
They pulled into a Denny’s parking lot. As Savage faded in and out of full consciousness, the boys assaulted her in the backseat.
At the urging of a friend, she called a rape crisis hotline the next morning. But she didn’t go to a hospital, a decision she came to regret. Two days after the assault, she told her father, who urged her to tell the police.
When she showed up at school, the rumors were already raging. She had asked for it. She was lying. She confronted the two boys who had assaulted her, asking how they could have done what they did. A week after the assault, she decided to go to the police.
Some people still think Savage made it all up, even though the boys pleaded guilty. But she wants people to know that sometimes the assault is only the beginning of the humiliation.
“I would really like to have finished at my own school in my last year,’ Savage says. “I would really like to have stayed with my friends, maybe even go to the prom. That would have been nice. But it’s strengthening to at least fight.”
Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her e-mail is [email protected].