Rape Victim’s Undisguised Story Stirs Strong Reaction

Sher Fuller-Hookano was raped by a stranger in her Laguna Beach home in March. I told you about the attack and its aftermath, in ugly detail, a month ago.

It was a difficult column to write because I was so chilled by Sher’s pain. I worried that her resolve to tell her story, not as a nameless victim but as a woman unashamed to say, “Look what someone has done to me,” could hurt her even more. I asked her, time and again, “Are you sure you want me to use your name?”

Sher was sure, and she was right.

“I was a victim,” she said. “But I don’t want to stay a victim.”

The response to that column has been very strong, from women and men, all of them lauding Sher for her courage in having come forward. They found her story hard to forget.

Overwhelmingly, people believed that writing about rape without euphemisms, in a style sure to put readers ill at ease, was the right thing to do. This surprised me. I thought some readers would take me to task for printing graphic details of sexual assault in what we in journalism like to call “a family newspaper.”

“Where else should you print something like this,” one woman in Capistrano Beach asked me over the phone. “In a rape newspaper?”

This reader, who says she keeps a handgun tucked between the mattresses of her bed, told me about her own terror of being raped. Many other women expressed the same fear.

Lynn, a Laguna Beach resident, said in a letter that fear prevented her from signing her last name.

“The article sent a chill down my spine,” she wrote. “It angered and sickened me. No woman should have to go through the torture Ms. Fuller-Hookano experienced.”

And Tony Haro, whose wife was raped, shot and left to die in October, 1988, wrote me this from Sierra Madre:

“To this day, I have horrifying thoughts of what they did to my mate for life. Fortunately (the two men) were caught the very next day with plenty of evidence. However, the frustration goes on with the long and tedious hearings that seem to be just another day for everyone except the surviving family.

“My heart goes out to all the Sher Fuller-Hookanos in this messed-up world. I have never heard the testimony of someone who has gone through rape before your article. The fear of not being able to handle the reality of what happened to my wife has surely taken its toll on my emotions. I used to experience dreams of being in my wife’s place, and fighting the animals with every last ounce of my strength. Trying to go on with life is very difficult, but I have faith that someday I will see her again and by God’s grace that someday I can live a somewhat normal life.

“The article was very courageous of Sher Fuller-Hookano and I hope many men will realize that rape is much more serious than most consider it to be. . . ! For Sher Fuller-Hookano, I pray that someday she will be able to go on with life, as time goes on, with less pain. I know what it feels like to be wounded, and every once in a while, the healing scab will break and the tears will flow, but the wound will soon heal again, hopefully, stronger than before.”

The man who raped Sher has still not been caught, but since the column was published, Sher has identified a possible suspect from among photographs shown her by the Laguna Beach police.

After reading about the attack, a former neighbor got in touch with Sher to tell her about a man who fit the rapist’s description. The woman had reported the man to police months ago when she saw him masturbating in a car parked near Sher’s home. He was arrested at that time.

Sher took this new information to the police and investigators are pursuing the man she identified. So far he has not been found.

The frustrations of dealing with the legal system was another theme common among those who got in touch with me after reading about what Sher had gone through. Many of them had been there themselves. Even years after their attacks, these women could not hold back their tears as they spoke on the phone.

Other readers called and wrote with suggestions such as self-defense lessons and counseling. Some hoped that Sher could eventually learn to forgive. One man in Westminster offered to lend her a gun.

A Redondo Beach woman wrote me this: “My ordeal has not yet finished all of its legal litigation and processes. It has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to experience in life. . . .

“To know who violated you and invaded the most private areas of your being without permission is so unacceptable. . . . Maybe, if more of us go public and stand up against the crime that has too long made us feel guilty for being victimized, the judicial system will catch on and other people will catch on and realize that rape doesn’t have a damn thing to do with what you were wearing. Incidentally, I was wearing sweats.”

And Harry Mersmann, director of education at the Orange County Sexual Assault Network, said this in his letter: “You will never know how many survivors of sexual assault you and Sher have helped by coming forward in this manner.

“Furthermore, it is a shot in the arm for those of us who work in this field day and night to see a positive media reaction to this epidemic of violence. I have but one suggestion: It would be beneficial to your readers to include the number of the rape hot line. . . .”

Here it is: (714) 831-9110.