For a week it's been on the front pages of every newspaper in the UK: the abduction, rape and murder of 33-year old Sarah Everard by a policeman showing his badge and credentials to assert his authority and gain her trust.
She never doubted him.
Her death came after a horrific night spent in his car driving around her mind most certainly filled by what can only be imagined as sheer terror. It is hard not to be moved by her mother saying in court that in her dreams she is always screaming at Sarah, “Don’t get in the car! Run!” The murderer had already shown signs of a perverted nature by flashing women at a Mac Donalds’s drive-in days before.
All this bought back memories of incidents deeply buried and thought forgotten.
In my thirties I was asked to dinner by close friends who lived in a large apartment in what was then and still is the poshest neighborhood in Lima. The night doorman was out. I arrived early and they buzzed me in. As I was waiting in the lobby for the lift to come down, I heard someone banging loudly on the glass front door. The crashing noise rattled the frames. I turned around and saw a man standing a few feet away, with no pants, an open trench coat exposing his genitals, a sick smile on his face. I looked away and froze. I remember several things. The man kept banging trying to make me look again, he was yelling something I could not make through the glass and the banging never stopped. I prayed the lift would come soon. I prayed another guest would arrive and make the man flee but most of all I prayed very hard no one would buzz him in and I would find myself with no glass partition between us, face to face with him.
The lift finally arrived; as I got on, the banging went on and on. I never reported it as a crime; I did not know it was one.
A few years later I was driving from Biarritz to Pamplona with my best friend Lulu to attend a wedding. I was living in Paris and had a rented French car. After we cleared the Spanish border and got on a mountain road, two police motorcycles followed us and starting flashing their lights and sirens; I stopped on the hard shoulder wondering what I had done and realized Lulu did not have her seat belt on. The policemen approached the car. In halting French they signaled my friend pointing at the limp seat belt and asked for my papers. Everything was in order. The younger of the two said, still in bad French, that we were serious trouble and had to go with them. Lulu being Lulu protested we had done nothing really wrong. She protested in Spanish. They immediately changed their stance and retreated a few feet. The older one looked upset. They argued and he said to the young guy something like “I want no part of this. I’m out”, got on his bike and drove off.
Then I really started getting worried, with two I felt more or less safe, in the hands of one armed policemen I just knew we were in danger. There were no cars on this deserted mountain road.
He said he had to take us in, that or we had to pay a big fine. I said I had no money. “Then I have no option but to arrest you both. Follow me and don’t try to run”. He jumped on his bike and took off at top speed. Lulu kept protesting and I ask her to please be quiet. I concentrated on not losing him; he drove faster and faster, the winding road harder and harder to negotiate at top speed. After a few miles he signaled me to stop again. He came back and said I had driven over the yellow line at least five times, “I could not avoid it. You were too fast. I could not follow otherwise”. He said our situation just got worst and he would stop soon to report us.
He stopped in a deserted parking lot and said that if his report went through we would spend at least 3 days in a Pamplona jail. I said we were expected at a wedding and if we did not show up soon people would start making calls, “important Spanish people”. He got nervous for the first time. “Then you should pay right away” and pointed at solitary ATM in the middle of nowhere. I took out the money and handed it to him as quickly as possible; I knew we had gotten off cheaply.
He thought they had targeted two lonely Frenchwomen who did not speak Spanish and had no connections. Ultimately it was what saved us.
When I was nineteen I went home to Panama on holidays from my college in France. I was asked by my very grand great-aunt to a cocktail party in her grand house for the scion of an even grander American family –Mayflower, Andover, Harvard and all that.
The man was in his early thirties and very handsome.
He offered to take me home and on our way there suggested a last drink at his hotel. I thought this was the height sophistication savoir faire AND chic and said why not? That the drink was at his hotel suite raised all the red flags my mother had warned me about, but I disregarded them.
Once there we sat on the couch, he kept drinking more, started slurring his words, I kept looking at my watch. At some point he got real close and I got real uncomfortable. He tried to kiss me, I pushed him back and his demeanor changed abruptly. “You're just a little tease, you knew what I wanted, don’t play coy with me”. I wasn’t playing coy or anything. I was a nineteen-year old with the experience of a twelve-year old and I was petrified. He threw me on my back and threw himself on top of me. He had very powerful arms, had crewed for the rowing team at Harvard. He started pulling up my skirt all the time calling me filthy names in a hoarse voice; I felt in mortal danger. I knew I had but one chance. I summoned all my strength and pushed him off. He crashed on the coffee table and I ran out.
I remember the sound of my high-heel sandals loudly clicking on the tiles echoing as I ran towards the lifts all the while thinking I better take the stairs because he could come after me catch me and drag me back.
Years passed. I blocked his name. In my forties I was invited to a flat in London. The owner, a rich American was away and had lent his flat to a friend. Walking through the rooms I happened on a photo of the man who had tried to rape me at the Hotel Panama all those years ago. I instantly recognized him. I was told he owned the flat. I wave of visceral fear instantly engulfed me; so powerful that I did not dare ask his name.
Because of Sarah I know now that all these men abused me. They committed crimes that went unreported and unpunished. This has to stop.
Sarah Everard
1987-2021
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