6A
Wednesday, November 2, 1994
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
RAPE: The lives behind the verdict
Continued from PAGE 1A
THE MEETING
Sometimes Don Hicks' mind wanders when he is at work. That can happen during the third shift at the Knart Distribution Center.
He still thinks about the Aug. 26 afternoon when the trial ended and he left the Douglas County Courthouse for his Jeep. His hands were shaking, an indication of how a five-day stint as juror in the Shanks rape trial had affected him.
The August afternoon sun beat upon his shoulders, but the heat was nothing compared to the responsibility he said he felt as a juror.
"I would feel so much better if I could talk to her," he said.
In his rear-view mirror, he saw the Lawrence woman walking toward him.
She walked past the Jeep, slowly looked his way and was about three feet in front of him when he quietly said her name.
THE VICTIM
She doesn't just want to be "that woman who said she was raped."
Brian Vandervliet/KANSAN
At times she wakes up with a jolt, sweating, reliving her nightmare. No matter what the verdict, flashbacks to the night she says Shanks raped her persisten.
"If I could have testified behind a curtain, I would have," she says.
She says her neighbors do not know her secret, and she wants to keep it that way.
She is, she says, a survivor, a nurse and a mother. Still, at times her answers sound as if they were transcribed from rape survival pamphlets.
"Jeff took my control away but not my dignity," she says. "I didn't realize I was in trouble until it was too late."
She compares having to testify with going to the dentist — something nobody likes to do, but something that has to be done.
She stands firm in her claim that she was raped by a man almost twice her size. Somehow, though, she has forgiven Jeffrey Shanks for attacking her, believing that she has helped put a stop to further attacks.
Rough relationships in the past, a divorce in 1883 and always being the oldest and most responsible child in her family gave her the strength to overcome the nightmare that she says she has endured.
"I'm not a Bible thumper or a Holy Roller," she says, sternly. "I do believe, though, that everything happens for a purpose and a reason. The sad thing is, I still don't think Jeff thinks he has done anything wrong."
And what about those people who still do not believe her?
"I don't give a damn about those people," she says, "It's all insignificant bullshit to me because I have come to terms with it."
As the oldest and only girl growing
Jeffrey Shanks briefly criered white on the witness stand at his trial in August. The former graduate assistant football coach was found guilty of one count of rape and was given a sentence of 73 months. He was found not guilty on another charge of rape involving a Lawrence woman.
up in a Parsons family of six, she was tough, determined and confident. She says working as a nurse for the past three years both helped and hurt her after she was attacked.
"Being a nurse, you learn to separate emotions from facts and procedures," she says. "I knew what I should have done, but I completely shutdown. All of my training, education and logic was gone right out of the window."
Before her attack, she had administered rape kits to women, taking clothing samples, taking blood samples and doing pelvic exams. But all of her training was worthless when she imagined herself on the hospital gurney.
"You become like a child," she says, explaining why she didn't go to a hospital after she was attacked.
Today, she is less trustful of strangers, especially men. She has new perspectives on how she disciplines and raises her children. After her children got into a fight recently, she sat the two on opposite sides of the room and told her son never to touch his sister if she said no. She told her daughter to avoid physical fights with her brother.
At work, she shares deeper emotional bonds with her patients.
She says too many people put themselves in dangerous situations.
Still, she wants to remain anonymous.
"I don't want people coming to me for help," she says. "Just because I was a victim doesn't mean I want to be everyone's mother and take care of them. That's what support services are for."
She stays in touch with Sarah Jane Russell, executive director of the Rape Victims Survivor Service. She also has an occasional cup of coffee with the police officers she has gotten to know as an emergency nurse. They are like big brothers to her, she says.
"I'm not angry or bitter," she says. "The way I brought this to a close was to forgive Jeff for what he did to me. I hope any other victims he might have attacked will be able to use this for some sort of closure."
Another part of the healing process was the conversation in the parking lot with Hicks.
THE JUROR
Hicks flashes a nervous smile and his tone of voice rises and falls with his feelings as he explains the responsibility he felt as ajuror.
"Unfortunately you don't leave the trial in the courtroom when the day is over," he says, wringing his hands. "You just don't because you are dealing with other people's lives."
"I kept putting myself in a jail cell and asking myself how I would feel if 12 people put me there and I was not guilty," he says, while fidgeting with a paper cup.
He had his doubts about Shanks' guilt before the trial began.
Now, he says he has a greater respect for rape victims.
Hicks, 26, who was married 10 months ago, started treating his wife better during the week of the trial. He brought her flowers, stopped watching as much television and spent more time with her.
He says he always wanted to serve on a jury. But now he never wants to do it again. "Not for a rape trial," he says.
In that Douglas County jury room, he was faced with a Catch-22: convict Shanks and send him up the river, or not convict him and forever worry about the fate of future victims.
Still, the jury wasted little time deciding the case involving the Kansas City, Kan., woman, Hicks says. Her case was decided on the first day of deliberations.
But the prosecution did not have enough evidence to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that Shanks actually raped the Lawrence woman, he says. But he says, the jury wanted to convict him on both counts.
"You can't convict someone on personal opinion," he says.
So the not guilty verdict was reached, he says, blaming the prosecutors for botching the Lawrence woman's case.
Reaching that decision is what tore Hicks apart during the week of the trial.
"I know I did the right thing," Iicks says, without reservation. "I don't
worry about the decision. We made the right decision."
Still, he says he wishes the jury could have done more.
His mind wanders back to the day—barely two hours after the jury said Shanks did not rape her — when Hicks and the Lawrence woman stood in the courthouse parking lot.
He apologized. He told her how the jury was forced to declare a not guilty verdict based on the evidence. He told her that the jury was confident in their decision but that she should never believe anyone who might call her a liar.
Without shifting her attention away from Hicks, she stood and listened for about 15 minutes, motioning only with a periodic nod. A handshake seemed to bring the conversation to a close. But Hicks had one more thing to say.
"You know," he told her, "just because he was found not guilty does not mean he is innocent."
"Thank you," she said. Then she stepped closer to his Jeep, extended her arms, hugged him and walked away.
Shanks cannot escape sex offender label
Sheriffs' offices keep track of him even after prison
By Manny Lopez
Kansan staff writer
As a sex offender in Kansas, Jeffrey Shanks will have some of the best rehabilitative programs in the country available to him, said Billie Lerner, a certified sex therapist and clinical social worker from Overland Park.
At the same time, she said, he also could become a victim. And if that did not get Shanks' attention, numerous group sessions with other sex offenders would force him to realize that he has a problem.
She said that most of the counseling sessions in Kansas prisons were 18-month programs designed around group interaction rather than individual counseling.
"Sexual offenders are the low men on the toten pole in prison," Lerner said. "Those guys in prison could easily put him in his place."
Shanks already has apologized in court to the woman he was found guilty of raping. But a juror and the woman whom the jury said Shanks did not rape both said they believed that Shanks still did not think he had done anything wrong.
"He may deny it all," Lerner said. "But his peers will get in his face, and he'll break down."
Shanks will have plenty of time to think about his future. He was sentenced to six years and a month in prison.
The stark reality is that he will not be able to return to his job as a coordinator for an emergency supply company in Irvine, Calif. He did not get to enjoy the cool, October
breeze that was blowing leaves off maple trees on the day he was sentenced.
Instead, a pale, tired Shanks was handcuffed minutes after his sentence was read and led to a jail cell to sit among other criminals.
His lawyer, Mike Warner, said that Shanks would not be eligible for parole under the new Kansas sentencing guidelines. The maximum sentence he could have faced was four months longer than the one he will serve. The minimum sentence he could have served was five years and eight months.
"I am mindful of what the sentences for this type of crime used to be," said Judge Ralph King of the Douglas County District Court. "This case is on neither extreme under the new sentencing guidelines. That's why you are getting the midrange."
For the next six years, Shanks will
see his family on scheduled visits through thick, glass walls.
His conviction will follow him even after he leaves prison. Because he is a sex offender, Shanks will be tracked by authories for as many as 10 years after he is released from prison. Lerner said.
Under Kansas revised sex offender registration laws, Shanks will have to register with the sheriff of a county within 15 days after moving there, according to Office of the Attorney General.
Once he gets out of prison, he will be able to try to join society again.
"I think Mr. Shanks is certainly remorseful," King said to Shanks just before Shanks was sentenced.
"But the degree of harm was great. Even though he was not the mysterious, lurking stranger, he was still a predator."