University Daily Kansan / Thursday. February 27, 1992
KU gives woman opportunity to escape stepfather's abuse
Louis.
A social worker came to the house and talked to her parents, but not Lane.
"Nothing was done, and the guy never came back," she says.
In eight grade, she was depressed and went to a psychiatrist.
Lane's parents told the doctor she was jealous of her new baby brother and new father. Lane told him she was being sexually abused.
"He didn't believe me," she says.
"He had me go to a gynecologist and never told me the results."
But her stepfather warned her if she continued to tell the psychiatrist she was sexually abused, someday her husband would find out and her reputation would be ruined.
"I was 14 years old, I thought maybe he was right." Lane saws.
She changed her story and denied the abuse.
"The jerk believed me and starting taking action, I thought if I would go college," she told reporters.
Help insight
College was going to be her refuge. Lane thought that she would be safe at KU.
Her stepfather raped her in her room at McCollum Hall during a weekend visit.
In late January of 1991, Lane missed
a call from her stepfather and decided she had had enough.
she had made her every move. He called her almost hourly. This time she was not where she was supposed to be.
When she finally talked to him, her stepfather told her she had to leave KU and come home.
"OK, I'll start packing and leave." Lane told him. "But I'm not ever coming home."
She knew her parents would come after her. Her stepfather never would let her of his control. Lane says.
letter of a friend.
She confined herself to a friend's room in Ellsworth Hall. Living like a fugitive, having clothes and food smuggled to her, Lane began a game of hide and seek.
"I would call her on the phone and tell her I was coming to bring her clothes," says a friend of Lane's. "I would knock, announce who I was. She'd hesitate and then let me in. We brought her everything she needed. It was scary because her parents were interrogating us. But she'k keep us up. She'd keep us lighthearted."
But the chase was just beginning.
"We were always looking over our shoulders," says Lane's roommate at the time. "We never totally knew where her parents would be. They would call and call, or leave messages threatening her. We had to run to the car and look around every corner."
A counselor at Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center encouraged her to take action, and KU police finally gave Lane the help she had sought since junior high.
"Because no one helped me for so long, I didn't think I'd ever get help," she says.
Barbara Ballard, director of the women's center, says a substantial number of students have experienced incest or rape.
"We want to provide a supportive, accepting atmosphere where women know they can come to talk," she says. "When they know we provide a supportive environment that does not blame them and guarantees confidentiality, they may find it easier to come us."
John Mullens, KU police lieutenant, says most cases like Lane's are handled successfully.
"There can be trust and a rapport within the system, but only the difficult situations are publicized," he says.
Mullens says people in Lane's situation have several legal options.
Lane filed a report when she was 19, a legal adult. If she had been abused by a blood relative, she could have filed an incest charge. Since she was abused by a stepfather, her only option was a rape charge.
Working with police put Lane in danger of being discovered. One day at 7:30 a.m., Lane and a friend, coats over their heads to conceal them, drove to campus where Lane sought a restraining order from KU police.
She filed charges with KU police on Feb. 2, 1991.
According to KU police records, a warrant for one count of rape against Lane's stepfather was issued March 19, 1991.
Without Mom's help
People at KU offered Lane support, but her mother never did.
"It's damn sad when a lady at the resource center who doesn't even know how to help me, but my own mother who brought me into this world doesn't," she says.
During winter break last year, her mom confirmed what Lane had suspected; she was not going to help her.
"I mouthed off to him," Lan recalls. "He grabbed me, he threw me to the ground and put his knee in my chest. I just sat there in the chair next to us."
Her mother didn't move.
"You're crazy just like he is! He can do anything to me and that's OK with you!" Lane yelled at her mother. "Then she told him to stop, but that was it."
Before her mom married her stepfather when Lane was 11, Lane counted
on her, trusted her and depended on her for everything. Her mom was all she had.
Lane has not spoken to her mother since July. Neither Lane nor her grandparents have any idea where her mother is. She sent Lane a card for Valentine's Day telling her she loved her and missed her.
When her mother was contacted for this story, she refused to comment. Lane does not blame her for what happened.
"Here you think you found the perfect father for your daughter, the father she never had," Lane says "Then you find out he's putting his penis in her vagina and her anus. I don't blame her for not dealing with it. If she dealt with that guilt all at once she'd probably have a nervous breakdown."
Still talking
"I talk so openly about sex to girls and guys," Lane says. "A lot of people are uncomfortable with it. My stepfather made me talk to him openly about sex. I just always have been able to."
"What my stepfather did was not sex," she says. "It was not about sex. I learned sex can be nice. It's not for
Lane separates the abuse from sex.
controlling and hurting other people." The bushes had made Lane cold.
"Most guys think once they have sex with a girl, she's hooked emotionally to him." Lane says. "But I'm not like that. I've cut myself off during sexual activity for so long that I still do it. It's a problem I have to work on."
Lane never has flashbacks with boyfriends. She says she is comfortable with most guys and can trust them.
But there is one man she still has trouble with.
Lane met with her biological father in April, not after seeing him for 10 years. He wanted to be the father he had never been.
"I was not ready to deal with a father figure or any kind of parental authority," she says.
ire and her mother never married.
Lane and her father exchanged
addresses and phone numbers and
decided to start a friendship.
They have not spoken since last semester, but Lane toys with a gold necklace around her neck when she talks about him.
"He gave me a necklace that he said he wanted to save for someone special," she said. "The necklace has an eagle on it. He told me, as long as I wear it, I will always be free."
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