Courtesy of SMU Athletics
This is the first of the Rape and Its Consequences series.
Sitting in a corner booth in Cafe Express, Monika Korra sighs and half smiles. “I’m really not looking forward to my U.S. history exam,” Korra, a senior at SMU, said.
If you weren’t paying attention, you might miss her. She is a sliver of a woman, though she moves with an athlete’s grace in her black sweater and pants, gold jewelry and cheetah print scarf. That Korra is fretting over a history exam is nothing short of miraculous given what happened two years ago. On Dec. 5, 2009, Korra was leaving a party with her SMU roommates when three men kidnapped her at gunpoint, holding a gun to her head while they gang raped her for more than an hour then left her naked in the frigid night near the intersection of Haskell Avenue and Crosstown Expressway.
Korra, a native of Norway and a member of the SMU cross country team, did not follow the path of most sexual assault victims. She immediately reported the rape to the Dallas Police Department. She worked with police and the Dallas County District Attorney’s office to build a strong case against her attackers. Her testimony in court helped convince jurors to convict two of the men of aggravated sexual assault; each was sentenced to life in prison. The third pled guilty to aggravated sexual assault and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
After the last man was convicted, Korra allowed reporters to use her name in their stories. “I don’t want to be defined as a victim,” Korra told The Daily Campus. “I want to show that it is possible to heal from calm.'”
Finally, the three stopped assaulting her and slowed down the SUV. They kept Korra’s shoes and phone and put duct tape over her eyes, according to Korra. Then they shoved her out of the moving car, flung her dress out and screamed at her to run, according to court records. Korra ripped the tape off, threw her dress on and began running. She was barefoot.
“I ran for a while, because I didn’t know what else to do,” she remembered. She knocked on the doors of nearby houses; no one responded. In desperation, she walked into the middle of a busy street. A driver stopped to help.
“I told him, ‘I’ve been raped, call the police, please help me,'” Korra recalled.
The Dallas Police Department responded immediately. Senior Cpl. James Shivers, a 21-year veteran, was the first to arrive. He saw Korra, “elbows and knees all skinned-up with duct tape in her hair,” surrounded by dark figures. Cpl. Shivers, who was not wearing his police uniform, drew his gun and approached Korra. She backed away, screaming, “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me,” while a police helicopter hovered overhead.
Shivers had to virtually sh
ove his badge in Korra’s face to convince her he was a cop. Finally, she relented, took the corporal’s jacket and got in a squad car to get warm and give her statement. Police then took her to Parkland Memorial Hospital for treatment.
“She’s the only victim I’ve remembered the name past a call,” Cpl. Shivers said. “She’s news.”
The Road to Recovery
Korra decided to remain at SMU and take her final exams. Initially, she remembers feeling unsafe even in her apartment.
“I tried to force myself to live a normal life,” she said.
It was not easy. Her HIV prevention medication made her sick. She found it difficult to concentrate in class. But everyone, from her professors to Dave Wollman, SMU’s director of women’s track and field and cross country, was supportive.
When she returned to Norway for Christmas, she still felt ill but was able to start running.
“I forced myself to run every morning, because that’s who I am,” she explained.
At home, she saw progress every day.
“One day I ran 10 minutes, then 15, then 20 … that gave me again.”
Arevalo, their leader, would be the first suspect to go on trial.
The district attorney’s office assigned Hendricks, a veteran prosecutor who had worked in the Sexual Assault Unit since its inception in 2007, to handle the case. Korra describes Hendricks as tough and supportive.
“I was kind of annoying,” Korra said. “I would email her and call her, ‘Tell me what’s going on, c’mon tell