NO WORDS:

Meditations on Being Stalked and Stabbed

Deborah Epstein

No Words: Meditations on Being Stalked and Stabbed

When I was 21, my ex-boyfriend tried to kill me. He didn’t kill me. The blood washed away. The hair regrew. That was over forty-five years ago.

Decades after the assault, my thoughts, my actions, my life were once again consumed by the fury, fear, helplessness, and deep lack of trust in systems that are supposed to protect.

In the months preceding the attack, the university that we both attended was aware of the danger I was in, but while they argued about what to do, I was stabbed in the head.

My attacker was indicted for first degree assault, possession of a dangerous weapon, and attempted homicide. In an attempt to protect me, my father, an attorney, took over all communication regarding the case, speaking on my behalf and making decisions for me.

My attacker was defended by a world famous criminal defense lawyer, and – despite the attempted murder two days earlier – was released on $2500 bail. Over the next eleven months, he violated the terms of his bail numerous times: failing to inform probation of his whereabouts and making threatening phone calls to my extended family and roommates at all times of day and night. When my father asked to be informed of when my attacker was in violation, his lawyer cited his client’s right to privacy. My attacker remained at large, and I became a prisoner in my parents’ home.

Ultimately, my attacker pled to the lowest level felony: attempted assault. At sentencing, his attorney urged leniency, touting my attacker’s status as a former student at an elite university. Aside from the two nights following his arrest, my attacker served no jail time. Although the university expelled my attacker after the assault on campus, that institution granted him a degree two years later.

A few years before my father died, I asked him if he had anything left from that time. He gave me a two-inch-thick file of his phone notes, correspondence, and court documents, which are the basis of this work.

I call the piece No Words, in part because in that two-inch thick file there are so many words – my father’s, the school’s, the lawyers’, the Court’s – but none of them is mine.

With this piece, I reclaim and control the words.