677

CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF HARM*

Jennifer Thompson**

I’m Jennifer Thompson, and I often say when I present that I

think, more often than not in life, that we do not choose our

journeys. I believe that the journeys somehow choose us, that we

are put on a path and we don’t necessarily know we are going to

be put on the path, and we probably don’t necessarily want to be

right? It’s the home of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. It was

Winston’s cigarettes and Salem cigarettes—combined, we get

Winston-Salem. And so of course as a tobacco industry city, it

was very, very wealthy. It’s also the home of Hanes Hosiery; it’s

the home of Babcock Medical School. There is some very

significant wealth in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. But it’s

also the home of some very significant poverty. As you can

imagine, there were the people who made the money from tobacco

and there were the people who worked the tobacco. And right

down the center of Winston-Salem was a railroad, truly, and it

aims to address the collateral human damage of wrongful convictions to all involved.

Jennifer founded Healing Justice based on her experience with a failed criminal

justice process that sent an innocent person to prison and left the true perpetrator

free to commit additional crimes. Along with Ronald Cotton, who spent eleven years

in prison after being wrongly convicted for Jennifer’s brutal attack as a college

after DNA testing led to Ronald’s exoneration and identified her attacker in 1995.

Jennifer is a nationally-known advocate for criminal justice reform, focusing on the

human impact of wrongful convictions, the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, the

need to combat sexual violence, and the healing power of forgiveness. She currently

side of the tracks.

fifty-three years. I had a great education and never went hungry.

I always had a roof over my head, and I didn’t really question my

upbringing because that was just my reality. That’s just how I

grew up. For people who grow up like I did, that’s privilege. But

like most people who grow up the way I grew up, you didn’t really

think about any other experience; that is also privilege. I was

told and stood very firmly on the foundation that people who went

to prison were bad—after all, they did a bad thing and deserved

to be punished. And victims who were hurt received justice. This

belief was my birthright, encoded in my DNA. If you had a pair

you deserved it. And that’s the way it worked. And like most

children in the United States, every day you go to school, you put

your hand over your heart, you pledge allegiance to the flag, and

you say, “for liberty and justice for all.” Because that was my

truth, that was my reality. And I stood on that reality for my

whole entire childhood.

In the summer of 1984, when I was twenty-two years old, I

was going to college. Between the ages of eighteen and nineteen,

like many young people, I had gone to the wrong school, chosen

the wrong major, dated every single wrong guy you could ever

just shocked. I was making straight As, and my advisor in my

department said, “Jennifer, you’re doing so well, you’ve got such

great grades that you’re going to graduate summa cum laude.

You’re going to graduate as the valedictorian of your class, and

the University of North Carolina at Greensboro is going to offer

you a teaching assistant position during your master’s program in

was in place for me.

I had two jobs. I was working really hard because I wanted to be

that independent woman, and I wanted to pay my own bills. I

wanted all of that. I was doing it, and I was actually really proud

of myself. My family was proud of me as well.

On July 28th of the summer of 1984, it was a pretty typical

day for a twenty-two-year-old. My boyfriend was in town. We’d

gone out to play tennis earlier in the day. I went back to my

apartment to shower. He went back to his home where he lived

Everything was going fine until he took me to dinner. I have

a habit of eating large, really big quantities of food. I was one

hundred and three pounds, but I could eat like a linebacker! And

that was a problem. It was a problem for men who dated me

nbecause I could be an expensive date. So, my boyfriend at this

time would always take me to buffets for dinner. Because for

$2.99, I could have all I wanted to eat, and he was happy, and I

was happy, and that was what we did that night. We went to the

China Inn Buffet. I ate large amounts of sodium-laced products.

And by about 8:00 PM, I came down with a major headache. I felt

really sick. I told my boyfriend, “I can’t go to this party, you’re

going to have to take me home. I feel really bad.” He took me

home, was polite, gave me an aspirin and some water, and my

last memory that night would be him standing by my bed making

sure that I was okay.

The police reports the following day would show that he left

my apartment somewhere between 9:00 and 9:30 PM, but I had

apartment, while I was sleeping. He would help himself to my

beer in the refrigerator. He would smoke some cigarettes in my

den. He would go through my wallet. He would take money. He

would even take a photograph out of my photo album as a

memento of who his next victim would be. And then around 3:00

AM, as I was sleeping, I would feel this very uncomfortable

feeling that many women have in the middle of the night when

you think you might hear something in your home. You are

afraid, and terror causes to you struggle to wake up because

there’s part of you that thinks, “Well, if I don’t wake up maybe

it’ll just go away. Maybe it’s not really happening; maybe I’m just

imagining this. So I’ll just stay asleep.”

Then, something brushed my left arm. As I opened my eyes

nanoseconds; stuff is coming into your brain so fast that you’re

trying to make sense of it. And for me, making sense of it meant

that my boyfriend had fallen asleep on the floor and that he was

leaving and didn’t want to wake me up. But I realized as that

thought went through my mind that that was impossible because

my boyfriend never spent the night with me. As I said, his

mouth and a knife to the left side of my throat and said, “Shut up,

I’m going to kill you.”

that moment was, “This has got to be a joke. This has to be some

guy from the University. He’s going to say, ‘I’m just kidding, I

had to do this for a prank.’” But again, I lived three and a half

miles off-campus. And I worked. And I studied. And no one

knew me. I didn’t go to the bars, and I didn’t go to parties.

Students really didn’t know who I was or where I lived. Then

you can take my car, you can have my wallet, you can take my

money, you can have my credit card. I don’t care. I won’t call the

police. Please don’t hurt me. You don’t have to do this.’” He

looked at me, and he said, “I don’t want your money.” And that’s

when the reality hit me of what was going to happen. Every rape

survivor I’ve ever talked to knows, in that moment, you know

what’s going to happen.

But what you don’t know is, Will you die? Will you live to

see the next day? You start thinking, How will I die? You start

wondering, What will it feel like? And you wonder, Will it be

quick? Will I just die fast? Will I not know I’m dying? Will it not

hurt? Maybe it’ll just be over with. Or will it be slow and will it

be long? Will he beat me and I die slowly? That was the

more day to tell them how much you loved them. You want to call

them and say thank you for everything you’ve ever done for me. I

wanted to tell my boyfriend that I loved him. I wanted to see the

sun come up just one more time. And those were the thoughts

that I was processing as I realized what was happening to me.

And then something strange took over. I remember thinking to

myself, “Yes, I might die, but I’m not dying here, not on my back.

way to live, I will find it.” And so, I began thinking about how I

was going to survive.

the same college. We had taken a walk just a few days before

this. Like most women, we talk about things that men don’t talk

about. As we’re taking a walk, I said, “Janet, what would you do

if you knew you were going to be raped?” My sister said, “I would

that moment. I thought to myself, “Jennifer, you’ve got to stay

calm. You can’t physically fight.” I was at a terrible

disadvantage: I was on my back; there was a knife to my throat; I

weighed one hundred and three pounds; I was 5′1″. I could smell

intuitively that physically fighting was not going to save me.

A student. I knew how to memorize. So throughout the rape, I

paid attention. I would look at his face in those moments that I

was able to get a good look at his eyes and his nose. I remember

thinking to myself, “Pay attention to details, Jennifer. See if he’s

got a scar; see if he’s got a tattoo; see if he has a piercing. You

want to look for things he can’t change later. Listen to his voice;

maybe he’ll say something.” He began to talk to me, saying,

“You’re from Winston-Salem, aren’t you? The town where they

burn witches.” Getting Winston-Salem and Salem,

Massachusetts, confused. He said, “You miss your boyfriend,

He had been in my apartment for a long time. Everything

that I could remember and recall that night meant I would live to

see the next day. At one point, he tried to kiss my mouth. I

turned my head to the right because I knew I was going to throw

up and I didn’t want to choke to death on my own vomit. But

that action would actually save my life. He looked at me and

I believe is some ancestor out there working on my behalf, I said:

“I have a phobia of knives. If you’ll get off of me, if you’ll walk out

the front door, if you’ll go down the steps and drop the knife on

my car and I hear the metal and the knife hit, I’ll let you come

I knew the power had shifted. It wasn’t a lot; it was slight,

but I needed it. I promised him: “Please just get off of me.” As he

weight. They would ask about his clothing. He was wearing

khaki fatigue-type pants that were maybe olive green, and he was

wearing a navy-blue shirt that had three-quarter length sleeves

with three white stripes that went across his bicep. He had on

that were black or navy blue in color. Everything I could

remember that night was one step closer to me living to see my

mom and dad. He pretended to drop the knife out of my front

door, and he came back in and grabbed my arm and said, “Let’s

go.” I wasn’t going back in that room; he would have to kill me in

that hallway first. “I have to use the restroom. Could I just take

a moment to use the bathroom please?” He told me to hurry up,

make it quick.

As I went into the bathroom, I turned the light on because I

knew that they would ask me, “How much light did you have?”

And as I turned the light on, he quickly told me to turn it off. I

went in the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it, thinking

maybe I could escape through the bathroom window. But the

Seagram’s, and we’ll have a party,” he said. I said, “Sure, okay,

I’ll make you a drink,” as I began to walk towards the kitchen.

He went over to my stereo and turned it on, looking for 98.7 KISS

FM because he thought we were going to have a party. As I went

past him, he had turned on the stereo, and a light had come off,

illuminating his profile. Again, it was another glimpse, more

I quickly made my way to the kitchen and immediately

turned the light on to give myself distance, to give myself some

time. It gave me fifteen feet, maybe five seconds, but I needed it.

next door, and my neighbor would be home. I would bang on the

door, and he’d let me in. But I didn’t know he was gone for the

weekend. As I was banging on the door, I looked over my

shoulder, and I could see him coming out the back door after me.

I had made him angry, and I knew that I would probably die. I

did the only thing that made sense to me, and I just took off

underneath light and he starts to kill me, maybe somebody will

drive by. Maybe somebody will see it, and they’ll call the police.”

carport light. Once I got into the carport, I began banging on the

neighbor’s door. I didn’t know who lived there, but I prayed that

they were home. The man who lived there with his wife and

children came to the back door and looked out the glass at me,

and I screamed, “Please let me in, I’ve just been raped! Please let

me in!” And he and his wife looked at me, and she said to her

husband, “Oh my God. It’s one of the students from the college. I

see her every day on campus. You have to let her in!” I quickly

fainted. They called 911. I could hear the sirens. I could see the

blue lights. They had canines that tried to pick up the scent of

The evidence is now on me, it’s in me, and it has to be collected to

be sealed in neat little bags and labeled for the police. I thought

to myself, as they were plucking my hairs and swabbing my body,

“I wish you could just take my skin off. You can just have my

skin.” Because I didn’t ever want to feel my skin again, it made

me sick. I was so angry, so broken. Suddenly, I began to hear a

woman down the hall loudly screaming. I asked the police officer

happened to her?” They looked at me and told me that she had

just been raped. I asked, “Was it the same man who raped me?”

And they said, “Yes, it was.”

He had left my apartment, and in less than a mile, he

crawled through this woman’s den window as she was sleeping on

the couch. He bit her, and he punched her, and he slapped her,

and he put a flashlight in her eyes and a pillow over her face, and

recognize my face as Jennifer Thompson, but that girl from just

an hour before was gone. She was gone. I would never ever see

that girl again. I’d never see her again. I hated this man. I could

have shot him between the eyes, and I would have walked away

When the police asked me if I got a good look at him, I said,

“I did. I really did. I know what he looks like. I can help you.”

she had a pillow over her face. She had been beaten. She

couldn’t do it. I had to do this for her, for me, and for every

woman who would never receive justice.

I went to the police department within two hours of my rape

and began to give a description of my assailant: a young African-

American male in his early twenties, pencil-thin mustache, short,

close-cropped hair. I knew his height. He was 5′11″, maybe 6 feet

tall. I knew his weight. He was around 175, maybe 185 pounds.

raped me, I said, “Yes it does. It looks just like him.” It ran in

the newspaper and within hours of it hitting the stand phone

calls were flooding the police department. But the most

important phone call came from a woman who said she had seen

a man by the name of Ronald Cotton around three o’clock in the

morning on July 29th standing outside of Brookwood Gardens

condominium complex with a bicycle, wearing khaki fatigue pants

hands, and a navy-blue shirt with white stripes on his sleeves.

That was the perpetrator.

assault. Detective Gauldin, who was the investigator, explained:

“I’m going to show you a series of photographs. Don’t feel

compelled to choose anyone, the suspect may or may not be in

here, but if you see him, pick up the photograph and initial the

they said, “Good job. That’s who we thought it had been.” The

relief was huge. I had gotten it right. The second victim couldn’t

do this. This was important. This man had to be removed off the

streets of Burlington, North Carolina. He was going to strike