PDD.131: Rape Revisited

I've almost completed reading Jessica Stern's "Denial: A Memoir of Terror," about the aftermath of her rape.

I'm up to chapter 12, and still no mention of the Public Duty Doctrine, not generally or specifically. Only.... a chief of police at Harvard saying that "... it was just a different time. People saw rape differently back then. And for the police -- it was soon after the protests. They had different priorities," page 221.

"... different priorities ..." How about no legal duty to protect by warning the public that a serial-rapist was in the neighborhood?

I'd like to share with you footnote number 2, in the notes section of the book:

The "walking corpses" is Bruno Bettelheim's term in The Informed Heart (New York: Free Press, 1960), p. 151. Psychiatrist and author Henry Krystal "affirms that psychogenic death can occur if the victim of catastrophic trauma completely surrenders to the situation in which no action is perceived as possible. If this surrender occurs, he/she falls into a state of immobility (catatonia), and abandons all life-preserving activity. He calls this a 'potential psychological "self-destruct" mechanism' and affirms that, once the process of total surrender starts it is no longer voluntarily terminable but may only be stopped by the intervention of an outside caretaker, and that, if this does not happen, the victim will die."

For those of you who have been traumatized like this, I want you to live. I want you to understand your legal standing with police and district attorneys. I want you to change your behavior by taking additional steps to protect yourselves, additional steps other than relying completely on 9-1-1.

Postscript: I finished Ms. Stern's book, "Denial." Because she made no mention of the Public Duty Doctrine, either specifically or generally, I would not recommend buying it nor reading it.