Rape Victim Wins $2.3 Million From Apartment Owners

A 21-year-old woman who was raped and severely beaten at an Anaheim apartment complex five years ago will be paid more than $2.3 million by the building’s owners, according to an agreement reached Monday.

The victim, who was 16 at the time of the attack, sued the owners of the Palm Gardens Apartments, alleging that poor lighting, overgrown shrubbery and other allegedly rundown conditions allowed a man to go undetected when he slipped into a laundry room, dragged her behind the complex and assaulted her.

The woman, who lived with her older sister in the building and attended high school in Anaheim, has since moved to Ohio. Her attorney, Troy Roe, said she works as a part-time retail clerk, does volunteer work with a school for the blind and is working toward her high school diploma.

“She was thrilled about it,” Roe said of the woman’s reaction to the settlement.

The apartment owners and their attorneys could not be reached for comment.

As part of a “structured” settlement reached in a mandatory conference with Orange County Superior Court Judge Leonard Goldstein, the owners agreed to give the woman an immediate payment of $290,000. She will also receive monthly payments of $1,000 that will grow by 3% each year, Roe said. In addition, he said the woman will periodically receive payments escalating from $20,000 in five years to $200,000 in 40 years.

“The crowning blow” that cinched the settlement, Roe said, was the fact that the woman’s sister had been the victim of an attempted rape in the same laundry room the year before and that it had been reported to the apartment managers.

“They knew there was that potential for it to happen again,” he said.

The woman was playing cards with her sister and friends the night of the assault, interrupting the game to run downstairs to the laundry room to change loads of clothes, Roe said. She was on her last trip at about 10 p.m. when a man confronted her, dragged her behind the apartment complex and then beat and raped her. Her friends, concerned that she had not returned, went to check the laundry room. From there, they followed a trail of blood to the back of the apartment grounds. The rapist, Roe said, was never caught.

Roe said the woman was nearly dead when she arrived at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Blows to her head caused swelling beneath her cranium, which forced doctors to drill into her skull to drain fluid and ease the pressure. Her injuries have resulted in a bone transplant to rebuild her nose, permanent vision loss, a seizure disorder that must be controlled by medication used by epileptics, and no sense of taste or smell, Roe said.