A Profile in Courage to Be Honored by D.A.

On an April night two years ago, Lisa Clark was raped by two young men she thought were her friends.

Clark had accepted a ride home with the pair from her job at the Jack in the Box in Spring Valley. After taking her to an empty lot and raping her, the pair drove Clark to her home and warned her never to tell anyone.

It was two days before she told a friend. Clark’s counselor at Monte Vista High School called the Sheriff’s Department, and her attackers were quickly arrested.

But it was an agonizing year before the case came to trial.

The San Diego County district attorney’s office changed prosecutors. The defendants changed defense attorneys. Each change meant Clark had to relive the ordeal.

At school, she was the object of taunts and threats and increasing pressure to drop the charges. Both defendants had friends and relatives at Monte Vista; one was a popular ex-basketball star.

A jury found both men guilty of rape and sexual battery. The judge, noting that neither had a prior record, sentenced one attacker to six years in prison, the other to three years.

The comparatively light sentences--less than a third of the maximum--disappointed both Clark and prosecutor Bob Amador. Clark buckled but did not break.

Although she says the taunts and coldness from fellow students have continued, she has refused to transfer to another school.

Now, for her perseverance, the 18-year-old senior will be among those honored today at the D.A.’s annual Crime Victims Luncheon.

“Lisa’s courage is a sign to other victims that they can take control of their lives,” Amador said. “Crime doesn’t have to ruin your life.”

Clark has made new friends. She has a boyfriend.

She’s in the chorus of “Bye-Bye Birdie.” After graduation, she plans to enlist in the Army.

Clark says her initial reaction was anger and shame. Then she felt betrayed when some of her friends joined the crowd that still calls her names.

“I’m stubborn,” she said. “I refused to run away. Victims shouldn’t have to hide.”

But Ociffer . . .

You heard it here.

* Bradford Warren Powers Jr., accused of gunning down a nurse and an emergency technician at Mission Bay Memorial Hospital, says he had been drinking.

It is not a new explanation. Here’s prosecutor Francis Gallagher’s summation to a San Diego jury in a 1958 murder case:

“This courthouse is some 100 years old, and someday they are going to start tearing it down. When they pull off these walls, I expect to hear 1,000 cries of ‘I don’t remember because I was drunk!’

“That phrase has been bouncing off these walls for 100 years. It hasn’t been a defense up to now, and it still is not.”

The defendant was wife-killer Raymond Lesley Cartier. He was executed Dec. 28, 1960.

* The Case of the Missing Eyebrow.

Security officers at San Diego State University are investigating a freshman’s claim that his eyebrow was surreptitiously shaved off by a fellow dormitory resident.

Norman Dunkinson IV says the trouble began after he shooed several students out of his room about 1 a.m. Sunday. He was awakened later to the looming sight of a young woman, razor in hand.

Groggy from partying, he fell back asleep. In the morning he discovered that his face was covered with shaving cream and his left eyebrow was gone.

The case is being treated as one of possible battery.

In for the Kill

Locals only.

* Media zoo.

San Diego Animal Advocates plans a major demonstration Sunday at UC San Diego to protest the use of animals in research experiments.

It’s timed for UCSD’s annual open house, which brings a bumper crowd.

Protesters will wear red to symbolize bloodshed in the laboratory. Deejay Jerry St. James of B-100 FM will host a mock “Vivisector of the Year” ceremony.

* Don’t mourn for Howard Robbins, 24, the security guard who lost his job in a flap over recycling phone books.

He’s a true San Diegan. He just passed the test for his real estate license.