With Attackers Behind Bars, Victims Cope With Less Fear

Scott Nils Nystrom ran down Linda Henry with his car, then brutally beat her and raped her. When he was up for parole, he wrote her a bizarre letter assuring her that he wouldn’t “seek revenge.”

He served his sentence, but he’s not going free. Nystrom is committed to the Minnesota Security Hospital indefinitely as a “psychopathic personality” under a 1939 state law that’s being challenged before the state Supreme Court.

Henry says Nystrom’s commitment allows her to live with less fear and with relief that he won’t rape again.

Nystrom attacked Henry in White Bear Lake in 1979, when both were 17. She has no memory of the assault because of head injuries; she recalls only waking up in a hospital.

While Nystrom was free on bail for that attack, he raped a woman in Duluth. He was sentenced in the two cases to a total of 20 years in prison, and he was up for parole when efforts to commit him began. He was committed in August, 1992.

Nystrom fought against his commitment, contending that he had changed. Henry fought for it, chilled by a letter that began, “First of all, let me reassure you that I will never seek revenge on you.”

Henry recalls sitting in the courtroom, listening to a psychiatrist testify that Nystrom would pose a “reasonable risk” if released.

“I’m sitting there in the back with my mother, and I wanted to stand up and scream, ‘It’s a reasonable risk for whom? For your wife? For your mother? For your daughter?’ ” said Henry.

“There are all these white men in suits pontificating on the ‘interesting facets of the situation,’ ” she said, “with no clue about the fear that we live with whether it’s happened to us or not.”