Victim of ’84 Rape Haunted by Memories

In the days and weeks after the rape, she could not walk her high-school hallways without stares from students who knew what had happened.

Now, nearly a decade after she met Edward Patrick Morgan at a teen-age party and he sexually assaulted her, a 26-year-old south Orange County woman is tormented by the news that he may have struck again. Morgan, who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to raping the woman in 1984, was arrested Monday as a suspect in the murder of 23-year-old Leanora Annette Wong.

“He should have never gotten out of jail,” said the woman, who was 16 when Morgan raped her. She spoke Monday on the condition that her name not be published.

“I’ll never forget it. . . . I can talk about it, I’m over it, but it’s never going to go away.

“You’re not scared, because logically you think, OK, nothing’s going to happen to me. But at the same time, your heart’s kind of beating fast, thinking, ‘My God, he’s out there again.’ ”

The woman, who grew up in La Palma and now works at a real estate firm, learned Morgan was a suspect in the Wong killing Sunday night when a friend phoned with the news. After a few moments of shock, she and her husband of four years dug through the weekend newspapers to read about the crime.

The details of her own experience in October, 1984, remain vivid.

“I just met him at a party. He showed up late. My girlfriends were all there. He seemed like a very nice man. He asked me if I wanted to take a walk outside to talk. I said sure,” the woman recalled. “We walked three houses down, he pushed me in between two houses and started to molest me. He turned almost into a different person within seconds.

“He had a knife on him. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t do what he wanted,” she remembered. “Then after slapping me around the whole time, I pretended I was dead or passed out so he would leave. . . . As soon as I didn’t hear footsteps anymore, I put my clothes on and ran back to the party.”

Morgan was arrested that night.

“It was hard going back to school,” the woman recalled, noting that she spent a year in psychological therapy after the rape. “People were staring at you and pointing a finger at you.”