Woman Recounts Her Kidnapping, Rape Ordeal to Youthful Offenders

Having traveled to hell and back while being raped for five hours in an alley, Karen Pomer decided to share that journey Monday with an audience whose ears might seem deaf to such suffering.

In front of juvenile delinquents about to be sent away for their crimes, Pomer recounted the terror she felt when she was kidnapped at gunpoint in front of her house at midnight one night, taken away, raped and threatened with death.

Her speech, part of National Victims Rights Week, was designed to imprint on these wards of the California Youth Authority the message that a victim travels a long road of misery, never quite able to wipe the past away.

Sitting on brown metal chairs inside a stuffy auditorium at a CYA facility in Norwalk, about 125 young men sat silently as Pomer began to weave her tale of tragedy that happened in October 1995.

“At first I thought it was a carjacking,” said Pomer, a 43-year-old filmmaker who was abducted in a middle-class Santa Monica neighborhood. “I didn’t know he meant to do me physical harm.”

She recounted the details as the men listened silently. The rapist forced her to take off her clothes before he assaulted her.

After an hour, he stepped out of her car to go to the bathroom. She grabbed her clothes and ran down a residential street, “screaming bloody murder and banging on people’s doors.”

No one cracked open a door or even peered out a window to offer help. Someone did call 911, but not before the rapist discovered Pomer, dragged her back into her car and drove off to an alley where she underwent five more hours of agony.

She was able to talk the man into sparing her life. He released her at dawn. Two days later, police say, he raped another woman. Three months after that, they say, he raped an 82-year-old woman. He has never been caught.

At first the juveniles, attired in white T-shirts and bluejeans, sat motionless as she spoke. There were no facial expressions, except when she mentioned the rape of the 82-year-old. At that, they let out a loud groan.

Then Pomer let the audience ask questions. For a few moments, no one raised a hand. Then the inquiries began.

“If you had had a gun, would you have shot him?” one asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t have a gun,” Pomer answered.

“Did this guy have any diseases?” asked another.

“I had to get HIV tested for a whole year,” she said, noting that she didn’t contract any sexually transmitted diseases.

“Do you have nightmares or have flashbacks?” one youth asked.

“I used to,” she told him. “Every night I would wake up screaming, but it has gotten better. Sometimes it is hard for me to go out by myself.”

The filmmaker, whose strength has enabled her to speak to CYA wards for three years, hopes that her talks make some of the young men think twice about the crimes they commit.

And some just may.

“I feel what she had to say was helpful to all of us here because we have to understand how much pain is caused to the victim,” said Tony, a 17-year-old ward, whose last name was not released.

“Maybe hearing what she went through will stick in our minds. Maybe the next time a girl says ‘No’ on a date, maybe someone will stop and think about that,” said Osvaldo, 23, a gang member.

Shirley Erker, in charge of the Intensive Treatment Program at the CYA facility, said she has seen young offenders cry after Pomer’s speeches.

Obviously, some kind of message is getting through, she said.

“It’s like a wake-up call for these kids,” Erker said. “Some of these kids never think about their victims.”