Rape Reminder (21 years later)

Yesterday evening, I got a call from a City of Austin worker, asking if I was the person who had a rape case from 2000 (and she gave the case #, which I assume was correct). I hesitantly said yes... She was calling to tell me that the DNA test taken at the time did indeed show a match with the guy whom I said had raped me.

The odd thing is: Back in 2000, the guy (who had told me where he worked, which is where the police picked him up the next day) never denied having sex with me; he just denied that it was rape. So of course the DNA was going to match. No one, not even the rapist, even questioned that it was his DNA... (The Grand Jury that I testified before, all 65+ years old, dismissed the case. The prosecuting attorney later told me that they didn't understand why I would have a man that I barely knew over to my apartment. They didn't get the gay scene; I'd told the guy I met that evening at a gay club that I was gay, and he'd told me he was gay---I thought inviting him over to do some coke was safe.)

When I first heard what the city worker was calling about, I assumed that she was about to say that the guy had been arrested again for rape (or worse) and that they needed me to testify about a pattern of behavior, or something! But no.

(And how in the world did she get my phone number? I didn't get my cell phone with my current number until 2007, 7 years after the rape.)

Hearing from this woman wasn't traumatic or anything (not to downplay rape, but this particular event didn't even mess with my mind that much---at the time, I'd felt a thousand times more traumatized by my female ex's then-ongoing emotional abuse), but just a bit...odd.

I wonder if, because of all of the recent #MeToo stuff, the liberal City of Austin didn't suddenly order a re-opening of all rape cases dating back for dozens of years. And then forgot to ask the case workers to actually pay attention to what they were telling the women they called. (In my case, the DNA wasn't initially in question, so why call me and tell me about it? If they'd read the case paperwork, they would have known this.)

My 2000 rape, while not horribly "traumatic," was indeed disturbing and creepy. A bad memory of a bad time in my life. Very odd that a city official would call me up after 21 years and remind me of it.