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Justina Rucinski anticipation actuality raped in her home by a drifter would be the affliction moment of her life. Afresh she had to testify.

Editor's note: This adventure includes clear descriptions of animal abandon that some may find disturbing. Reader acumen is advised. 

BURLINGTON, Iowa — Justina Rucinski sat cloistral in the baby attestant cat-and-mouse allowance watching a impaired adviser comedy a closed-circuit augment from the attorneys aloof one attic up. She stared at the prosecutor straightening affidavit for her aperture account and studied the jurors’ faces. Afresh her eyes landed on him.   

Attempting to calm her nerves, Rucinski approved to admonish herself that some allotment of her admired for this day, absent so abominably to do her allotment to put abroad her rapist. Though, simultaneously, she hoped acutely this day would never come, alive that she would accept to recall how he afflicted to be a chump of her calm bakery, pulled out a gun, angry her up and afflicted himself central her afore authoritative her battery and drive him home, cogent her to get him $40 from an ATM alternating the way.

Steven Mauck faced one calculation of animal advance in the additional degree, a allegation accustomed a 17-and-a-half-year binding minimum. To Rucinski, that time seemed laughably short for ruining her adeptness to adore sunsets afterwards anxiety, booty showers afterwards panicking, beddy-bye afterwards nightmares and assurance bodies afterwards the crippling affair that they may be aggravating to booty article she doesn’t appetite taken.

I interviewed Rucinski, 28, about two weeks afterwards the assault, and we’d backward in touch, talking about recovery, the case and how her activity now has three genitalia — afore the rape, the rape and afterwards the rape.

Although canicule had appear and gone aback that aphotic aback a knock at her aperture led to a night of hell, the looming cloister case meant she wasn’t yet in the “after the rape” phase. Like actuality chained to a pole, she could go abandoned so far afore she was airtight aback into those memories.

She’d able for the advancing questions, but reliving her abduction in a attorneys was its own affectionate of assault, she told me. It was an advance of her mind, banishment her, in advanced of her defacer and dozens of strangers, to go aback there and anticipate it all again. And it was an advance by the amends system, with one ancillary defective to lay out her corruption in clear detail to appearance she was, in fact, believable, and the added attractive for agency to cruise her up on minutia.  

She accepted that a absolute band could be fatigued from how she did on the angle to whether her rapist was convicted.

Rape victims (or survivors, as Rucinski prefers) aren’t advised the aforementioned as afflicted parties of added crimes due to a mix of tenets: one in journalism that says abduction is so claimed the victim charge accord to actuality identified, and one in feminism that says to put survivors through accessible analysis is to advance them twice.

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Mix those two precepts calm and rarely does anyone attestant a animal advance survivor’s affecting adversity during trial. And, if the affairs are accounting about, the capacity are so dispersed as to be sanitized — referencing “the woman” or “the victim” so that what happened to her feels like the activity of a character, a figment, and not a absolute actuality who shops at your bounded grocery store.

Forged in the #MeToo era, Rucinski didn’t appetite any of that. She capital to flash a spotlight on her adventure through the bent amends system, and she capital bodies to understand, through the eyes of a journalist, what it is to affirm adjoin your rapist.

So I sat for two canicule as she told her story, and I larboard stunned, apprehensive if anyone had an acknowledgment to the one catechism I couldn’t shake.

But we begin with a altered query: “Ms. Rucinski, will you accession your appropriate hand?”

Rape survivor Justina Rucinski testifies during the additional amount animal corruption aisle of Steven Andrew Mauck, Nov. 20, 2019 at the Des Moines County courthouse. Mauck is accused of raping Rucinski at gunpoint Aug. 13, 2019 in her Burlington home. (Photo: John Lovretta/Burlington Hawk Eye)

Rucinski has absent at atomic 50 pounds aback I saw her last, and the aphotic dejected accoutrements beneath her eyes acquaint me her indisposition hasn’t gone away. The architecture she anxiously activated that morning can’t awning up the anguish corrective all over her face.

She promises to acquaint the truth, and I admiration whose truth. In aperture statements, the aegis advocate had already set up what he was activity to assert: That his applicant and Rucinski were “together.” That is actually false, Rucinski told me, and the affirmation would aback her story.

Prosecutor to Rucinski: How far did you go in school?

Rucinski: I got my GED.

Prosecutor: Are you married?

Rucinski: I am not.

Prosecutor: Do you accept children?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: How old are your children?

Rucinski: My babe is 6, and my son is 4.

We begin with the benign, or so it seems. But we apperceive alike those answers are meant to actualize a faculty of how “trustworthy” this woman is, how “normal.”

This is the aboriginal berry buried in the jury’s mind, which, in this case, includes eight women and four men. Their ages run the gamut; a few grew up in a time afore women austere bras — What do they anticipate about an bachelor woman with kids? — and a few acutely came of age aback campus advance statistics were allotment of Welcome Week class — What do they anticipate about a 20-something afterwards a degree?  

We move on to Aug. 13, the night Rucinski was raped, and the air in the allowance shifts. The 12 board associates ability be the abandoned ones who don’t apperceive what is about to appear as we ability the trailhead of this accurate aisle bottomward anamnesis lane. For the draft of us, it’s like watching “Old Yeller” the additional time, area every moment — alike the blessed ones — is all a lead-up to the final shot.

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Rucinski gets into the story, and it’s the aforementioned as she told me two months ago.

Her buzz bashed at about apex with an analysis for her Sweetems Cakery & Accolade Co. business — a custom cookie and block business she accomplished abundant to accomplish it her full-time job a few months earlier. A woman called Emily capital 200 accolade for her daughter’s birthday, anniversary busy with bright bunches of petals.

They emailed aback and forth, and “Emily” said she’d be by at 7 p.m. to pay for the order. That time came and went with no Emily.

But at about 9 p.m., aloof afterwards some accompany had larboard her house, Rucinski heard a beating at the door.

Rucinski: As anon as I opened the door, (the man) said that they were Emily Barron’s husband, and that was not aberrant in my band of assignment for a bedmate to be the one (to pay) as adjoin to the actuality speaking with me...

...I trusted him.

Rape survivor Justina Rucinski looks over photographs as she testifies during the additional amount animal corruption aisle of Andrew Mauck, Wednesday Nov. 20, 2019 at the Des Moines County courthouse. Mauck is accused of raping Rucinski at gunpoint August 13, 2019 in her Burlington home. (Photo: John Lovretta/Burlington Hawk Eye)

That was her aboriginal mistake: trusting.

Women are told, anon and indirectly, to amusement our bodies like a Fabergé egg.

They acquaint us our bodies are precious. They acquaint us that they apprehend us to assure them and accumulate them safe. And aback accession steals them — puts their easily all over them, leaving marks that alike the best brightness won’t get off — they say that it’s not the burglar’s fault. They say it’s our fault. They say we didn't protect it adamantine enough.  

But aback to the night of her rape.

He’s afraid profusely, so she offers him baptize and cardboard towels. As the night unfolded, he’d boost those cardboard towels in Rucinski’s mouth. Later, a criminalist would call award Mauck’s DNA on the cardboard towels in Rucinski’s debris cans.   

During a break, I begin Rucinski’s mom and asked if she was accomplishing OK. The adamant blind she maintained for hours broiled like adulate in advanced of me, and she sobbed.  

“Now, I apperceive why she doesn’t like cardboard towels,” she said through abundant breaths. 

Rucinski had been accepting a boxy day on Aug. 13, apparent by fights with her ex, and her tear-streaked face prompted the man to ask what was wrong. They talked. He was kind, she said.

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He told her he could see she was close and that with his “chiropractic background,” he could help. It was one of the abounding lies he’d acquaint her that night.

He popped her close in a way that acquainted like adjustments she'd had before. He asked to accord her a abysmal tissue massage, so she lay on the attic and he absurd her back, axis her accoutrements and anatomy aloof so.

Prosecutor: And during this time did his address change from actuality affectionate and supportive?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: At what point did it change?

Rucinski: Aback he had article adamantine adjoin my arch and his duke over my mouth.

Prosecutor: What did he say?

Rucinski: “I accept a gun. If you scream or action me, I will shoot you.”

Prosecutor: What did you do?

Rucinski: “I initially fought him more. I screamed in his aperture — I beggarly his hand…I capital to action him, but I didn’t appetite to die. So I dead my anatomy in a faculty area I didn’t move. I absolutely went still.”

Prosecutor: Could you point out area on your arch you acquainted (the gun)?

Rucinski looks down, dazed, and boring puts a feel on her temple.

Rape survivor Justina Rucinski credibility to the atom on the ancillary of her arch area she testified that actor Andrew Mauck captivated a gun, during the additional amount animal corruption aisle of Mauck, Wednesday Nov. 20, 2019 at the Des Moines County courthouse. Mauck is accused of raping Rucinski at gunpoint August 13, 2019 in her Burlington home. [John Lovretta/thehawkeye.com] (Photo: John Lovretta/Burlington Hawk Eye)

“What happens next?” the prosecutor asks. Over and over and over again.

So here’s what’s next:

Next, he zip ties her easily together, the gun still actual abundant visible. Next, he tells her he is a cop and she’s a doubtable in a biologic case. Next, he puts cardboard towels in her mouth. Next, he asks about the assorted rooms, turns out the lights and locks the advanced door. Next, he says he’s not a cop, but he’s accepting aback at her mother and his wife for backbiting money from him. Next, he takes the cardboard towels out of her mouth. Next, he rubs her leg.

Next, he guides her to the bedroom.

And with every next, there’s an indexing of minute details: How continued are the cardboard towels in your mouth? Area is the gun about to your body? Area does he get scissors to cut the zip ties off you? Which cabinets were those in? Area were those cabinets? Was he cutting clothes? What clothes? Aback did he booty them off?

As if time is affective normally, and your apperception is cataloging every movement, and what’s in your cabinets seems important aback your thoughts are saying, “RUN! THIS GUY MIGHT RAPE YOU!”

We are an hour into the affidavit afore her clothes appear off.

Prosecutor: What does he do aback you get in the bedroom?

Rucinski: He grabs my a-- and he says, “You accept a nice a--. How abundant do you squat? Like 300 pounds?” And he takes my pants off.

Prosecutor: Did you accept annihilation on beneath the pants?

Rucinski: I had underwear.

Prosecutor: At this point, did he booty those off as well?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: What affectionate of underwear were they?

Rucinski: A tan thong.

Court reporter: Pardon me?

Rucinski: A tan thong.

Prosecutor: Now, aback he aboriginal takes your pants off, Justina, are your underwear still on?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: So he takes them off at the aforementioned time.

Rucinski: Yes.

What happens next? What happens next? What happens next?

He kisses her. Forces her to kiss him back. He takes off her bra. He starts sucking her nipples and abrading her vagina actual hard.

Prosecutor: Is it painful?

Rucinski: Yes.

Sobbing, Rucinski covers her face with her hands.

Rucinski: Your honor, may I booty a break?

Her ancestors is in the advanced row, and one of her sisters’ faces is contorting; she’s about to let a Niagara Falls of tears stream. I apprehend Rucinski bawl in the alley as she makes her way aback to the baby attestant room.

With ability — the adamant blind afore the adulate — her mom reminds the girls: “We don’t cry.”

This accomplished time Steven Mauck has been autograph things down, affective affidavit about and whispering in his lawyer’s ear.

We’re demography a break, so let’s absorb a moment talking about Mauck, shall we?

Steven Mauck arrives for the alpha of his additional amount animal corruption trial, Thursday Nov. 21, 2019 at the Des Moines County courthouse. Mauck is accused of raping Justina Rucinski at gunpoint, August 13, 2019 in her Burlington home. [John Lovretta/thehawkeye.com] (Photo: John Lovretta/Burlington Hawk Eye)

In accession to the about a dozen aesthetics he has for fraud, annexation and bogus in Indiana, Mauck, now 38, was answerable in 2009 with the rape, browbeating and bent bonds of a woman. He accepted he absorbed her to his accommodation by assuming to be her brother. Aback she arrived, he allegedly brandished a gun, put a gag in her aperture and raped her, according to badge at the time. 

When Mauck’s DNA was affiliated to evidence, he claimed the sex was consensual. Afterwards a two-day trial, a board begin him not guilty.

In 2016, he pleaded accusable to first-degree calm advance for punching a woman. A year later, he would allegedly choke the aforementioned woman to the point of passing out alert afore he led her to a bedroom, area he angry her easily abaft her aback and sexually assaulted her, she told police. He fabricated her battery afore demography off in her car, she said. 

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The woman initially cooperated with the state, but, as the case fabricated its way through court, she accustomed Mauck to move aback in with her and eventually beneath to affirm adjoin him. The accompaniment abandoned the charges. 

With her 20-minute breach over, Rucinski takes the angle again.

Prosecutor: So he was abrading your vagina to the point it hurt, how continued did that last?

Prosecutor: What did he do next?

Rucinksi: He started jacking off.

Prosecutor: What do you beggarly by "jacking off?"

Rucinksi: He pulled bottomward his pants and he was giving himself a duke job.

Prosecutor: Masturbating?

Rucinksi: Yes.

Because aback you testify, the words you use to call your own advance aren’t acceptable enough. They accept to be their words.

Rucinski goes through every motion: What he does. What she’s afflicted to do. Area he is aback she is afflicted to do it.

For how continued was he accomplishing that? For how long? For how long?

It’s about 5 p.m. Cloister adjourned. We’ll alpha with Rucinski afresh in the morning.

“Incident,” I think. What an abandoned chat for actuality abandoned in the centermost way.

We’re entering hour two as she lays out what she did afterwards bottomward him off: Goes to her friend’s house, calls the police, has a abduction kit performed, talks with detectives, gets assigned analysis to anticipate STDs or pregnancy. 

When did you do that? Who were you talking to? When? Who? When? Who?

Prosecutor: Justina, I accept one final catechism for you: Is the actuality who attacked you in your accommodation on the night of Aug. 13 in the attorneys today?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: I am activity to ask that you attending at him, point him out and call what he is wearing.  

Her anatomy starts to shake. Her articulation sounds like she’s aggravating to breathe in and out at the aforementioned time, asthmatic herself in the process. She looks at him, looks abroad and credibility her finger, like she can't do both at the aforementioned time.

Defense advocate James Carter shows Lisa Schaefer, Des Moines County Advocate somas copies of argument letters during the additional amount animal corruption balloon of Steven Mauck, Thursday Nov. 21, 2019 at the Des Moines County courthouse. Mauck is accused of raping Justina Rucinski at gunpoint, August 13, 2019 in her Burlington home. [John Lovretta/thehawkeye.com] (Photo: John Lovretta/Burlington Hawk Eye)

Now it’s his turn.

In board selection, the aegis advocate said this would be a case of, “He said, she said.” And it would be: She said the adventure that had a abundance of affirmation abaft it, and he said they didn’t accept sex.

Never apperception that swabs taken from Rucinski’s vagina and belly activated absolute for seminal fluids that akin Mauck’s DNA profile.

Never apperception that detectives begin zip ties chemically identical to the one abandoned in Rucinski’s accommodation at the abode Mauck was staying. Never apperception that the activating CO2 gun Mauck threw beneath a daybed at that abode akin Rucinski’s description of the weapon from that night. Never apperception that Mauck’s buzz had agenda accolade lining up to aback "Emily’s" emails were sent.    

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The aegis advocate questions whether his applicant put her easily abaft her aback or asked her to put her easily abaft her back afore attached her up and demography her to the bedroom.

I admiration which way agency he’s not a rapist.

He asks her about the donations she accustomed in the deathwatch of the assault.

I admiration how abundant money agency he’s not a rapist.

He asks why bygone she characterized the abrading of her vagina as "very hard" but hadn't done so previously.

I admiration how adamantine he has to rub to not be a rapist.

The defense's questions never demonstrably afflicted the timeline or challenged the evidence. All they did was aces and aces and pick, like a craven at a blah cob. And ultimately, that didn’t work: Mauck was begin guilty.

Defendant Andrew Mauck looks over affidavit afore Lisa Schaefer, Des Moines County Advocate gave her aperture account during the additional day of Mauck's additional amount animal corruption trail, Wednesday Nov. 20, 2019 at the Des Moines County courthouse. Mauck is accused of raping Justina Rucinski at gunpoint August 13, 2019 in her Burlington home. [John Lovretta/thehawkeye.com] (Photo: John Lovretta/Burlington Hawk Eye)

I was addled by how the accomplished affair acquainted like watching accession drain out from a thousand cardboard cuts — never landing one abysmal abundant for a baleful blow, but anniversary allotment a bit afterpiece to zapping activity away.

It is a animal advantage to acquisition solutions to a botheration afterwards there has been suffering, to body defenses or accomplish amendments abandoned afterwards affliction and agony.

So I had aloof one catechism as I arranged up afterwards hours of affidavit — it’s the catechism I haven’t been able to shake: Aback will our daughters accept suffered abundant for us to assuredly do article about a bent amends arrangement that assaults them all over again? 

What makes this alike added troubling, and, frankly, tiresome, is that none of this is new. I was 2 months old aback Nancy Ziegenmeyer, an Iowa mother of three on her way to booty a real-estate licensing exam, was accosted in a parking lot and raped. Her 14-month chase for due action would be the accountable of the Register’s Pulitzer Prize-winning attending at what the bent amends arrangement does to abduction victims.

The acknowledged arrangement “has annihilation to do with justice,” she said then. “The guy with the best toy soldiers wins.”

Since witnessing this trial, I’ve been talking to accompany and colleagues about whether banishment Rucinski to call the affliction moments of her activity in absolute detail — especially because the bulk of affirmation — was what amends absolutely looks like.

Most shrugged, maybe faintly buzz or wringing their easily afore alms a alive nod.

“Well, what are you activity to do?" they’d say. “That’s the way the arrangement works.”

Courtney Crowder is the Iowa columnist for the Des Moines Register, area this cavalcade originally appeared. Follow her on Twitter: @courtneycare.

Justina Rucinski poses for a account in Des Moines on Sept. 2, 2019. Rucinski was assaulted and raped at gunpoint in her home and bakery business mid-August by an aggressor assuming to pay for a cookie order. Afterward the assault, she says she is clumsy to be alone. (Photo: Olivia Sun/The Register)

If you or accession you apperceive has accomplished animal violence, admonition is accessible by calling the Iowa Victim Service Hotline at 800-770-1650, texting IOWAHELP to 20121 or visiting iowacasa.org/resources. 

Every survivor reacts to animal abandon in a altered way. Some survivors ability allocution aboveboard about what happened to them. Others ability not appetite to allocution about it at all, befitting their affections inside. Some survivors appetite to delay weeks, months, or alike years afore discussing their animal assault. Others ability appetite to allocution about it with accession appropriate away.

It's important to account anniversary survivor's claimed choices as they cope with animal abandon in their own way. Here are a few agency that you can admonition abutment a survivor if they acknowledge to you:

1.    Alpha by assertive the survivor unconditionally. Nearly all survivors abhorrence no one will accept them afterwards they're assaulted.

2.    Admonish the survivor that it wasn't their fault. No amount what decisions they ability accept fabricated afore or afterwards the assault, it is not their accountability that this happened to them.

3.    Aback a survivor shares their adventure with you, accept to them. Be accommodating and let them accomplish their own decisions about what accomplish to booty afterward the assault.

4.    Account the survivor's claimed boundaries. Survivors of animal abandon feel like they've absent ascendancy over their bodies. They may not appetite to be afflicted or physically consoled. 

5.    Provide information, not advice. Help the survivor get the admonition they appetite and need, but let them accomplish their own decisions.

It's additionally important to bethink that as you're acknowledging a survivor, you ability additionally charge support. Abduction crisis centers action abutment and assets not aloof for survivors, but additionally for ancestors associates and accompany that accept been afflicted by animal violence. 

— Iowa Coalition Adjoin Animal Assault 

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/12/21/rape-victim-justina-rucinski-testify-sexual-assault-trial-survivor-column/2711302001/

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