Pound Pup Legacy

http://insidedateline.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/04/26/171002.aspx

Jane Doe No More: The fight against rape

by Sara James, Dateline correspondent

Jane Doe. Over my years as a reporter, I've read countless police reports about her, and always found that spare, staccato pseudonym doesn't do her justice. Is her real name Melanie or Janice or Grace?  Because behind that fig leaf of anonymity, there is a real woman: A woman whose life changed in an instant, a woman who has been subjected to violence, terror and heartache.  

The name and the anonymity are meant to protect, as a sort of verbal shield.  But sometimes it's necessary to put down a shield to fight a battle. At least, that was the case for one woman  we met.  She was a woman ready to reclaim her identity. To be Jane Doe No More. A woman named Donna Palomba.  
 
When I met Donna at lunch some months ago, I was impressed. She's a warm, dynamic woman, successful in business and clearly devoted to her husband and children. But I was also struck by her natural reserve.  She's clearly a very private person.  So why choose to go public? Why tell her story on television?  Why start a Web site called Jane Doe No More?
 
The reasons couldn't be more obvious. Strong as she is, Donna knows firsthand how devastating it is to be raped. She also knows that the aftermath -- the police, hospital, court system -- can be another ordeal. Strong as she is, she acknowledges she could have used assistance, both in coping with the emotional fallout of her attack, as well as negotiating the complicated legal labyrinth.  Donna's goal -- like most good ideas -- is both deceptively simple and potentially far-reaching.  She wants to reach the other Jane Does.  Give them the support they need.  Remind them that, while they may choose to stay anonymous, which is just fine, they shouldn't feel they must.  After all, they did nothing wrong.   They were victims of crime.   

Donna has a strong team assembled for Jane Doe No More. She also has both courage and stamina, as she has proved in the years since her attack.  I look forward to seeing all she achieves with her new initiative.  I remember a day when it was difficult to talk about breast cancer because no one wanted to mention the word "breast" in public.  These days, no one thinks twice.  I hope the day will come when no woman feels any shame about rape.  Perhaps then, there will indeed be Jane Doe No More. 

What if Jane Doe was an infant, sold to adults who condone a good rape scene, simply because no one got "seriously" hurt?  Does Rape have different meaning when it's a child, of completely different heritage, but same last name?  Is incest a Lesser Crime in danger, and damage?  What if Dateline interviewed Joel Dominquez and discussed his sex-life?  Would that be a story told in gory or glorious detail because he had sex with his sister.  The problem is, I'm almost certain, NEITHER partner would have wanted sex with eachother, had they known before-hand they were brother and sister.  Joel was put in foster-care and adopted before he ever knew he had a sister named Melissa.

News like this happens everyday for adoptees, but you don't see or hear it on Dateline, do you?

If a grown woman feels violated by a stranger's uninvited scent and physical invasion, what makes people think a child would think differently?  Is inappropriate, unwanted sex an adaptation adoptees need to accept as part of the deal between estranged parents?  I think it is.

"Strong as she is, Donna knows firsthand how devastating it is to be raped. She also knows that the aftermath -- the police, hospital, court system -- can be another ordeal. Strong as she is, she acknowledges she could have used assistance, both in coping with the emotional fallout of her attack, as well as negotiating the complicated legal labyrinth.  Donna's goal -- like most good ideas -- is both deceptively simple and potentially far-reaching.  She wants to reach the other Jane Does.  Give them the support they need.  Remind them that, while they may choose to stay anonymous, which is just fine, they shouldn't feel they must.  After all, they did nothing wrong.   They were victims of crime."

Too bad there's no mention if Donna was adopted, like so many millions of adopted females raped each year by strangers called Family, or Friends of Family.

I wonder, how many Mothers would want their babies raped by the law, then by strangers, then by The Authorities, all over again?  Such is the reality for a child adopted by Mistakes, Over-Sights, and "the exception" to high standards of  the baby-trade-and-exhange program Adoption has become these days.   A Normal American Woman has the option to hide her identity in a court of law if a crime was committed against her.  An adopted female had that identity stripped by the courts before the actual attack.  Identity becomes a moot point then, doesn't it?

But this is about Donna's Jane Doe's... not the ones I represent.  Sorry.  I'll shut-up now.