Lavinia Masters is the happiest rape victim you’ll ever meet. She says so herself.
Right now Masters has something to celebrate. Earlier this month, Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Lavinia Masters Act into law. The law bearing her name requires that law enforcement agencies test evidence collected after sexual assaults in a timely manner and extends the statute of limitations for cases with untested evidence.
The new law effectively eliminates the rape kit backlong that haunted Lavinia Masters for over two decades.
‘A systematic rape’
On July 31, 1985, Lavinia Masters was raped at knife-point by an intruder in her family’s West Dallas home when she was 13 years old. “I had no idea who it was, where he came from, or why he chose me.”
The police came to her home and questioned her and her family at the scene. All she wanted was a shower. She was covered in blood. “I'm dirty, I'm filthy, I'm a mess,” she says. “I had [what] I call a smile cut in my neck, because the knife print was still in my neck.”
The police took her to Parkland Memorial Hospital for what is now called a SANE exam, a sexual assault nurse examiner exam. This exam collects the evidence that composes a rape kit.
The hospital staff put her on a gurney in the middle of the hallway while they waited for a doctor to arrive. The police questioned her more in that crowded hallway. She felt as if they were trying to find a hole in her story. Her mom sobbed in the background.
"That is a very invasive and scary process after you've been raped. You've already been exposed once to a perpetrator, a stranger. Now you're exposed again to all these people."
Finally a male doctor came to examine her. Nurses cut and picked and probed her for what felt like days. They collected blood, semen, her clothes. All she wanted was to take a bath. She could still smell the "stench that he had" on her body.
The exam was terrifying. "That is a very invasive and scary process after you've been raped. You've already been exposed once to a perpetrator, a stranger. Now you're exposed again to all these people." For 13-year-old Lavinia, the experience was traumatizing. "It was scary, it was traumatizing and it was my second victimization."
After the exam, police took her to a relative's house in the back of the squad car. "I wanted to ride in the front seat," she says. "I felt like I was being arrested; I was a criminal."
Two police officers came to her house the next day — or maybe the day after, she isn't sure — to follow up. They brought a massive binder of photographs of men, but she didn't see her rapist among them. She thought the officers seemed frustrated with her as they left.
Masters didn't hear anything else about her case for 21 years. She always assumed the police had tried to contact her — her family had moved since then, maybe they missed a call. She was only a child, maybe the police had spoken with her mother somewhere along the line.
Twenty-one years later, Masters found out her case had been closed 72 hours after she reported the assault. The report cited "lack of evidence" as the reason for closing the case, but her rape kit was never tested.
She calls the police department's handling of the case her "systematic rape."
Recovery
It look Lavinia a long time to emotionally recover from the trauma she experienced that night.
In her early adulthood, she was angry. She didn't trust anyone — men, police, God, the world.
When Lavinia started acting out as an adolescent, her mother took her to their family's pastor. She refused to talk to him. She was too paranoid to talk to men. Since she didn't know the identity of her assailant, she thought any man she saw could be her rapist.
Her emotions would turn on a dime, and she couldn't control her anger. "People would tell my husband, 'She's sweet, but she's mean as hell.'" When she would get pulled over for speeding — not an uncommon experience given how fast she likes to drive — she berated the officers. "I can't trust my justice system. I can't trust police," she says.
She was raised in a religious household, but her faith was shaken by the assault. "I began to question my whole belief and what my family taught [me] about God. Why would he allow something like this to happen to me?"
Masters didn't trust anyone, because no one could give her an answer about her assault.
She relied heavily on her faith and her family, but she wishes she'd gone to counseling more often. "That's what I tell people now: Go to a counselor. Go sit there and talk to somebody about it."
Her family had relocated after the assault, and she hadn't returned to West Dallas since that night. On her way to a wedding about 13 years ago, it hit her. As she drove, she realized: "Oh, my God, this is West Dallas. I can't go. I can't go. I can't go."
But the tidal wave she expected never came. She felt fine. She called her mom, joyous. Her mom responded with concern, but Lavinia assured her: "Mom, I promise you I am OK. I am good. It is a beautiful day out here."
She had her power back. She was ready to pursue justice.
The second investigation
In 2005, Masters saw an ad in The Dallas Morning News for a Dallas Police Department initiative to solve old rape cases. Under the Debbie Smith Act, police had funds to test untested evidence. The police had shelves of untested evidence, but they couldn't run any tests unless victims called and requested them.
Masters called in. It took the police a few months to find her evidence among the sea of unfinished cases. Once the officer working with Masters found her evidence, he braced her for bad news: They might not find her assailant in the system, and even if they do it will be too late to prosecute.
"He said, 'You missed two statues of limitations.'" Once again, she felt responsible for the system failing her.
Police did find her assailant in their DNA database. He had spent time in and out of prison since the assault for other crimes. She doesn't bring him up when she tells her story. Masters says he became a "nonfactor" to her as soon as she learned it was too late to prosecute. His identity matters less than what she did next.
Texas has a 10-year statute of limitations for sexual assault cases, and the window for prosecuting her assailant had closed. Her rape kit sat on a shelf the whole time.
It was too late. At that moment she decided to become an advocate for other survivors. She thought, "This will never happen to another victim as long as I'm alive. This is not right. This is not fair."
The Lavinia Masters Act
In the years following the conclusion of her case, Masters became the face of a national effort to eliminate the rape kit backlog. She started with a news conference for the Dallas Police Department, urging other victims to come forward and request their evidence be tested.
Before long, she testified in front of Congress, alongside actress Mariska Hargitay, an advocate for victims of sexual violence. She spoke in South Africa. She visited the Texas Legislature more times than she can count.
Masters felt called to speak out on behalf of other survivors. "I knew God was putting me out there so I could get the exposure I needed to make sure things would happen for victims," she says.
Most news outlets don't show or name rape victims on principle, so reporters were amazed by her candor. They asked her if they should blur her face, or change her voice. But for Masters, visibility was key.
"They have to see us. Congress has to see us," she says. "Victims must take their power back. They must know how powerful they are."
Masters started working with state Rep. Victoria Neave, D-Dallas, on a bill to eliminate the rape kit backlog in Texas. Neave insisted on naming it after Masters.
At that time, there were more than 2,000 untested rape kits in Texas. Masters put a face to that number, and she showed people how damaging an untested rape kit can be to a victim.
"To take my evidence, to take my body. To me, it's more than just evidence, it's who I am. It's the way I lived. I was a happy child. I didn't know about fear. I didn't know about locking my doors," she says. "You took more than you thought you did when you put it on that shelf."
The Lavinia Masters Act passed unanimously on May 23. Masters says Neave turned to her afterward and told Lavinia it was nice working with her. Masters replied: "Working with me? Baby, this journey has just begun."
Going forward
Masters is still focused on survivors. "I want you to be empowered," she says. Masters wants to show other victims that each of them has a survivor inside of them. "Once you were here in the darkness. Now you're in the marvelous light. And, oh, my God, it's so much fun over here."
She says the Legislature needs to focus on maintaining the system they've built. She calls it preventative maintenance. It's like driving a car, she says. We need to check the oil and make sure everything is working well. We can make significant repairs when we need to, but mostly we need to focus on ensuring the system works every day.
We need to maintain this success and make sure we don't create another backlog.
"You can't stop now. You can't. There's no way you stop now. This is just one of the prizes we collected along this journey," Masters says. "I got my prize. I'm excited, but this journey does not end here."