Jupiter rape survivor gains a national voice {HEADLINE2} Julie Weil is on a mission she couldn't imagine 8 years ago.
PrintThe first thing Julie Weil's attacker asked her was whether she believed in God.
He was driving her minivan from the church parking lot near Miami where he'd ambushed her and her two children, hitting her over the head with the handle of a butcher knife before he shoved them all into the van.
"I answered, 'Yes, I do believe in God,'" Weil said. "He said, 'Good, then you'll forgive me for what I'm about to do to you.'"
For the next several hours on that day -- eight years ago this month -- the stranger she would later know as Michael Siebert beat and raped Weil four times and forced her screaming 3-year-old daughter and 8-month-old son to watch.
Weil, who now lives in Jupiter, still vividly remembers the horror on her daughter's face. It was the image she saw in her mind when she testified before a U.S. Senate committee last month, urging lawmakers to improve the way the legal system deals with rape.
The 39-year-old mother's journey from victim to survivor has placed her in the national spotlight as an emerging advocate for thousands of women like her.
It's not a mission Weil would have imagined for herself that night in October 2002 as she lay naked, bruised and bleeding on the floor of her van back at the church parking lot where Siebert left her.
Earlier, he had found her address on her driver license and driven her by the house she shared with her husband and kids. He threatened to come back and kill them all if she went to the police.
"I felt like my life was over, like he just entirely, completely ruined my life, my children's lives, my husband's life," she said. "I didn't see any way that we would ever get out of this."
For six months as Miami-Dade police searched for her attacker, Weil lived as a prisoner in her own home. But they eventually caught Siebert, and Weil through therapy and her family's support was able to work with prosecutors over the next four years to make sure his case went to trial.
Siebert, known as the "Day Care Rapist," received seven life terms in prison plus 15 years for Weil's attack. Weil and her husband moved from the South Miami neighborhood where she'd grown up and settled in Jupiter, hoping to put the attack behind them.
But a year after the trial, just before Christmas 2007, Weil heard about the murders of 47-year-old Nancy Bochicchio and her 7-year-old daughter, Joey, outside the Town Center at Boca Raton.
Watching news reports of the murders brought back memories of what had happened to her. Because she had survived, she said, she felt a need to help other mothers stay safe.
She established the website keepingmomssafe.com and used the forum to provide advice to mothers based on what she had learned from her own case.
One lesson: Pay attention to your surroundings.
Before Siebert abducted her, she said, she was distracted and talking on the phone just before she buckled her son into his car seat. Other mothers have been abducted while changing a baby's diaper from the trunks of their cars.
Weil said she also began to realize that her case was a success story compared with those of other rape victims.
Authorities in her case vigorously pursued her attacker and eventually caught him. Her story twice appeared on America's Most Wanted, including video of Siebert as detectives arrested him.
In the hours after Weil reported the rape, detectives took her to the Roxcy Bolton Rape Treatment Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where she received a rape exam by medical staff specially trained to deal with sexual assault victims.
But in many other counties, including Palm Beach County, Weil discovered, there are no medical treatment centers similarly devoted specifically to rape cases.
Worse still, Weil says, in many other places law enforcement officers either fail to believe the victims or are otherwise insensitive.
In one Pennsylvania case, police accused a victim of lying and threw her in jail while her rapist continued to attack other women.
That victim, Sara Reedy, testified with Weil last month at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on what lawmakers called "the chronic failure to report and investigate rape cases."
Both women urged the committee to improve the system for rape victims. Among other measures, Weil supports the SAFER Act of 2010, which would create a national registry to track untested forensic evidence from rape cases.
Weil now works with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN, as a member of the group's national speakers' bureau to raise awareness of the plight of victims as they deal with the legal system and society as a whole.
When unreported rapes are factored in, only 6 percent of rapists will ever spend a day in jail, according to RAINN.
RAINN spokeswoman Elizabeth Crothers says Weil is one of 700 speakers for the organization, but Weil stands out in her determination to improve the system for rape victims.
"When we heard the (Senate) committee was meeting, I immediately thought of her," Crothers said. "It was as if that hearing was tailor-made to what she does."
Weil says her work has given her a new purpose. In addition to her testimony before Congress, Weil has worked with prosecutors and law enforcement, offering tips on how they can more sensitively deal with victims.
Weil says she doesn't see herself as a victim but as a survivor.
Her marriage survived the attack and eventually grew stronger. Although both her children suffered from the effects, they now go to school, have friends and participate in sports and other activities.
Weil says she still feels a twinge of fear every time she gets in her car. She says she doesn't think she'll ever forgive Siebert for what he did to her children more than what he did to her.
Though he's in prison for life, she says every once in a while she searches for his name on the state Department of Corrections website, just to make sure he's still locked away.
Reading the phrase "Sentenced to Life" seven times under his name still gives her the same sense of empowerment she feels whenever she speaks in public, the same sense she felt when she walked out of the courtroom after Siebert's sentencing.
"I wish I could frame that and hang it up next to my high school and college diplomas," Weil says of Siebert's sentence. "It was hard work. It was something I never thought I would make it through, but here I am, with a new purpose."
~ daphne_duret@pbpost.com
Rape statistics
- Counting those whose crimes go unreported, only one in 16 rapists will ever spend a day in jail.
* A 2010 survey showed that 66 percent of rape crisis treatment centers had to reduce their prevention education and public awareness efforts because of funding losses.
* One in 6 women and 1 in 33 men in the United States have experienced either a rape or an attempted rape.
* Seventy-three percent of rape victims are acquainted with their attackers.
Sources: National Alliance to End Sexual Violence; Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network; Florida Council Against Sexual Violence.The SAFER Act
The SAFER Act of 2010(H.R. 6085) would create a national registry to track untested forensic evidence from sexual assault cases.
Supporters say the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry would, for the first time, give policymakers accurate data about the extent of the nation's backlog of unprocessed rape kits, including evidence in possession of local law enforcement, and lead to quicker elimination of the DNA backlog.
They say it also will provide up-to-date information to victims and the public, and would establish best practices for the use of DNA evidence in rape cases.
Status: The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.,was referred to two House subcommittees on Sept. 20.
