The Incident
Having the act confirmed by my friends, I then asked one of my friends, Betsy, to call campus security from a phone located in another entrance to the building. There is no doubt that the masturbator could have seen where she was headed, and Anne and I began to fear for an encounter between the two of them, both moving through the same hallways. When she left to make the call, my friend and I watched her; as a result, we did not see the masturbator slip out of the building (from which there are numerous entrances and exits). We did not see him leave his spot, we did not see him ejaculate, we did not see in what direction he might have been headed. We only watched Betsy on the phone.
This latter rationale became all the more profound as we sat in the University of Chicago police station completing the reports. We learned that this man was married and had children; we learned that he was an employee of Peoples Gas and thus had access to private homes and apartments; we learned that he had no prior record for this activity but had once been arrested for marijuana possession, a dubious crime as far as I was concerned. We were assigned a court date, and we left the building convinced that we were saving our department and possibly the planet from marauding sex offenders who had little respect for the bounds of propriety and decorum.
Later that day at work I discussed the incident with my boss, who advised me not to change my phone number (an action I was considering, anticipating nights of hang-ups and incessant phone ringing) but instead just to have it unlisted. She said: “You know, I have a hard time keeping track of the phone numbers I want to remember. He could’ve already lost your number and be making another call to information right now.” Seeing this as an appropriate step to take, I called Illinois Bell, and for a fee they unlisted me.
During the lunch break we were able to talk to Officer K., who had put on a tie with characters from the Disney movie Aladdin for the occasion. He was extraordinarily helpful in explaining the process to us, and also in explaining why he was going to leave and not wait for the case to be called. We panicked! The two of us, up there alone before a mean-spirited judge who had done nothing that morning, as far as we could tell, but sigh a lot and make remarks about inattention, inadequacy, and incompetence? K. convinced us that to leave at this point would “send the wrong message” that we did not take this offense and this case seriously enough to tough it out for a few hours in a courtroom. Guilt-ridden and anxious, we decided to stay.
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What was remarkable about this first court appearance was our anger in the face of this initial continuance. Considering what was to happen, this first delay should have made us understand how the whole process worked and what we should expect. In our naive and hopeful assessment of the situation, we remained convinced that this was an open-and-shut case of little import or magnitude on the scale of criminal activities. Surely a judge would see this and dispense with it accordingly. He’s just exercising his constitutional powers, we told ourselves, and as American citizens we should be grateful that the accused have this kind of protection. Or, as the judge said simply when I rolled my eyes upon hearing about the continuance, “Ladies, it’s his right.”
Court Appearance 2
