A 'he said, she said,' or a violent rape? What it's like to testify against your rapist.

Editor's note: This story includes graphic descriptions of sexual violence that some may find disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. 

BURLINGTON, Iowa — Justina Rucinski sat sequestered in the small witness waiting room watching a soundless monitor play a closed-circuit feed from the courtroom just one floor up. She stared at the prosecutor straightening papers for her opening statement and studied the jurors’ faces. Then her eyes landed on him.   

Attempting to calm her nerves, Rucinski tried to remind herself that some part of her wished for this day, wanting so badly to do her part to put away her rapist. Though, simultaneously, she hoped deeply this day would never come, knowing that she would have to recall how he pretended to be a customer of her at-home bakery, pulled out a gun, tied her up and forced himself inside her before making her shower and drive him home, telling her to get him $40 from an ATM along the way.

Steven Mauck faced one count of sexual assault in the second degree, a charge carrying a 17-and-a-half-year mandatory minimum. To Rucinski, that time seemed laughably short for ruining her ability to enjoy sunsets without anxiety, take showers without panicking, sleep without nightmares and trust people without the crippling concern that they may be trying to take something she doesn’t want taken.

I interviewed Rucinski, 28, about two weeks after the assault, and we’d stayed in touch, talking about recovery, the case and how her life now has three parts — before the rape, the rape and after the rape.

Although days had come and gone since that dusk when a knock at her door led to a night of hell, the looming court case meant she wasn’t yet in the “after the rape” phase. Like being chained to a pole, she could go only so far before she was snapped back into those memories.

She’d prepped for the coming questions, but reliving her rape in a courtroom was its own kind of assault, she told me. It was an assault of her mind, forcing her, in front of her rapist and dozens of strangers, to go back there and visualize it all again. And it was an assault by the justice system, with one side needing to lay out her victimization in graphic detail to show she was, in fact, believable, and the other looking for ways to trip her up on minutia.  

She understood that a direct line could be drawn from how she did on the stand to whether her rapist was convicted.

Rape victims (or survivors, as Rucinski prefers) aren’t treated the same as injured parties of other crimes due to a mix of tenets: one in journalism that says rape is so personal the victim must consent to being identified, and one in feminism that says to put survivors through public scrutiny is to assault them twice.

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Mix those two precepts together and rarely does anyone witness a sexual assault survivor’s emotional tribulation during trial. And, if the proceedings are written about, the details are so sparse as to be sanitized — referencing “the woman” or “the victim” so that what happened to her feels like the life of a character, a figment, and not a real person who shops at your local grocery store.

Forged in the #MeToo era, Rucinski didn’t want any of that. She wanted to shine a spotlight on her journey through the criminal justice system, and she wanted people to understand, through the eyes of a journalist, what it is to testify against your rapist.

So I sat for two days as she told her story, and I left stunned, wondering if anyone had an answer to the one question I couldn’t shake.

But we begin with a different query: “Ms. Rucinski, will you raise your right hand?”

Rucinski has lost at least 50 pounds since I saw her last, and the dark blue bags under her eyes tell me her insomnia hasn’t gone away. The makeup she meticulously applied that morning can’t cover up the worry painted all over her face.

She promises to tell the truth, and I wonder whose truth. In opening statements, the defense attorney had already set up what he was going to assert: That his client and Rucinski were “together.” That is categorically false, Rucinski told me, and the evidence would back 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 have children?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: How old are your children?

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

We begin with the benign, or so it seems. But we know even those answers are meant to create a sense of how “trustworthy” this woman is, how “normal.”

This is the first seed planted 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 before women burned bras — What do they think about an unmarried woman with kids? — and a few obviously came of age when campus assault statistics were part of Welcome Week curriculum — What do they think about a 20-something without a degree?  

We move on to Aug. 13, the night Rucinski was raped, and the air in the room shifts. The 12 jury members might be the only ones who don’t know what is about to happen as we reach the trailhead of this particular path down memory lane. For the rest of us, it’s like watching “Old Yeller” the second time, where every moment — even the happy ones — is all a lead-up to the final shot.

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

Her phone buzzed at about noon with an inquiry for her Sweetems Cakery & Cookies Co. business — a custom cookie and cake business she nurtured enough to make it her full-time job a few months earlier. A woman named Emily wanted 200 cookies for her daughter’s birthday, each decorated with colorful bunches of petals.

They emailed back 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., just after some friends had left her house, Rucinski heard a knock at the door.

Rucinski: As soon as I opened the door, (the man) said that they were Emily Barron’s husband, and that was not uncommon in my line of work for a husband to be the one (to pay) as opposed to the person speaking with me...

...I trusted him.

That was her first mistake: trusting.

Women are told, directly and indirectly, to treat our bodies like a Fabergé egg.

They tell us our bodies are precious. They tell us that they expect us to protect them and keep them safe. And when someone steals them — puts their hands all over them, leaving marks that even the best polish 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 hard enough.  

But back to the night of her rape.

He’s sweating profusely, so she offers him water and paper towels. As the night unfolded, he’d shove those paper towels in Rucinski’s mouth. Later, a criminalist would describe finding Mauck’s DNA on the paper towels in Rucinski’s trash cans.   

During a break, I found Rucinski’s mom and asked if she was doing OK. The iron curtain she maintained for hours melted like butter in front of me, and she sobbed.  

“Now, I know why she doesn’t like paper towels,” she said through heavy breaths. 

Rucinski had been having a tough day on Aug. 13, marked 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 tense and that with his “chiropractic background,” he could help. It was one of the many lies he’d tell her that night.

He popped her neck in a way that felt like adjustments she'd had before. He asked to give her a deep tissue massage, so she lay on the floor and he cracked her back, turning her arms and torso just so.

Prosecutor: And during this time did his demeanor change from being kind and supportive?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: At what point did it change?

Rucinski: When he had something hard against my head and his hand over my mouth.

Prosecutor: What did he say?

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

Prosecutor: What did you do?

Rucinski: “I initially fought him more. I screamed in his mouth — I mean his hand…I wanted to fight him, but I didn’t want to die. So I killed my body in a sense where I didn’t move. I completely went still.”

Prosecutor: Could you point out where on your head you felt (the gun)?

Rucinski looks down, dazed, and slowly puts a finger on her temple.

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

So here’s what’s next:

Next, he zip ties her hands together, the gun still very much visible. Next, he tells her he is a cop and she’s a suspect in a drug case. Next, he puts paper towels in her mouth. Next, he asks about the various rooms, turns out the lights and locks the front door. Next, he says he’s not a cop, but he’s getting back at her mother and his wife for swindling money from him. Next, he takes the paper 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 long are the paper towels in your mouth? Where is the gun relative to your body? Where does he get scissors to cut the zip ties off you? Which cabinets were those in? Where were those cabinets? Was he wearing clothes? What clothes? When did he take them off?

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

We are an hour into the testimony before her clothes come off.

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

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

Prosecutor: Did you have anything on underneath the pants?

Rucinski: I had underwear.

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

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: What kind of underwear were they?

Rucinski: A tan thong.

Court reporter: Pardon me?

Rucinski: A tan thong.

Prosecutor: Now, when he first takes your pants off, Justina, are your underwear still on?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: So he takes them off at the same 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 rubbing her vagina very hard.

Prosecutor: Is it painful?

Rucinski: Yes.

Sobbing, Rucinski covers her face with her hands.

Rucinski: Your honor, may I take a break?

Her family is in the front row, and one of her sisters’ faces is contorting; she’s about to let a Niagara Falls of tears stream. I hear Rucinski wailing in the hallway as she makes her way back to the small witness room.

With power — the iron curtain before the butter — her mom reminds the girls: “We don’t cry.”

This whole time Steven Mauck has been writing things down, moving papers around and whispering in his lawyer’s ear.

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

In addition to the about a dozen convictions he has for fraud, theft and forgery in Indiana, Mauck, now 38, was charged in 2009 with the rape, intimidation and criminal confinement of a woman. He admitted he lured her to his apartment by pretending to be her brother. When she arrived, he allegedly brandished a gun, put a gag in her mouth and raped her, according to police at the time. 

When Mauck’s DNA was linked to evidence, he claimed the sex was consensual. After a two-day trial, a jury found him not guilty.

In 2016, he pleaded guilty to first-degree domestic assault for punching a woman. A year later, he would allegedly choke the same woman to the point of passing out twice before he led her to a bedroom, where he tied her hands behind her back and sexually assaulted her, she told police. He made her shower before taking off in her car, she said. 

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The woman initially cooperated with the state, but, as the case made its way through court, she allowed Mauck to move back in with her and eventually declined to testify against him. The state dropped the charges. 

With her 20-minute break over, Rucinski takes the stand again.

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

Prosecutor: What did he do next?

Rucinksi: He started jacking off.

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

Rucinksi: He pulled down his pants and he was giving himself a hand job.

Prosecutor: Masturbating?

Rucinksi: Yes.

Because when you testify, the words you use to describe your own assault aren’t good enough. They have to be their words.

Rucinski goes through every motion: What he does. What she’s forced to do. Where he is when she is forced to do it.

For how long was he doing that? For how long? For how long?

It’s almost 5 p.m. Court adjourned. We’ll start with Rucinski again in the morning.

“Incident,” I think. What an empty word for being violated in the deepest way.

We’re entering hour two as she lays out what she did after dropping him off: Goes to her friend’s house, calls the police, has a rape kit performed, talks with detectives, gets prescribed treatment to prevent STDs or pregnancy. 

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

Prosecutor: Justina, I have one final question for you: Is the person who attacked you in your apartment on the night of Aug. 13 in the courtroom today?

Rucinski: Yes.

Prosecutor: I am going to ask that you look at him, point him out and describe what he is wearing.  

Her body starts to shake. Her voice sounds like she’s trying to breathe in and out at the same time, choking herself in the process. She looks at him, looks away and points her finger, like she can't do both at the same time.

Now it’s his turn.

In jury selection, the defense attorney said this would be a case of, “He said, she said.” And it would be: She said the story that had a mountain of evidence behind it, and he said they didn’t have sex.

Never mind that swabs taken from Rucinski’s vagina and abdomen tested positive for seminal fluids that matched Mauck’s DNA profile.

Never mind that detectives found zip ties chemically identical to the one discarded in Rucinski’s apartment at the place Mauck was staying. Never mind that the high-powered CO2 gun Mauck threw under a futon at that place matched Rucinski’s description of the weapon from that night. Never mind that Mauck’s phone had digital cookies lining up to when "Emily’s" emails were sent.    

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The defense attorney questions whether his client put her hands behind her back or asked her to put her hands behind her back before tying her up and taking her to the bedroom.

I wonder which way means he’s not a rapist.

He asks her about the donations she received in the wake of the assault.

I wonder how much money means he’s not a rapist.

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

I wonder how hard he has to rub to not be a rapist.

The defense's questions never demonstrably changed the timeline or challenged the evidence. All they did was pick and pick and pick, like a chicken at a corn cob. And ultimately, that didn’t work: Mauck was found guilty.

I was struck by how the whole thing felt like watching someone bleed out from a thousand paper cuts — never landing one deep enough for a fatal blow, but each slice a bit closer to zapping life away.

It is a human prerogative to find solutions to a problem after there has been suffering, to build defenses or make amendments only after pain and agony.

So I had just one question as I packed up after hours of testimony — it’s the question I haven’t been able to shake: When will our daughters have suffered enough for us to finally do something about a criminal justice system that assaults them all over again? 

What makes this even more troubling, and, frankly, tiresome, is that none of this is new. I was 2 months old when Nancy Ziegenmeyer, an Iowa mother of three on her way to take a real-estate licensing exam, was accosted in a parking lot and raped. Her 14-month search for due process would be the subject of the Register’s Pulitzer Prize-winning look at what the criminal justice system does to rape victims.

The legal system “has nothing to do with justice,” she said then. “The guy with the most toy soldiers wins.”

Since witnessing this trial, I’ve been talking to friends and colleagues about whether forcing Rucinski to describe the worst moments of her life in explicit detail — especially considering the scads of evidence — was what justice really looks like.

Most shrugged, maybe faintly sighing or wringing their hands before offering a knowing nod.

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

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

Get help

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, help is available by calling the Iowa Victim Service Hotline at 800-770-1650, texting IOWAHELP to 20121 or visiting iowacasa.org/resources. 

How can I help a survivor?

Every survivor reacts to sexual violence in a different way. Some survivors might talk openly about what happened to them. Others might not want to talk about it at all, keeping their emotions inside. Some survivors want to wait weeks, months, or even years before discussing their sexual assault. Others might want to talk about it with someone right away.

It's important to respect each survivor's personal choices as they cope with sexual violence in their own way. Here are a few ways that you can help support a survivor if they disclose to you:

1.    Start by believing the survivor unconditionally. Nearly all survivors fear no one will believe them after they're assaulted.

2.    Remind the survivor that it wasn't their fault. No matter what decisions they might have made before or after the assault, it is not their fault that this happened to them.

3.    When a survivor shares their story with you, listen to them. Be patient and let them make their own decisions about what steps to take following the assault.

4.    Respect the survivor's personal boundaries. Survivors of sexual violence feel like they've lost control over their bodies. They may not want to be touched or physically consoled. 

5.    Provide information, not advice. Help the survivor get the help they want and need, but let them make their own decisions.

It's also important to remember that as you're supporting a survivor, you might also need support. Rape crisis centers offer support and resources not just for survivors, but also for family members and friends that have been affected by sexual violence. 

— Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault