Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb - Softcover

Lefkowitz, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375702695 ISBN 13: 9780375702693

Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

A shocking true-crime story of America's jock culture and the hidden world of unrestrained adolescent sexuality in one seemingly idyllic suburban town.

In March 1989 a group of teenage boys lured a retarded girl into a basement in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and gang-raped her. Glen Ridge was the kind of peaceful, affluent suburb many Americans dream about. The rapists were its most popular high school athletes. And although rumors of the crime quickly spread through the town, weeks passed before anyone saw fit to report it to the police. What made these boys capable of brutalizing a girl that some of them had known since childhood? Why did so many of their elders deny the rape and rally around its perpetrators? To solve this riddle, the Edgar award-winning author Bernard Lefkowitz conducted years of research and more than two hundred interviews.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Prize Finalist
An Edgar Award Finalist

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bernard Lefkowitz, an Edgar award-winning author, has written three earlier books on social issues, including Tough Change: Growing Up on Your Own in America. He teaches journalism at Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. His articles have appeared in  Esquire, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, New York, Psychology Today, Ladies' Home Journal, The Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, and  The Los Angeles Times.

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In March 1989 a group of teenage boys lured a retarded girl into a basement in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and gang-raped her. Glen Ridge was the kind of peaceful, affluent suburb many Americans dream about. The rapists were its most popular high school athletes. And although rumors of the crime quickly spread through the town, weeks passed before anyone saw fit to report it to the police. What made these boys capable of brutalizing a girl that some of them had known since childhood? Why did so many of their elders deny the rape and rally around its perpetrators? To solve this riddle, the Edgar award-winning author Bernard Lefkowitz conducted years of research and more than two hundred interviews. The result is not just a wrenching story of crime and punishment, but a hauntingly nuanced portrait of America's jock culture and the hidden world of unrestrained adolescent sexuality.
A "New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A "Los Angeles Times Prize Finalist
An Edgar Finalist

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Ros Faber* didn't want to fret about her daughter, but she felt that familiar sense of uneasiness tug at her as she saw Leslie* running down the steps in her sweats. She's home from school ten minutes and she's leaving already, Ros thought.

"Where are you going, Les?" Ros asked.

"Shoot some hoops at the park," Leslie said without stopping as she detoured into the kitchen.

Ros watched her gulp down a glass of milk. She hesitated and finally said, "You know, if you're going to be late, you must call." Leslie was expected home at 5:30 on weekdays. That would give her time to help set the table for dinner.

"Don't worry," Leslie replied impatiently. She was seventeen, and she didn't want to be treated like a little kid. "You know I always get back on time."

Carrying her basketball and portable radio, Leslie opened the front door and started down the pathway to the street. "Bye," Ros called after her, trying hard to sound casual.

It was never easy for Rosalind to let her daughter go out alone. Leslie Faber was retarded.

To someone who didn't know her well, Leslie might appear almost normal: a friendly, outgoing teenager who loved sports. But Ros knew that Leslie's condition had left her impaired in a way that wasn't always visible. A lot of what people said in seemingly straightforward conversations went over her head and she was extraordinarily susceptible to suggestion and manipulation by anyone who seemed to like her.

In a big city, Ros thought, Leslie would have been vulnerable to the predatory stranger. But in 1989 Glen Ridge, New Jersey, retained the gentility of a more tranquil age; it remained a small, picture-perfect suburb where almost everyone knew everyone else. And that's what reassured Ros Faber. Today Leslie would be shooting baskets in the middle of the afternoon in a community playground that was a five-minute walk from her house. She had played in this park all her life. The other neighborhood children knew her well. They all came from respectable, well-off families like the Fabers themselves. The homes of many of the Fabers' friends were nearby. Strangers rarely passed through the sheltered streets of Glen Ridge. What could be safer than a couple of hours of healthy recreation in Cartaret Park?

The Fabers had moved to Glen Ridge fifteen years before and had never regretted it. When they learned that Leslie was retarded, it comforted them to know that they lived in the sort of place where the strong didn't prey on the weak. For Leslie needed protection, and the cruel streets of the city could inflict terrible injuries on a defenseless child. The Fabers believed that raising their daughter in Glen Ridge would keep her out of harm's way.

It was, in fact, just the sort of lovely, peaceful suburb many Americans dream about but few can afford. Many of the houses were neat and spacious, the streets were immaculate and picturesque, the schools were good, and the values of the community, Glen Ridgers would say with pride, were solidly planted in family, country, and the free enterprise system. On days when the urban swirl seemed overwhelming, Glen Ridge was the kind of place a New Yorker dreamed of escaping to.

Only 7,800 people lived in Glen Ridge. It was the second-smallest municipality in populous Essex County, consisting of just 1.3 square miles, and you could drive from one end to the other in five minutes. Set at the crest of a gentle slope rising from Newark Bay, the town seemed little changed in 1989 from when it was created in 1895. For the people who lived there, Glen Ridge remained a secure retreat in a contentious world.

A teenager walking the cobblestoned, leafy streets of Glen Ridge couldn't help feeling secure. Tranquility was so highly valued that the entire commercial life was limited to a couple of small stores housed in a single building near the commuter rail station. Indeed, when kids complained that it was boring to live in such a small, unexciting town, parents were quick to tell them that it was precisely the pastoral peacefulness of the suburb that made it a perfect place to raise children.

With her usual exuberance, Leslie trotted the short distance to the park. She was tall for her age, broad-shouldered, and somewhat overweight. Leslie was dressed in her play clothes: a West Orange High School shirt, purple sweatpants, and red-and-white sneakers. She was very proud of the radio she carried. It was about a foot and a half long, with speakers at each end. What made it special was its color-pink. It was a pretty radio, a feminine radio. That's why she had bought it. It was important to her because she had paid for it with her own money that she had earned mowing the lawn and raking leaves for her parents. She had plunked down the $35-her savings-at Crazy Eddie's about a year and a half ago; since then, the pink radio had been her constant companion whenever she went out to play.

Her walk to the park took her along Linden Avenue past the elementary school she had attended through the fourth grade. She walked one long block and turned left onto Cartaret Street, where she entered the playground. She had taken the same walk hundreds of times in her life.

Today the weather was cool and blustery, typical of the first day of March. The park was rectangular, about three hundred feet in length. Leslie headed for the basketball court in the southwest corner. She would remember later that as she walked toward the court, she noticed a stick in the grass. It was about a foot long, smeared with mud and flecked with red paint. She picked it up and threw it a few feet away. It was nicely balanced and carried well. She thought it would make a good "throwing stick" and decided to keep it.

Directly parallel to the basketball court, on the northwest side, was the softball diamond. At the other end of the park, the southeast corner, was the baseball diamond. Six rows of wooden bleachers, where spectators sat during Little League games, looked down on the first-base line.

At the baseball diamond a bunch of high school guys had formed two lines. The boys wore baseball gloves and cleats and trailed baseball bats behind them. Leslie, who was so devoted to athletics that she divided the year by the different sports seasons, knew what was going on. The guys on Glen Ridge's championship baseball team were going to have a preseason practice session, an easy drill without any adult coaches around. Loosen up, look sharp. The stars of the high school's other big-time teams, the wrestlers and the football players, also were there, hanging out, checking out the scene. This was very cool, Leslie thought. When she had left her house a few minutes before, who would have guessed that she was headed for jock heaven?

In a bigger town or in a city, most of these guys would be considered average athletes at best. But in the insulated world of Glen Ridge, they were the princes of the playing field. And that was the only world Leslie had ever known. These were the guys who acted as if they owned the high school. More than once, Leslie overheard girls saying they'd just die if the jocks didn't invite them to their parties.

It was a tough call to pick out the leader among all these handsome, popular guys, but Leslie guessed that it was Kyle Scherzer, although he wasn't her personal, true fave. Kyle, everybody said, would probably be picked as the best athlete in the senior class. Kyle was captain of the baseball team. He and his twin brother, Kevin, were co-captains of the football team. The Scherzers lived at 34 Lorraine Street, a white shingled house adjoining the park. From their backyard it was just a step onto the grass of Cartaret. Now, as she stood on the basketball court, Leslie could see Kyle on the back deck of his house, surveying the park as though it...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0375702695
• ISBN 13: 9780375702693
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 529
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: EDITIONS GALLIMARD; ufficio.anagrafiche@meli.it; ; Via Verdi, 8.; Assago Milano; 20090; Italien