YOU ALWAYS THINK THAT IT CAN'T HAPPEN TO YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW

I met Tara in grade school. She was a very lively curly blonde headed rambunctious girl who had the same love for horses that I did. She was always nice to everyone and she had a lot of friends. It was her personality and our enthusiasm for horses how we came to be best friends.

We would always sit next to each other, play games together during recess, and on the weekends she would come with us up to our lake cabin where we would spend our time having fun boating, swimming, and riding the neighbors welsh ponies.

When we got into middle school I only had one class with her so we didn't see each other much; but I always looked forward to science class because I knew I would see her and we would talk about our day and what was going on and even sometimes make plans to visit each other over the weekend.

After one year at middle school our family moved to Churchs Ferry and I attended Leeds Public School. Tara was still back at the middle school in Devils Lake so we would call each other now and then or write letters. After a while there wasn't so many phone calls and the letters stopped.

I ran into Tara's mother today at the Wal-Mart and I was shocked at what she had to tell me.

Tara is now living in Woodbury, MN not far from St. Paul and it working for Target Corporation doing horticulture work. Tara found a condo that she liked and moved into it on Fathers Day of 2004. That day she called home to wish her father a happy fathers day. Her father wasn't in when she called so she told her mother that she was going to go out for a jog and call back later.

Tara went jogging on a path right across from her condo that went through a nice park. There were tons of people out enjoying the day. She passed by a gentle man playing catch with a football and gave him a quick smile and kept going. Not too much longer down the trail the gentleman with the football passed her.

When she got farther down the trail, the trail left the open area of all the park and went into a wooded area. Tara was going to go jogging through it but a sixth sense kicked in and told her not to go through it so she turned around to jog back to her apartment.

Right after she turned around someone grabbed her shoulders from behind and pulled her down into a ditch. The man that grabbed her started punching her in the face and was shouting at her, "shut the fuck up you stupid bitch" as Tara kicked and screamed with all her might to get away from the guy. As she was fighting she realized that it was the gentleman with the football that she had passed earlier.

Tara finally started screaming loud enough that people started running to help her and the guy took off running. No body from the park was able to catch him.

She was taken to the hospital and the guy had broken Tara's nose, dislocated her jaw, and both her eyes were black and swollen. Since she got a good look at the guy earlier before he attacked her she was able to give the cops a good description of him.

The cops found the man the next day and had even found a pair of his shorts in the bushes that he planned on changing into after his intended rape.

Tara wrote a letter to the judge and even went to court for his trial. The guy only served 18 months in jail opposed to a full 7 years which is the maximum sentence. He had also committed another rape earlier but no one could positively identify the man so he never served time for that.

Poor Tara is still afraid of men except for family and her close friends. She can't go anywhere without someone being with her and she never puts herself in a situation where she can not see anyone coming up behind her. This attack totally changed Tara's personality and who she was. She was also afraid that since he was out of jail so soon that he would come back for her.

Tara has since moved and is doing better but still is causious around men. The guy that attacked her is back in jail serving his full 7 year sentence because he broke probation.

I feel just terrible for her. She was the sweetest, kindest person that I knew and I just can't believe that something like that happened to her.

She is going to be home in July for a friends wedding so I hope to see her then. Her mother also gave me her email address so I am going to write to her and hopefully we can start up our old strong friendship again.