Screams in the Dark

It was a cold February morning in 2002, and as usual, Melissa Brown was desperate for a fix.

She was working the corner of West 65th and Detroit. A black truck pulled over, driven by a well-muscled man with clean teeth, a flat nose, and big hands. He invited her inside.

As he pulled away from the curb, her gut told her something was wrong. But it was cold, she was high, and he looked like he could pay.

Pale and compact, Melissa has the hunched shoulders and weary eyes of a veteran of the streets. Her mouth is a firm, unsmiling line, and her left forearm bears a tattoo with a black rose, a heart, and the names of her three children.

When the man parked the car off West 77th Street, Melissa decided she'd had enough. The man came around the truck as though he were going to let her out, but as soon as he opened the door, he grabbed her by the throat.

He dragged her down a hillside, under a bridge near the railroad tracks, and started beating her. He forced her down on her knees. "Just suck my dick, bitch," he said.

She tried to fight back. That only enraged him. When the train rumbled overhead, he rammed her head against the wall, ripping out fistfuls of her hair.

As he brutalized her, she slipped in and out of consciousness. There was a blur of pain. The bitter stench of sweat. The foul taste of blood.

When he was done, he left her naked under the bridge, a crumpled condom beside her.

As Melissa regained consciousness, men with RTA badges were trying to arrest her. "Get this trash off our tracks," they said.

Her memory is fuzzy after that. She might have gone to a hospital. She definitely never called police. The rapist knew she wouldn't. "Ain't nobody gonna listen to a prostitute," he had told her.

The attack became one of the stories Melissa told her friends around the crack house. She cautioned anyone who would listen to steer clear of the muscular guy in the dark truck.

But not everyone heard her warning.

---

In early 2002, Melanie GiaMaria wasn't ready to be anybody's savior. A 25-year-old grad student at Case Western Reserve, she was simultaneously pursuing degrees in law and social work.

As part of her studies, she was interning at the Women's Re-Entry Network, a nonprofit group that helps women in jail improve their lives and stay out of trouble when they are released.

An imposing woman with a mass of curly brown hair, GiaMaria was drawn to helping rape victims, in part because of her own demons. An older relative had molested and raped her when she was a child. She volunteered at the Rape Crisis Center for years before working in the Cuyahoga County jail.

GiaMaria knew that many female inmates were also victims of sexual assault, so in January 2002, she started a support group. Within weeks, she began hearing stories about a man with a wide, flat nose, who was preying on West Side hookers.

"Emily," a former prostitute who spoke to Scene on the condition of anonymity, says that she met the rapist near West 76th Street and Lorain. He asked whether she wanted some quick money. When she agreed, he punched her in the face and forced her to lie down in an alley. The condom was already on. He choked her, then threatened to stab her in the face with a knife. "I believed he was gonna kill me," Emily says.

Then GiaMaria heard Melissa's story. Melissa referred GiaMaria to a third inmate, Laura. (Scene could not locate Laura and is withholding her last name to protect her privacy.)

Laura told GiaMaria that she had met her attacker in an alley at the corner of West 76th and Lorain. He grabbed her by the neck and ordered her to take off her clothes. He choked her until she gave him oral sex, then pulled a condom from his pocket, put it on, and raped her. "He asked me if it was just as good for me as it was for him," she later wrote in a police report.

It was clear to GiaMaria that a serial rapist was preying on West Side prostitutes. She decided to call the police.

---

Instead of going to the jail to interview the victims, the police told GiaMaria to visit the station. When she arrived, Officer Pamela Berg gave her blank crime reports for the incarcerated women to fill out.

Melissa and Laura each filled out the forms. GiaMaria photocopied the paperwork for her own files, then returned the originals to the police.

Berg wasn't in the office the day GiaMaria stopped by, so she left the forms with someone else in the department. To make sure Berg got the reports, GiaMaria called at least twice and left messages on the officer's answering machine. The calls were never returned.