�At the end of the day,� Miles says as he looks through me, �I know that I did something to make somebody out there just a little bit safer.�



The three of us sat at that table Monday afternoon an hour before she entered, a fitted Warriors cap on her head and a sling holding her arm in place. We all stood up when she arrived, led in by one of the staff social workers. Miles, an attorney who first became a prosecutor around the time my mother arrived in this country, stood at the head of the table, left arm extended to welcome the new arrival to sit beside him. He gave her an earnest grin, the type he always uses for complaining witness interviews.

�Alyssa. I�m glad you were able to make it. Come have a seat besides me, yeah?�

She obliges with both a nod and then a weakened smile. Miles, a native Hawaiian man of Japanese descent, pulls out her chair before turning to look across the table to Linus, another attorney.

�I�m Miles. I will be the lead prosecutor on your abuse case, Alyssa. Seated across the table is Linus � he�s another attorney here to help. If you don�t mind, he�ll be videorecording our interview this afternoon. Is that alright with you?�

She shrugs and grumbled a sullen �Okay.� before Miles continued.

�You�ve already met Cynthia,� he said with a nod to the social worker who accompanied her inside. �Oh! And this,� he says as all eyes turn to me, �is Jonathan. He�s here interning from some school on the mainland� you�ve probably never heard of it though. Harvard.� He laughed. One of those harsh, guttural chuckles you�d hear at the end of a Carlton from Fresh Prince joke. �Why he chose to come all the way out to Maui is beyond me!�

Alyssa, a native girl around my age, forced a smile as she sat down. Over the course of the next hour, I sat across from this girl and watched her tell her tale.

Her boyfriend actually sounds like an interesting guy. He�s a surfer � pretty accomplished one, even. They actually met surfing and spent most of their dates on the North Shore, surfing or hiking like weird white people do.


(For the life of me, I�ll never understand the appeal behind hiking.. �Hey guys, let�s go WALK! Uphill! It�ll be as fun as you know.. walking.. uphill.. wait, why am I doing this again?� Hiking is almost as bad as camping.)


Anyway, they dated for a month or so before they got serious. About seven weeks into exclusivity he began acting funny. He�d get real jealous when another dude would look or speak to her and accuse her of cheating. When she denied it, he would yell. When she yelled back, he punched her in the jaw and told her not to talk back.

He apologized, reminded her of all the good times, and beg her to take him back.. and she did. The next time they argued, he tried punching her again but she ducked. He ended up slugging a wall and fucking up his hand so bad that he needed a cast.

So he kicked her instead. In the stomach. Then pinned her to the ground, burying his knee deep into her sternum, and choked her with his good hand until she passed out. While she laid unconscious, he kicked her immobilized body hard enough to dislocate her arm.


When everyone left the office that day but Miles and I, I asked him what the best part about his job was.


�That�s why I do this job � we all know it ain�t for the money,� he said with another one of those Fresh Prince laughs again. I believe him. Not sure if it�s what I�ll end up doing though.

Poor girl. I'd feel really uncomfortable in that situation, it's so personal. But good for her for getting help.
Most women ignore it or leave the guy and let them get away with it. Rape culture.

I hope that guy gets his ass beat to a pulp with a hammer.

I also want drake to go away forever, god good don't shout out to him ever again.

» dont-see on 2012-07-05 08:49:36

Hiking is cool because you get to hang out with nature, and when you finish you feel really really good. So nyah.
It should be obvious why you'd want to intern in Maui...Maui is awesome. Also that sounds like a rewarding position.

re: Yes you do, admit it.
» Unicornasaurus on 2012-07-06 05:00:46

Yes apathetic and ignorant. Sigh.

Wow, you were an advocate for rape victims? That's really admirable. I respect that a lot.
» dont-see on 2012-07-06 10:30:45

Poor girl.. I hope they throw his ass in jail and they do the unmentionables to him!
» Nuttz on 2012-07-07 04:48:54

Hiking is how you get to all of the rocks that you want to measure!
» Zanzibar on 2012-07-08 05:14:18

Yeah it's just weird since he said he wanted me to be in his life still, that he still loved and cared about me (in a friend way). BLA BLA BLA.

I am just in a glass case of emotion. Unsure of what he is thinking and why he keeps flaking on giving me my stuff back when I told him I could mail shit. Boys man.
» dont-see on 2012-07-09 05:00:34

you may now read my blog post.
» dont-see on 2012-07-12 02:03:53

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