“A Centre Hall man is facing more than 1,100 criminal charges after state police said he raped a woman almost 200 times during the course of a year… Roy Arthur Chamberlin, 29, was scheduled for a preliminary hearing on charges that include rape, burglary, sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, criminal trespass and terroristic threats… The first attack happened in August 2006, when the woman drove Chamberlin to his home, where he raped her, according to the complaint. Chamberlin continued the attacks, sometimes in her home, sometimes in his, for 13 months, according to the complaint. During that time, she never told her husband or called authorities… ‘She was terrified of Chamberlin,’ police stated in court documents… The woman’s son backed his mother’s account… He told troopers he ‘used to see Chamberlin sneak in the back door’ and go to his parents’ room, police said. The youth said he could think of three occasions when he heard yelling coming from the bedroom, his mother shouting ‘get out of the house’ and ‘I’m married,’ according to the complaint. Police also interviewed a friend of the son, who told troopers that once, when he stayed overnight, he saw Chamberlin go into the woman’s bedroom and heard her screaming at him to get out, to get off her, that ‘I have two children in the living room.’ Police said the woman’s husband told them that although he noticed bruising on the inside of his wife’s legs, he never pushed the issue because he feared causing his wife stress after open-chest surgery to repair an aneurysm in May. After therapy, the husband told police he now recalls arriving home about 9 a.m. one day in June. He said he heard his wife inside yelling ‘get off me,’ ‘you’re hurting me’ and ’stop,’ according to the complaint. When the husband tried to get inside, he found a locked dead-bolt, to which he didn’t have a key, he said in court documents. So he pounded on the door. Chamberlin appeared ’surprised and terrified’ but left without incident, the husband told police. His wife was in the bedroom, ‘crying hysterically and trembling,’ he told police. But the husband said that when she wouldn’t say what happened, he didn’t push the matter due to her surgery, according to court documents.” — Centre Daily (US)

(Thanks to Walt for the link.)

By all accounts Mr. Chamberlin is a scary dude. Here is his picture. You would hesitate to say that he looks like a bad guy because, after all, looks can be deceiving. Sometimes the nicest guys look like Charles Manson wannabes and the meanest motherfuckers look like Mr. Rogers. Either way, you wouldn’t want Mr. Chamberlin sneaking into your house. Before the rape charges, he was already being investigated for arson and was sitting in the local jail on charges of attempted murder.

When you first read the headline of this story, you’re amazed by the number of rapes the guy committed. “Jesus,” you think. “This guy must have some sorta Guinness World Rape Record.” Then the amazement deflates as you realize that it wasn’t 1100 random rapes, but rather 200 rapes with 5 criminal charges per assault committed against 1 victim. That’s less impressive in purely quantitative terms, though it goes without saying that it must have been awful for one person to be subject to so many crimes.

When that first amazement abates, a new one arises: how did this go on for so long? Admittedly, the woman was afraid of a genuinely threatening individual. But it never occurred to her that the police could insulate her from any further harm? Why didn’t the son or his friend speak up? Clearly something was not right in mommy’s bedroom. And what’s dad’s excuse — he didn’t want to upset his wife after her surgery? Listen, buddy, getting raped is a lot more upsetting than being confronted with difficult questions. You half wonder if the husband condoned the rapes. He surprised the perp in his wife’s bedroom and let the guy leave “without incident?” Most husbands would have gone ballistic.

Some crimes pierce deep in a moment of time. For example, there was the Florida guy who raped an infant. It only happened once, but its loathsomeness is profound. Other crimes plow a trench through months and even years. It is impossible to say which is worse. The crime that occurs in a minute may leave long reverberations, and the victim of a prolonged crime might be able to put it behind her speedily. But when you compare the two, you understand that the first crime couldn’t have gone on for long. It was simply too injurious to be repeated. The second, however, could theoretically have been confined to a minute. Its longevity might have been cut short, and that is really the difficult thing to understand — not the perversity of the rape but its repetition in time.

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