Leigh Collins
Victim Impact statement 2021

I'd like to thank the court for giving me the opportunity to speak today. I'd like to thank the DA, ———, for being a warrior for me, and getting us through to this point with years of tireless hard work. I want to say thank you to Detective ———, for all that he's done for me, my family, and always being a champion for us. And I'd like to thank my family for being here, and their support, which I wouldn't have made it here without. 

You already know the story of what happened. You already know the man was Rashad Harris. You already know how we moved from Point A to Point B, who said what to who, how the knife was big enough to carve a turkey on Thanksgiving, how he ran and has never expressed concern, remorse or recognition of the pain he caused.

I won't go over that again and waste the court’s time. What I do want to express to the court is that it didn’t end there, as most stories don’t. It got harder, and in new ways. Surprising ways. And took 100 times the fight I had in me that night to live through. I want to share how it felt, after.

I remember being wheeled from the ambulance into the double doors of the ER that night, after I pleaded as hard as I could to the firefighter next to me to tell me the truth about whether or not I was going to live or die. ‘You’ll live,’ he promised. ‘You will.’

As they wheeled me over concrete, up the ramp and through the double doors into a narrow hospital hallway, I remember seeing a man sitting outside in a wheelchair. ‘What the hell happened to her?’ he shot over to his companion as they rushed me past.

This vantage point was new, sitting up high on a gurney, still no agency over my movements as I was moved from place to place. The first room off of the hallway was empty—a few ambient lights on, no people inside.

As we continued forward past a second room in the nighttime ER, I took note of this room so extraordinarily lit up, so bright…and as we wheeled closer I was terrified by all of the eyes —wide and waiting — that peered out of that light room, a dozen or so people crowded around an empty bed waiting for someone in need of that many people, that much care. I sighed with relief as we continued past, worried for the person who would occupy that room—but at that same moment they reversed the gurney, cut the angle, and turned me into the room destined for someone hurt real bad. The fear that was in my stomach jumped to my throat. ‘This room is for me,’ I thought, and braced myself for all the hands that would touch me and wide eyes that would now focus exclusively on saving me.

All seemingly 35 people crowded around me, but they concentrated the nicest, warmest, most assuring faces around my head. As white-coated strangers poked and prodded and skimmed my body, I heard them start to cut off my clothes; the sound of the heavy sheers laboring through the thickness of the sweatpants I had pulled on to shield my should-be-asleep body from all of the eyes I knew I would encounter between my dark bedroom and the safety of a brightly lit hospital. I remember them telling me that someone was going to stick two gloved fingers inside my anus, checking for a spinal injury, and bracing myself for that while a social worker named Ruth with a clean, brown haircut brought a phone to my ear to hear the voice of my mom, which I remember over the hospital phone I couldn’t hold felt so very far away…like a recording played into a microphone. I remember Ruth keeping it short, and trusting in her expertise, only getting out the words ‘Hi mom, I love you,’ before Ruth disappeared, phone to her ear, into the sea of bodies to my right and out into the glaring glow of the open doors to the hallway. I wondered if that man in the wheelchair at the doors was a regular, just having a smoke.

I focused on the nurses above my head; the one with curly hair…light with brown undertones, and tortoise statement glasses flecked with green that I liked very much. She hovered above my head with 2-3 others, all women. All coo-ing, all reassuring, all ‘You’re so strong, we’re so proud.’ They talked about margaritas and normal things and their daughters and they calmed me. One nurse waited hours until she caught a moment alone with me in one of my many hospital beds, after the fussing had subsided, my face and hair and body still bloody and my eyes still moist and wide, like a deer. She told me she had been attacked and raped in her twenties, or maybe it was her daughter…I’ve heard so many stories since it happened it’s hard to keep them all straight. She said she wished she’d fought back when it happened to her, or her daughter. Maybe I wonder if it was her daughter because of the way she looked at me—with a heart broken already before but beaming with pride for this time seeing primal justice served; ferocity and fragility brimming just beneath the tears about to spill over. I still hadn’t seen my mom.

~

The first realization I had that this circumstance I’d awoken to would try, tear and decay my relationships was maybe…my third day in the hospital ? It’s hard to remember…my hair was so balled and gnarled, pulled back in the same fashion it had been that night. The same messy bun he had pulled tight and pushed me forward with, soaked through every follicle and dried with the blood that had covered every inch of my face from — I was going to call it my head injury…from the two entry points where he had stabbed me, cutting through hair and skin until he hit the skull and then doing it again. All that blood was still knotted and twisted and scratching at my skin through my tangled, wild hair, and it was bothering me. 

I remember asking a friend that had come to visit the hospital to help me. “Can you help me fix my hair?’ I asked, ‘it’s scratching me.’ I wanted to do it myself but couldn’t for the 12 lb. cast that encapsulated and protected my left arm and newly repaired fingers. She delicately stood up, afraid of hurting me, and took the knots and tightened them into a tighter bun.

Realizing the immediate relief this gave me and also that this was the best I would get, I asked if she would help get all the blood out of my eyebrows. I could feel the blood caked in there, too, where the two bushy strips had done their best to stave off all that they could for my eyelashes; the last lines of defense between the pouring blood and my eyes that I needed to fight that night. She looked at me, terrified; got up again and came back with an origami-like fold of paper towel and a tiny plastic cup of water, gently dabbing the pointiest corner of the folded paper into the cup, allowing it to saturate to the desired dampness, then raised it to my eyebrow, dabbing at the tips of the short, ash-brown hairs and pulled away, settling back into her seat…a green chair the hospital made available for guests.

I remember feeling a rage boil inside me. ‘You have to do it HARDER!’ I hurled at her, and felt the burn and sear of internal rage flowing through my stomach, into my chest, up my esophagus, and into my wild survival brain. ‘YOU HAVE TO SCRAPE. LIKE THIS!’ I wretched at her, grabbing the tiny origami paper towel away and using it to drag the long tendrils of thick, dried blood I scraped from my eyebrows — curls and flakes of burgundy coming loose with every drag.

I remember her eyes. Looking up at her. And I remember seeing her just one more time after that before she said ‘This is too overwhelming for me, I can’t.’ She had just gotten back together with an old boyfriend and had to finish planning a trip to Europe she was taking later that month. ‘Did I want to go ?’ I remember her asking one day, weeks later, while I was driving around with my dog and a backpack of clothes, looking at apartment after apartment after apartment — a new home — clad in the only clothes I carried with me…a single pair of black jeans, a grey tank top I bought at the Target near the hospital, and heavy black boots in what I had deemed my new uniform: safe, uninviting, easy to fight in, invisible. I remember looking at the text about going on a European vacation and putting the phone down, face down, on the seat next to me, and never looking again. 

~

I proceeded to lose several more close friendships and relationships as family and friends had to back to their work, their normal lives and the shock of not knowing what to go back to began to set in. 

I tried going to back to my apartment on 5th Street after I was released from the hospital; at the time having nowhere else to go, really. The hotel that owned the building had put up four fog lights above both my windows; they were so bright, casting a sick yellowish-green, like the light before a tornado. I knew their presence indicated a before and an after.

My family and a friend did their best to try to make it seem like normal; we ordered a pizza, threw down blankets and watched movies. But I never stopped being aware of the eerie yellow light saturating the perimeter of the space — illuminating entry points, weak spots…revealing four vulnerable bodies inside. 

As I laid awake in my bed I assured myself that my step-dad, 6’ 8” and sleeping in the next room, would rip off anyone’s arms if they tried to come in and hurt us. The friend next to me, sleeping soundly, surely wouldn’t mind a tangle with anyone who tried to come in uninvited.

I laid in bed awake all night anyway, staring at my illuminated bedroom door, coming up with plans and alternate plans for how I would protect them. I worried because I was so tired; I knew I would move slow…with my arm in a cast and feeling so drained…so weak. I never stayed in that apartment again. 

~

PTSD comes with behavior, emotion, other diagnoses. I struggle in some of those instances to understand the survival advantage to this but, nonetheless, it seems to be prevalent enough to be well-documented, observed, studied and shared. 

My PTSD came with self-harm in the form of banging my head, physical twitches, lapses in time/flashbacks, confusion, distortion, dissociation, floating above myself and observing myself, passing myself in the mirror and not knowing who I am, denial, minimizing, isolating, depression, suicidal thoughts, obsessive-compulsive disorder (this has been one of the more pervasive and dangerous offshoots of PTSD that I’ve experienced), panic attacks, melancholy, extreme rage, terror, distrust, hyper-vigilance, new beliefs about men, humanity and what’s safe, how to be prepared, anorexia — I remember splitting one breakfast sausage per day with my dog, wishing my body would finally just disappear. My body that had saved me…yet I was so mad at it for being different and broken, foreign to me. Not mine anymore. I’d never experienced an eating disorder before. 

~

My understanding of PTSD set in over months. I didn’t know it happened that way. It was like with every crack in the earth, my mind began to push every button in the control room to see what would bring a reality I knew back into our present. The hold I had — and we all take for granted — on who I was, where I was, if I was alive, if I was dead, why is this happening to me, when can I go home…took hold of me and cracked one night a couple of months after the attack, the night Rashad broke in and took my reality away from me. I was walking down the stairs at a friends’ house — the girlfriends I still have that you’ve seen come with me here throughout the trial —and they were letting me stay temporarily in whatever room was vacant while I searched for a new home with my dog every day. They were out on a weekend night and I was alone at their apartment, a familiar place to visit but not a familiar place to stay. As I plodded down the carpeted stairs I remember fixating on a tiny string of paper flags near their front door; colorful, cute. My mind flashed back to another time I had been there — or maybe an imagined time — staring at this 2 1/2 foot string of tiny paper flags. My mind imagined it was daytime and there was a friendly group outside, laughing and playing games. “Why isn’t —— here?’ I wondered. —— hadn’t lived there for years. As this flash of disreality and imagined normality dissolved as quickly as it came, I descended back into an even darker, even emptier apartment. I looked down at the dark black stains on the medium brown carpet of my friends’ stairs and started banging my head against the iron banister. BANG — to get it out of my head; BANG — to get a grip on reality; BANG —to wish I could go back to my old life; BANG — to remind you that you’re here, now, this is real. 

I started banging my head all the time with my open hand, my fists; I’ve broken glass on my head, at home where no one could see. I broke a curling iron over my head, banging it as hard as I could until it broke apart, then started banging on the stone of the bathroom vanity. I would bang my head against the driver’s side window as I drove to PT appointments. I read once that banging your head is a symptom of PTSD. Again, I don’t understand, evolutionarily, why. I don’t know anyone else that does it. I just know that I do it. It happens when I have flashes — confused, unreal. The flashes only last a minute or two. But the world is always darker, lonelier, more confusing when they end. Which reality is real ? For some reason banging my head reminds me which one is real with the urgency I need for the moment. In the moments I fear I’ve really lost my mind.

~

I didn’t think after the hospital that my injuries were really that bad; I mean, objectively, they were, but feeling-wise up until that point I was uncomfortable and sore, but in my mind getting stabbed would be excruciating, continuous hot searing pain. I thought maybe I was tough, extra tough…X-Man tough, the first week in the hospital. And then it changed.

I remember sitting in the surgeon’s office, after the copious painkilling, nerve-dulling, anxiety-reducing, muscle-relaxing medications had begun to dwindle. Sitting completely erect in my grey Target tank top, feeling tears stream down my face as I sat, waiting for the doctor to enter. My mom sat by my side, afraid to speak as she knew the response would be a soundless dropping of hot tears, a clenched jaw, and frightened big eyes that fixated from one randomly selected point in the room to the other — I concentrated on outlining the shapes of the big blue letters of the medical poster to not focus on the deep shrieks of agony I wanted to scream out…but couldn’t in front of my mom. 

My left hand was on fire. Someone had poured gasoline on it and just struck a match. With each pump of my heart and cycle of my breath, someone would run the whole sequence through again 1…fire. 2…fire. 3…fire. Each second, each half of a millisecond, I was aware of every nerve ending in my damaged fingers and hand sounding a 10-bell alarm that this body part was currently engulfed in a blue flame. That was the hot part. Then there was the crushing thud; the pound that came when the sensation I felt could only be equated to being slammed in a car door. Fire-car door. Fire-car door. Pain. Pain. I could hardly speak. 

The doctor told me it would be better for me to stay off the pain meds, as they were the strongest, most powerful, and highly addictive. I struggled to imagine living in this pain for longer than another 45 seconds. 

I think he saw the terror in my eyes, breaking from the safety of the focal point on the poster, tears ripping down in panic, fear…I don’t remember thinking any words. Just pain. Just fear. He leveled his eyes to mine.

“There will be nights that you will not sleep from the pain,’ he told me, his eyes trying to impart some strength in this new expectation of life. For some reason, knowing that agony was part of the plan was a comfort to me. 

I remember the nights of not sleeping, days of not eating, not moving. Sitting up, awake at night, my only thoughts were ‘pain, pain, pain, pain.’ On some days, I couldn’t talk. I remember my step-dad pleading with me to eat something…to say something. ‘You’re scaring your mom,’ he said. ‘You have to say something.’ I tried to part my lips to say something to tell them I was going to be okay, but my top lip wouldn’t leave my bottom lip. It felt like the only sound I could make was ‘Puh,’…which now I realize was the beginning of the only thing I could think of…‘Pain.’ I tried acupuncture. I tried melatonin for sleep. My mom kept me on a regular cycle of acetaminophen and ibuprofen. But it all felt like throwing water onto a house fire. 

~

Sometimes now I become aware that my fingers are stuck inside their new skin. A panic will rise up in me, a boundedness, similar to claustrophobia, and I’ll feel like my fingers are stuck in a skin straight jacket and want to get out. I’ll flex them and pull on them and to try to get them straight, get them to move, and comfort them with my touch. It feels like they’re panicking, my fingers. ‘Free us,’ they scream. ‘We’re stuck like this and we just want to work right and be beautiful and be the way we were!’ I’ll stroke them until they calm down, and I’ll run my fingers over the zig zag outlines of the scars that go from the tops of my fingers, through the nail of my pinky, and snake all the way down to the inside of my palm. The ‘burn skin,’ as they call it…all crepe-y, thin-looking, like paper. Not supple and full, like the skin on my other hand. Damaged. My tiny, curled, shy pinky that always feels cold as ice to the touch. My tiny pinky — too small to operate on — now tucks her head into my palm next to her bigger, stronger sister, my left ring finger locked at an angle under layers and layers of rock-hard scar tissue. They take care of each other now. I stroke them and breathe, and eventually, we all calm down.

~

My greatest lingering fear that continues to plague me is the moment I realized that I was alone. Staring at the wall of my bedroom, imagining the front door on the other side of that wall; imagining the police kicking as hard as they could (ONE, TWO, THREE….), my friends, my brothers, my dad; all kicking and knocking the whole wall down to come extract me from this dark room and this nightmare I didn’t believe was happening. To pull me up and out of this room into a sea of never-ending loving arms to hold me and forever put distance between me and him. 

But as I stared at the wall that night, I came to the cold realization that no one is coming. That ice still sits at the base of my spine, and every so often sends a sharp chill to remind me. ‘No one is coming for you.’

I would imagine many people come to understand this as it’s powerful, and ultimately, we do all go to our maker alone.

But that’s not what the movies tell us. That’s not what books tell us. That’s not what our moms and dads — if we’re lucky — tell us about how the world works. Someone always bursts through the door to the rescue. I remember the way I felt before I realized no one was coming for me and I long for it. That safety, that comfort…that hope. 

That realization turned me into a warrior…yes. When faced with what I perceived as a certain emotional death and a probable physical one I weighed my options and made the choice that living a life without arms is still living a life. In that split second in the dark I said goodbye to my arms, as I was sure I would have to keep coming at him until there was so much blood and carnage that he no longer wanted to rape me. Would that stop him, I wondered? I gambled that night, and hoped. 

~

I used to stare at doorways a lot. Mirrors with reflections in the dark. I count entry points everywhere I go…I don’t sleep on the ground floor or post pictures of where I am. I refused to ride in Ubers for a while and now share my location when I ride, after my experience and hearing so many terrible others. I noticed that after the verdict was read I stopped being afraid of the mirror shadows. The first night after I caught my reflection, realized I wasn’t afraid, and I laughed at myself. 

~

I don’t know why he came in through my window that night. One thing I’ve been too afraid to think about is being hunted; watched for weeks, months, years prior to the event. I’ve avoided thinking about it like the plague. I can’t think about it because I don’t want to recategorize all of my happy memories as moments when I was prey; replay and obsess over memories when maybe I should have been more guarded, dressed differently, acted differently, to avoid being targeted and hurt. I want my memories from before this to stay gold, rosy, and just mine. No one else’s. 

~

I am very afraid that at one point in the future he will get out and blame me for all that’s happened to him. He’s blamed me for stabbing him, which I did not, blamed his being caught on dropping his phone on my bedroom floor while we fought, expressed outrage at the consequences he’s already faced, and tried to pretend that he was insane, incompetent and unable to stand trial. Tried to intimidate me on the stand to stop talking, scare me out of testifying by disrupting, challenging, demanding that I pull down my shirt and show him my scars. All to get out of it, not take responsibility for it. I’m not without empathy for Rashad, and I have an internal journey to not harbor hatred or anger. But these are the things that I know.

~

I know I covered some of this in my testimony, but I want to give my impression of Rashad that night, in my own words, because I think it’s important for the court. He was excited…nervous maybe, but calm. Not yelling, not incoherent, not wild or out of control. Nothing he said, yelled or whispered that night was out of left field, out of context or jarring. Every sentence followed the other in a structure. Even a drunk person has trouble staying on an even thread, dialing up or dialing down as needed to accomplish the task at hand.

His task was to frighten me — make me docile, make me cooperative — make me complicit through fear into executing his vision. He whispered to me how he would fucking kill me…a chilling thing to hear when in a dark room with a much larger stranger who you don’t yet understand the motivations or capabilities of. 

He gave me hope in asking if anyone would be back and when, a boyfriend. ‘He plans to leave,’ I thought. ‘Be as cooperative as you can — give him the things that he wants so he’ll go.’

He made me stand and lay vulnerably, outstretched, belly and breasts up, while I cried. Sobbed. I was begging. Pleading for my life…I have never been more afraid. He enjoyed me crying, sobbing; snot and tears and begging so much that it made him erect, made him want condoms, made him want to insert himself into me.

A creature at their most terrified, desperate, that nature tells us to take pity on — a deer wounded in the woods, a dog by the side of the road…we can all see the eyes of a creature who fears that death is only moments away. We all know what it would take to look into those eyes, listen to those whimperings, and feel excited to inflict and induce more. 

To cut that animal, with no regard for its beauty, its life…its deepened fear or its survival; to beat it, to leave it for dead when it seemed too hard to kill. 

I don’t know why Rashad was in my apartment that night, or why he picked me. But that was my experience with him that night, and the ripples that night has had into subsequent years after.

I love who I am now, not because of what he did to me but despite what he did. The woman you see before you is entirely new. 

I know I can endure excruciating physical pain. I know I can watch my mind break apart and put it back together again. I know I can be stripped of my home, my job, my savings, my identity, my everyday life and comfort and rebuild. I can heal. And I am now undeniably, unbelievably stronger. I fought hard to come back. And I’m here to say that it’s possible, but you can’t ever stop fighting. I remember imagining shoving iron bars through the chambers of my heart to keep it from collapsing. One day I won’t need to be so strong, my heart can once again be soft, and I can relax. But I’m just beginning on that journey, and have a long road ahead. 

Thank you, your honor.