Young Rape Victim's focus on recovery

Rape victim's focus is recovery

By Dong-Phuong Nguyen and Thomas French,

Times Staff Writers

Sunday, September 14, 2008
For a young woman brutally raped, beaten and left for dead in April behind a Valrico library, months of recovery center on just this: get just a little better every day.

Inside the hushed and darkened room, the girl is awake. She does not remember what happened that night outside the library. But she understands that she is now lying in a hospital, in a state of suspended possibility, floating between the life she used to know and whatever awaits her.
Her long black hair flows over her pillow, thick and shiny and meticulously combed by others. She can't speak because of the strokes that followed her attacker's efforts to choke her. But her lips sometimes move as though she is trying to form words. She can't see, either, yet her dark brown eyes are open and alert, and she turns them toward people who stand by her bed.

Teen may regain her sight