Liz Seccuro

Liz Seccuro is a wife, mother, and victims' rights activist who is one of the first rape victims to share her story with the country when she brought one of her rapists to justice after a long and circuitous journey. She documents her story in her 2011 memoir, Crash Into Me: A Survivor's Search for Justice.

In 1984, Seccuro was drugged and raped when she was a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Virginia. The rape was committed by a stranger and fellow student, William Nottingham Beebe, at the fraternity house Phi Kappa Psi. Seccuro has always maintained that there were possibly other attackers. The university did nothing to aid her in seeking justice and offered no official remedy, leaving her confused and lost. Despite the events of that night, she moved on and graduated four years later.

Her entire world changed when, in 2005, Seccuro received a letter of apology from Beebe in which he invited her to contact him so that he may explain what led him to rape her and, ostensibly, to help her heal. His admission came, according to Beebe, as part of his recovery in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. She began a frightening, eerie, and courageous email correspondence with him to ascertain his mental status as well as to begin to understand why he had raped her and what his life in the aftermath had been. As the email correspondence became more erratic, she contacted the Charlottesville Police Department on what she called a random "gut check" and was shocked to learn that, unlike what she and her parents had been told by University of Virginia officials in 1984, Charlottesville Police Department did indeed have jurisdiction over the fraternity house where she had been raped and that there is no statute of limitations on felony rape in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Seccuro also learned Beebe had been "tracking" her for nine years with the aid of the University of Virginia Alumni office.

At this point, Seccuro turned over the evidence and provided a statement of what had happened to her all those years ago. After a thorough investigation, Beebe was arrested in 2006. He was indicted on several felony counts after a preliminary hearing where Seccuro testified and was cross-examined in the courtroom, only eight feet away from her rapist.

In a stunning admission, Beebe pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual battery, avoiding a trial as he assisted the Commonwealth in the prosecution of other person(s) who had raped her that night.

Ultimately Beebe was sentenced to 18 months in prison, required to perform 500 hours of community service related to educating university students about alcohol abuse and sexual assault, will have two years of supervised probation, will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, and is forbidden from ever again contacting Seccuro or her family.

Seccuro now devotes a great deal of her time to advocating on behalf of rape survivors and has created a Donor Advised Fund called STARS (Sisters Together Assisting Rape Survivors) to assist all survivors of rape, sexual assault, and incest.

Seccuro's story is about her fight for justice in a cold case, the wonderful people she's met along the way, the terror involving questioning herself, and the peace she has found in the process after becoming become part of a system that does not treat rape victims with the proper care and respect. Most of all, she speaks for those who do not have a voice. This is not a story of victimization or pity, but one of strength, triumph, humor, grace and, hopefully, a story for all families who want to protect their greatest treasures: their children.

Engaging and wry, Seccuro puts a riveting but hopeful face on the devastating crime of rape and its aftermath without sparing any of the ugly details, so that others may come to "know" her as a friend.