Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (24 page)

"Minda," the therapist interrupted, "it's okay to yell."

"But I don't hate him. I—I wish I could help him."

The counselor said she was supposed to be helping herself, not the rape doctor. "You're suppressing a lot of anger, Minda."

"Yep," Minda said. "I'm angry about my arthritis. I'm angry about my throat and my tongue and my mouth. I'm angry about a lot of other things. But ... I feel sorry for Dr. Story."

The psychologist suggested that the angers might be connected.

At the next session, they rooted around in her past. That night Minda told Meg on the phone, "The idea is to put all the blame on Mom and Dad and my crummy childhood. We didn't have a crummy childhood, did we, Meg? Gol, I enjoyed it!"

Her highly educated sister assured her that they'd had the most wholesome childhood since
National Velvet.
Minda dropped the shrink and made an appointment for a checkup with Clinton Hart-man, M.D., a young Mormon with a family practice. Her blue-green eyes rolled with fright as she walked into his examining room. "Look," she told him, "I've had some real problems with a doctor and I don't want any kinky stuff. Just tell me what you're doing before you do it and we'll both be happy."

Dr. Hartman looked puzzled, then sympathetic. "Okay, Mrs. Brinkerhoff," he said. "First I'd like to check your heart with my stethoscope." She started to unbutton, after all the years with Story, but he listened through her blouse. "Now I'm checking your knees for reflex. Now I'm taking your blood pressure. . . ."

The examination was thoroughly professional, but she never really relaxed.

One day a State of Wyoming attorney and two lawyers for Dr. Story met her in a conference room and asked a million questions about the case. She'd never heard of a "deposition," but Assistant Attorney General Kathleen Karpan, representing the Medical Board, explained that all she had to do was tell the truth. She explained that Story's lawyers had requested the session to assist them in preparing his defense, which was their right under the law.

Minda gulped when she was introduced to one of the opposing lawyers: William Simpson, son of the U.S. senator from Wyoming. She thought, A senator's son questioning
Minda
? She gulped harder when she noticed that Simpson sat silently while a young woman named Loretta Kepler asked the questions. Dean McAr-thur's children weren't accustomed to such role reversals.

Kathy Karpan had advised that the Story lawyer might take any of several approaches to pry out information. She might act dim-witted, like Columbo on TV; she might stroke Minda with friendly phrases and compliments; she might play word games to catch her off guard; she might even be abrupt and hostile.

It didn't take long to find out. The first few questions came like birdshot: What's your name? What is your address? When were you born? Where were you born?

Minda thought, Can't somebody smile around here? Her tongue and mouth still hurt from the spotting fluid. She kept trying to remember Kathy's advice, something about listening to the question and thinking carefully before answering, but her old compulsion to be heard and understood
right now
soon took over. The official transcript caught her tone:

Q And then you lived in Lovell from 1982—

A 1982 till three months ago I think because Scott graduated. Gosh, he graduated in college in '81, '82,1 don't remember. Shoot, it's been so long ago. Anyway, we were in Lovell I think nine months so it was a year and a half. I lied. Gosh, I don't know, golly . . .

Minda caught a look from the assistant attorney general and throttled down till she was asked to describe what Dr. Story had done to her. Even at her usual speed, her answer took ten minutes. When she was finished, the court reporter sighed and looked at the ceiling.

In the next siege of questioning, Minda remembered something that had slipped from her mind. Talking about one of the incidents in Story's office, she said, "I went home that time with pen marks up and down my legs."

Q Pen marks?

A Pen marks.

Q What color ink?

A I don't remember what color.

She knew it was an odd memory, but she supposed he'd kept his pens in the waist pocket of his smock. The defense lawyer didn't look too pleased that she'd remembered a detail like that.

The questioning by Kathy Karpan was more congenial, and Minda slowed down a little. The state's lawyer asked why she'd tried to keep her blouse on during Story's examinations:

A I hated laying there without any clothes on. That is the most horrible feeling. And I figured that he could either reach up down through the top or from below because for the amount of time that he spent with my breasts I was very much uncomfortable laying there without anything on.

Q Did you feel that his examination of your breasts took longer than it should have . . . ?

A That's the only guy that ever did it. In Rock Springs they didn't even check for it, so never—

Q How long do you think it took him? Was it a matter of a minute or two minutes or three minutes?

A Oh, he made sure he felt around real slow and pushed and I don't know how long it was.

She was asked about her earlier years with Story.

A ... I had an open relationship with him. We talked, we laughed, we joked. There wasn't anything, ya know, that I couldn't ask him about and, ya know. . . .

Q Would you say it was flirtatious on your part or his part?

A I never thought it to be that way on his part. And he would comment, "Oh, you came in. You sure don't look sick." And I never thought, I always thought it was because he cared. . . .

Toward the end, some of Karpan's questions turned speculative:

Q Is it possible again, Minda, and I'm trying to be most generous, is it possible that Dr. Story could have thought, "Well, you know, Minda has touched my penis a couple of times and didn't run screaming out of the room. Maybe I can try something kinky?"

A That's exactly what I thought: he was a kinky dirty old man, and when I think about it, I think that's what it was. He figured, "Well, I haven't scared her off because she was so naive." And she was. She
's
not anymore. . . .

Q In retrospect, is there anything you would have done differently?

A Yeah. I wish I would have grabbed it and hauled him out in the hall and asked him what he wanted to do now, and I didn't. I won't ever trust anybody like I trusted him. It's hard for me I think now as I go to the doctors, this is terrible. I take my kids into Dr. SetlifF. He's very nice. And I think, Gosh, I wonder if he's like Dr. Story. . . . And every doctor I see I think that, and I think that's awful, how terrible, but I won't ever send my kids in. Oh, I don't care if they're eighteen or nineteen. Their mom's coming with.

And so he scared me away from doctors. I don't trust and I won't believe. It's kinda like he's been on a God's pedestal in Lovell. With most of the people that I know in the group we're with, he could do no wrong. And that's why he was defended so much and it's like I've been asked, "He's a God-fearing man. Why would you do this?" And I thought, "Why would he do this to me?" You know. I will not put another doctor in that position again.

Q So it's had quite an impact on your life?

A Yeah. When I make love with Scott, I think of that last exam I was with him, you know, and Dr. Story was in and out real slow, and I think—anyway ..."

The court reporter's transcript noted, "Witness shakes head from side to side."

31

MEG ANDERSON

Meg felt better after the two investigators interviewed her at home in Lovell. It was the first official confirmation that the case was still alive.

In the long weeks of silence, she'd suffered from her old self-contempt. She took the blame for the scandal, told herself that she should have done something, screamed, jumped up—anything but lain there like a lump. She'd allowed it to happen, and wasn't that just about the same as encouraging it to happen?

She couldn't sort out her feelings. She still felt love for Dr. Story. He'd done so much for her family. She could still see the intensity on his face as he listened to her father's heartbeat through his stethoscope. She could still hear him in the delivery room. "Push, Meg. That's it! Oh, you're doing fine. . . . You've got a beautiful baby boy."

Sometimes she told herself she must have dreamed the incident on the examining table. She'd never seen his penis. Sure, a woman could tell, but could she be certain enough to destroy a doctor's life? She'd learned in college how tricky the mind could be. Was the whole thing an exercise in self-hypnosis?

Impossible, she told herself. I know what I felt.

But if she ever had to go before a judge or jury, would they understand? Or would they just snicker about her "black feelings" and intuitions? Sure, women knew—but did men? Wouldn't Story be judged by men?

Every day she talked long-distance to Minda. The middle child had been wise to exile herself to Gillette. The tension was building in Lovell, and the mercurial Minda might have ended up in a fistfight on the street.
Don't mess with Minda.
Meg remembered her family's watchword.

Even in church, old friends were going out of their way to show their contempt for the Brinkerhoffs and the McArthurs and the Andersons. It was the cruelest blow. She told herself, When we went into this I never thought that my own people wouldn't believe me. Why, I've never lied in my life!

She stayed home and locked the doors.

A week before Christmas, Meg and several others were deposed in a Lovell office by Assistant Attorney General Kathleen Karpan and three defense lawyers. The female of the trio, Loretta Kepler, got Meg to repeat her story as she'd told it times before. All she could remember later was that the Kepler woman wore no makeup.

DEPOSITION OF MEG MCARTHUR ANDERSON (Excerpts)

Q
(By
Loretta Kepler
) Did you say anything to Dr. Story about it [the second] time?

A No, I did not.

Q Why not?

A Would you?

Q Yes.

A Well, I congratulate you. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to believe what was happening and I certainly didn't want Dr. Story to be the one I was thinking about it.

Q Say that again.

MEG ANDERSON

A I didn't want Dr. Story to be the one I was thinking it about. . . . Q Who delivered your second child? A Dr. Wrung.

Q Did he give you a pelvic examination? A Uh huh.

Q How did his pelvic examination differ from Dr. Story's? A It only lasted for two minutes maximum. He would insert a finger to see if the head was floating, and that was all. Q And that was it? A That was it.

To Meg, the rest of her testimony seemed like a thricetold tale. How many times would she be expected to go over the same set of facts? Did they expect the truth to vary?

As she was leaving the building, Kathy Karpan told her that many others would be deposed, but their names couldn't be revealed. It seemed that the case against Dr. Story was ballooning.

32

THE RECORD

DEPOSITION OF JOHN CHARLES WELCH, M.D.

(Excerpts)

Q (By
Loretta Kepler) You
have said that you believe Dr. Story is a good doctor. Do you believe he's capable of doing these sort of things?

A I think that you're asking me to make a judgment that I really can't make, Mrs. Kepler.

Q You mentioned once that he had a split personality.

A No, I didn't say that. I said, my statement was that if he's guilty, then it has to be something like that. I don't believe he had a split personality, okay? Don't misquote me. . . .

Q Do you always have a nurse present when you do [pelvic] examinations?

A Always . . . except when I do one on my wife. Every other time, yes. Never have I ever done a pelvic examination or even continued one if [the nurse] has to leave the room. I stop and leave with her. . . .

Q (By
Kathleen Karpan) ... Is
this a policy you adopted as a result of your education at Colorado University?

A Yes. ... We had a lecture by a physician who was, I think, also a lawyer. ... He made the statement that the coming thing is medical-legally you have to protect yourself. That even in the case of a physician, if a woman were to holler rape, I didn't have a leg to stand on if I was alone during a pelvic examination. . . .

Q Doctor, aside from this practical concern about potential liability, do you believe there is an ethical aspect, too?

A Absolutely. . . .

Q ... How would you define that ethical responsibility a doctor has towards a woman patient during a pelvic examination?

A It has a lot to do with my religious upbringing, I'm sure. That is, I never see a patient totally naked, if I can help it. There's always a drape or something on her. I am very uncomfortable if I have to see a patient totally naked. I just am. . . .

Q Can you envision a circumstance where it would be appropriate for a doctor and a woman patient to engage in sexual relations in the doctor's office during a pelvic examination?