Hours after John Corrick Jr. raped a young woman at knifepoint in his Beaverton apartment, she dialed his number. It was just after 2 a.m.

"I'm scared to talk to you," he said.

"Why?"

"I'm afraid you're at, like, the police station or something."

She wasn't. But she was at the hospital, her clothes sealed in bags, skin swabbed for DNA, physical exam completed.

Corrick had reason to be afraid. His victim was with police. They were listening to his every word.

***

Most rape cases don't go like this one. National statistics show the majority of sex-crime victims never report to police. Fewer than 1 in 10 rapes are prosecuted and 3 of 100 rapists ever go to prison, according to an analysis of U.S. Department of Justice data by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Authorities say the crimes go unreported for a variety of reasons: Victims worry they didn't do enough to prevent the crime, they won't be believed or they'll face retaliation. In cases where drugs or alcohol were present, victims worry they'll get in trouble with parents or police.

And when victims do disclose, it's usually well after the rape. In the passing hours, days, weeks -- or longer -- between the offense and report, the links between suspect and crime weaken. In many cases, the physical evidence washes away. The memories cloud. The suspect's defense builds.

***



Corrick's victim was a 19-year-old woman hired weeks earlier at the store where he worked.

A customer complained about her and she was fired Sept. 21. It was Friday.

Corrick, 23, and his victim were both dating other people; Corrick's girlfriend had just had a baby. He and his victim were acquaintances with no romantic connection, but they were becoming friends. That Friday, he invited her over to smoke pot at his apartment.

After having dinner with her dad, she decided to hang out with Corrick.

Her account of that night comes from police reports and an interview with The Oregonian.

He gave her a tour of his apartment and lit up some synthetic weed. They smoked it in the living room. She told him she wasn't feeling well.

She thought about leaving as she fixed some tea in the kitchen. Corrick grabbed her from behind, with one arm around her neck, a knife in his other hand. She felt the blade touch her neck as he pushed her into the bedroom.

He laid her facedown on the bed and pulled down her Nike athletic pants and underwear; her favorite blue tank top and sweatshirt stayed on. His weight on top of her, one arm still around her neck, he raped and sodomized her. He told her she was good.

She told Corrick to stop several times, but she worried her pleas and tears might encourage more violence. Before long, she stopped talking. She tried to be quiet; she tried not to cry.

Her awareness of the knife never left. At times, she tried to pull away from him but his grip on her neck tightened in response.

When he was done, she asked if she could use the bathroom, leaving the door open as she went.

He lay on the bed staring at her.

Over and over, he talked about her going to the police and him going back to prison. Corrick had been to prison before for property crimes.

He stuck some chew in his mouth.

"I'm going to enjoy this," she recalls him saying. "Because I'm going to prison."

She told him she needed to go home. Scared and starting to cry, she drove back fast. He immediately began calling and texting her.

***

Phone call: "I am so sorry," he said.

"I was seriously convinced that you were gonna kill me, the way you had that knife to my throat."

"I would, I, I told you I'd never hurt you."

"But, you don't understand how that looked to me. You seriously caught me off guard."

"I know. I know I did. I know, I know, I know. I cried myself back to sleep. When I got home I didn't know. ... I'd never done that to nobody. I am so, I am so sorry."

***

Rape statistics

12 percent

of rapes lead to arrest

9 percent

of rapes lead to prosecution

5 percent

of rapes lead to felony conviction

3 percent

of rapists go to jail

73 percent

of sexual assaults are perpetrated by a non-stranger

38 percent

of rapists are a friend or acquaintance

13 percent

of sexual assaults involve a weapon

1 of 6

women in Oregon has been the victim of rape

Sources: Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence, Domestic Violence Resource Center

Corrick's victim experienced some of the same concerns that keep many victims from reporting. She felt stupid for hanging out with Corrick alone. She worried he would try to hurt her after she turned him in. Her fear of people blaming her for the rape persists.

Corrick was always nice and friendly to her at work. But she still feels responsible for becoming his target.

She couldn't see the knife when it was against her neck, but she felt it. And as he dragged her from the kitchen to the bedroom, she says, she began blaming herself. She shouldn't have been there alone with him, she thought. She shouldn't have let herself be so vulnerable. She should have listened when another coworker told her Corrick was a bad guy.

She left the scene racked with regret but knowing she had to call police. She wasn't thinking about an invasive hospital exam or testifying in front of a jury. She wasn't worried about whether her family -- or anyone else -- would believe her.

Telling the police was instinct.

***

The 19-year-old drove straight home and went to her mom's bedroom. Her mom woke to her daughter choking on words.

"He what?" her mom asked.

"He raped me," the daughter cried. "John raped me."

The teen dropped to the floor. She was hysterical, her mother recalls. She didn't look like herself.

The daughter told her mom to call 911. Her mom was already calling.

Police and paramedics arrived. The young woman didn't know Corrick's last name or address. She couldn't remember the route to his apartment.

But as she told her mom, the paramedics and a police officer about that night, her phone kept buzzing. It was Corrick.

Police identified him through phone records, which led them to his address. The victim remembered the vehicle he drove that night -- a silver Jeep. It was registered to his address in his girlfriend's name. Police pulled up a DMV photo identified as Corrick's. It was him.

Beaverton officers drove by Corrick's apartment and spotted the Jeep outside.

The woman went to the hospital. Her mom followed. Her dad met them there.

***

Phone call: "Baby," Corrick said.

"What?"

"You didn't deserve that. Nothin', there's nothin' that you've done wrong. There's nothing that you could have done different, absolutely nothin' that you did that caused this. It was abs -- absolutely nothin'. I am so sorry."

***

At the hospital, a nurse completed a rape kit and noted rectal tearing and bleeding during the woman's exam.

Meanwhile, Beaverton Police Detective Mark Kirlin told her parents that if she was willing, police would record a conversation between her and Corrick. They would prepare her first with questions and statements she might say. If Corrick confessed, police could arrest him that night.

She was afraid of Corrick. She thought he might try to kill her. She wanted him arrested, but she didn't want to talk to him.

The victim's mother spoke to her alone, thinking if her daughter could keep Corrick from going free, she had to do this. Her mother's persuasion worked. She agreed to call him.

In the next 11 minutes, Corrick apologized 11 times.

Phone call: "Hey," he said.

"What?"

"Please. Please, please, please, please, please accept my apology. Please. I swear to God to you, girl, I can make it up to you."

***

In the early hours of Sept. 22, Detective Kirlin went to Corrick's apartment complex. Police knew Corrick would be leaving soon for a 4 a.m. shift at the store.

The victim went home to shower. The four o'clock hour came and went. Corrick wasn't leaving. The woman worried he might be somewhere outside her apartment. The victim's mother called Kirlin. Her daughter was so scared, she said. She wanted an officer to come stay for a while. Kirlin went himself.

Four or five officers remained outside Corrick's apartment, watching the front and back doors.

Kirlin asked if the victim would text Corrick. Instead, she let Kirlin use her phone to text Corrick.

Kirlin, pretending to be the victim, replied to Corrick's texts. She was freaking out and needed to talk, Kirlin texted. She'd meet Corrick for breakfast. Corrick took the bait.

Expecting to drive a few minutes from his apartment to Denny's, Corrick left his apartment. He walked out the back door and around the building toward the Jeep parked near the front door.

***

Phone call: "I am so sorry, sweetheart," he said.

"Alright."

"So sorry."

"Fine. I'm gonna go to bed. I'll call you or text you later."

"Now I'm scared the cops or whatever are gonna show up at my work."

***

The moment the victim, her family and police waited for all night came at 5:17 a.m., before sunrise.

Kirlin sat in the living room with the victim and her mother and waited for word of Corrick's arrest.

Kirlin tuned his ear to scanner traffic.

The radio went quiet. Moments passed.

"A long time," Kirlin recalls.

He picked up his own phone and spoke to an officer at the scene.

They had Corrick in custody, the officer said.

The victim's mother remembers the detective's reaction:

"Wonderful, wonderful," he said.

The detective announced the news.

He remembers the mother's relief: "She said a prayer."

***

Corrick's arrest brought some sense of security to the victim but not closure.

Help for rape victims

Office: 503-626-9100

Crisis line: 503-640-5311

Office: 503-232-9751

Crisis line: 503-235-5333

Hotline: 1-800-656-4673

For more resources throughout the state:

503-230-1951

Office: 503-990-6541

After Corrick's arrest, while in jail awaiting trial, he solicited another inmate to kidnap his victim. His plan was for her to be kept in the woods so she couldn't attend the trial. He'd be released, he thought. Then, he told the other inmate, he'd kill her.

That inmate reported what he knew to authorities. Corrick racked up additional charges for hatching the plan. Police say this twist was rare and that after arrest, most rapists never attempt to harm their victims again.

For Corrick's victim, it was one more injury in a continually painful process. One weekend separated the woman from a late night working with police to catch her rapist and the first day of her sophomore year of college. She dropped out before the end of fall term.

For six months, she dreaded the thought of testifying at trial, afraid a jury would think she was stupid.

She started abusing Xanax and other drugs to distract her from what happened. She says she has quit.

She doesn't talk much about what happened. What she sees as her failure to avoid Corrick's attack embarrasses her.

"It's shameful. When I think about that, it's really shameful," she said. "It was my fault. Just because -- I should have known better."

She struggles with how rape is treated in public, where comedians joke about it, where high school students record and share videos of it, where it is a mere word that does not adequately describe her experience.

"I was watching something on YouTube -- a guy making fun of a rape case," she said. "That kind of scared me because there are people who look at that. A lot of people see rape as sex. They don't understand what it is. That's what I thought rape was. I thought it was sex forced on someone. I didn't realize what it does to a person."

Her parents insisted she go to one counseling session, less than a week after the rape. It didn't make her feel better, so her parents agreed she wouldn't go back unless she wants to one day. She still has days when she thinks only about what happened.

"I think over time," she said, "I'll just become less angry with myself."

Advocates say counseling can be helpful to victims, but there is no right or wrong path to recovery. Reporting -- even when it leads to a criminal conviction -- doesn't heal the victim, they say. A victim's feelings of self-blame may linger.

Corrick pleaded guilty in March to first-degree rape, first-degree unlawful sexual penetration, soliciting first-degree kidnapping and soliciting bribery of a witness. He was sentenced under a plea deal to 12 1/2 years in prison.

The victim wasn't there to see Corrick admit his crimes against her in court. She didn't want to see him.

And in his statement to the judge, Corrick made no apology. He stood before his family and his victim's parents.

When it was Corrick's turn to speak, he told the judge repeatedly, in tears, that he wasn't a bad person.

-- Emily E. Smith