When she learned that police were finally about to arrest the man who years before had slipped into her bedroom, held a gun to her temple and raped her, Laura Neuman made a pact.
If this works out, she prayed, I will find a way to make a difference and help other people.
As it turned out, Neuman's persistence over 19 years in pressing to have her rape case solved has had a surprisingly sweeping effect.
Five years after a Baltimore man named Alphonso W. Hill pleaded guilty to raping Neuman in 1983, police charged him last week with six more sexual assaults and suspect he might be responsible for more than two dozen others in Baltimore County. The key to cracking the six new cases, police say, was a detective's recollection of a news segment about Neuman.
"I was just on a mission - for me personally - and I was just determined that my case was going to be at least reopened, if not solved," said Neuman, who went on to form a foundation that helps rape victims.
"I thought I was doing something just to make my life better," she said of pushing for her case to be solved, "and now it's helped so many other women as well. It's amazing."
As is the case for many rape victims, the trauma of the attack did not fade with time.
For nearly two decades, Neuman struggled to form close relationships. She dived into a career as a hard-charging manager of technology companies. She refused to live alone. And she routinely checked the closets and corners of her home each night - sometimes holding the butcher knife she kept under her pillow.
But much has changed for the Annapolis woman since she walked into a Baltimore courtroom Sept. 30, 2002, to confront the man who attacked her when she was 18. There, Hill pleaded guilty to second-degree rape and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Now, at age 42, Neuman is married and has two young children. She met her husband, Paul Volkman, through friends the night after Hill was first brought to court to hear the charges against him. She no longer works full time. She accepts many speaking engagements about rape and its lasting impact. And through her nonprofit Laura Neuman Foundation, she has helped rape victims across the country fight for cold cases to be reopened.
"I would say that my rape case being solved was one of the most significant events in my life," Neuman said - topped only by getting married and giving birth to her children, 3-year-old Alex and 17-month-old Avery. "It was a life-changing event."
