It is late on a Saturday night and you are at a bar having drinks with someone who appears to be a nice guy. He is an assistant soccer coach and studying industrial design at UIC. You go to another bar with him have more drinks then share a cab ride home to your Bucktown apartment.
You arrive at your apartment and invite him in for another drink, but when you say it is time to call it a night he doesn't listen. Instead the guy who was so charming one minute threatens to kill you and sexually assaults you.
You see an opportunity to escape and you take it. You run out the door of your apartment and start screaming for help. He charges after you, grabs you by the ankles, drags you back into your apartment, and chokes you unconscious.
A neighbor hears your scream and calls the cops, who arrive just in time to arrest your alleged assailant as he is leaving your apartment. You are taken to the hospital where you are treated.
If only this were just a story. Unfortunately it isn't. Several news outlets including the Chicago Tribune reported the story. On Sunday, Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas set a $750,000 bond for Michael Giffin, who continues to assist the UIC team and coach youth soccer, according to prosecutors.
Why would any woman invite a stranger into her home?
1) He may have appeared like a very nice guy. Ted Bundy came across as a very nice guy until he wasn't.
2) She may have had too much to drink and wasn't thinking clearly. Alcohol is the original date rape drug. It makes it much harder to think clearly and evaluate potentially dangerous people and situations
3) He may have been very good at using boundary-lowering techniques to put her at ease. One of these goes something like this: "I will just stay for one drink and then I will leave. I promise."
In the book "The Gift of Fear" author Gavin De Becker describes this technique in his list of tactics someone might use to persuade a potential victim to allow him or herself to get into unsafe situations with someone they do not know.
The victim paid a terrible price for letting her alleged attacker into her home, but hopefully after reading this, you will avoid having the same thing happen to you.
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