Loud in the Silence: Janine Madera's long pursuit of justice

She hears the voice.

It pierces the silence inside her head. She cannot make it stop.

"You are ugly," the voice rasps. "You are worthless. You will never be loved. You are nothing ..."

The voice is vile, scary. Imagine a monster in your ear, she said. She is now 46 years old and she still hears it almost every day. Sometimes the voice is loud, sometimes a whisper. She no longer has the ability to hear other sounds, the regular sounds in her world, the popular music on the radio she loved so much, her children's laughter, the breeze slipping through the trees or the witnesses she questions as a homicide prosecutor.

Janine Madera is deaf, due, in part, to the second of two brutal encounters with the man whose voice lives inside her head.

He sexually assaulted her at knifepoint on the Fourth of July when Janine was 10 years old. She was at a friend's house in Diamond Bar, swimming in the backyard pool when the friend and her parents left to go get fireworks, leaving her alone. She went inside and made herself a bowl of macaroni and cheese. She was sitting on the living room couch when an intruder entered through a sliding glass door.

Madera said he raped her on the living room floor, next to a coffee table on which, she remembers, was a stack of Road & Track magazines.

Madera remembers reporting what happened to several adults including people at her church, a psychiatrist and a medical doctor, but justice was never pursued. It confuses her to this day how that could be. There are days when she blames her 10-year-old self because she struggled to describe the attacker. She remembers, during the questioning, she bit her fingernails until they bled.

It kills her that she still can't remember if he was blond or if he had brown hair. In 1985, the adults around her decision not to put her through an investigation or a possible trial, for her protection, Madera said. Statistically, it wasn't an unusual decision. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center says 60 percent of rape cases are not reported to the police.

The effect of the non-reporting was severe. Madera said she felt worthless, just like her attacker told her.

What she did next tells you everything you need to know about Janine Madera, who grew up to be an Orange County deputy district attorney, one of a handful of women in county history who broke through a male-dominated hierarchy into the coveted positions on to the homicide unit.

At age 11, Janine began a relentless quest to be heard.

Видео Loud in the Silence: Janine Madera's long pursuit of justice канала Orange County Register