Life After A Slasher Attack

Since February, a has cut at least nine of our girls as they shopped in local malls - stalking and marking them, like an animal.

The youngest victim to step forward – I’ll call her Jessica, to protect her privacy – is the 15-year-old sitting on my couch, sipping water, talking in a soft quiver teenage girls use before they find their strong voice.

Jessica’s story starts around 7 p.m. on March 11, when she and a couple of friends did what ninth graders do on a Friday night – sail in and out of stores in trying on outfits and sampling lip gloss.

The girls were checking out , a clothing store with good prices, when Jessica noticed a paunchy Hispanic man shopping alone, eyeballing her. She saw him again walking behind her posse as they made their way upstairs to a cosmetics store, and then for the last time when he dropped something beside her, which she stooped to pick up.

 “I’m sorry,” Jessica said, eye-to-eye with the creep, repeating her go-to phrase whenever something seems amiss. She stood up, returned to her shopping, and then sensed a burn in the middle of her left buttocks. When she reached around, she felt a tear in her black leggings, and then saw her hand was covered in blood.

By the time Jessica realized she had been slashed, the creep was long gone.

“I don’t want people to think it’s some kinda big deal, or that I’m scarred for life,” Jessica says, trying to regain that teenage balance of standing out while blending in. “I don’t need or want pity for this. It hurt. It’s over. It’s fine.”

At 15, you think life either sinks you or leaves you unscathed.

At 50, you know every event has impact; that even the slightest turn of the wheel can change your direction entirely.

During the hour we talked, Jess said five times that her attack was no big deal. And, a lot of people seem to agree.

National media calls the creep a “serial butt slasher,” because “butt” at once titillates and trivializes the attacks, casts them as a bit of local color, like Italian men who pinch tourists cooling off at the Trevi Fountain.

Internet gossip monger Perez Hilton embedded a video of the slasher in a section labeled “Wacky, Tacky & True,” as though the attacks were publicity stunts or akin to wearing white after Labor Day.

I heard an ABC reporter say “the most serious injury was actually treated with a Band-Aid,” hinting that the slashes were benign because they hadn’t opened an artery, yet.

Even though Jess covered her two-inch wound with a Band-Aid, it bled all night and should have been closed with a couple of stitches, a doctor said in late July. That's when Jess, after hearing about other attacks, worried about a possible blood infection from a dirty razor or box cutter and finally agreed to medical help.

“I was embarrassed about it,” Jess says, explaining why she didn't see a doctor or report the attack to police for four months: Her mother did contact Tysons Corner Center security soon after the slashing, but never heard from mall security again.

Most of the time, Jess waves off the attack, mock-brags that the story is trending on Twitter, laughs when friends call her a “serial butt slashee.”

“It’s better to have them think it’s a joke,” she says, “than have to explain.”

But somewhere in suburban D.C. the sadistic creep is still at large. He’s following our girls, getting his sick kicks from slicing their skin, changing their lives in incalculable ways.

And there’s nothing funny about that.

Lisa Kaplan Gordon writes every Wednesday about real life in McLean.