For a long time afterward, even after her attacker went to prison, Kathy Fick would shake when she talked about being sexually assaulted at knifepoint in her Wiltondale home on April 26, 2002. She thought about moving to Calvert County.
Over the years, Fick, a native of nearby Stoneleigh, stopped shaking. She decided to stay put and became active in local Citizens on Patrol groups. The former preschool teacher focused on her home-based design business, including painting glassware and pottery.
She said her husband, Bryan, a Mercy Medical Center administrator, and two grown sons, who were in middle school when she was assaulted — have largely put the incident behind them.
"It didn't tear apart my family," she said. "We're not that kind of family."
Fick, too, has tried to forget the past, and for the most part has succeeded. It was only when the letter came from the Maryland Parole Commission last September that she began to cry.
"And it all came flooding back," she said. "The shaking has started again."
The letter informed Fick that Morrice Smith is up for parole.
A parole hearing is scheduled for Feb. 17 at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup, where Smith, 35, has served more than 12 years of a life sentence with all but 25 years suspended.
According to the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office, Smith was charged with first-degree rape, among other charges, but pleaded guilty to a single charge of attempted first-degree rape. Fick said she agreed "reluctantly" to the plea, partly because prosecutors told her the sentence would be roughly the same, whether Smith pleaded guilty to first-degree rape or attempted first-degree rape, and partly because pleading guilty would preclude Smith from appealing his conviction or seeking a mistrial.
But in a victim impact statement that she read aloud at Smith's sentencing hearing on June 2, 2003, Fick insisted that she was raped and told Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Christian M. Kahl, "Your honor, the word 'attempted' in Morrice Smith's plea really bothers me."
In sentencing Smith, Kahl said, "This is a case of an armed, evil, psychopathic predator."
"It was 10:30 a.m., a beautiful, sunny day, people all over the neighborhood," the prosecutor, Sue Hazlett told Kahl, arguing for a stiff sentence in the highly publicized case, according to The Sun, which covered the sentencing hearing. "It's very frightening. It almost takes your breath away how bold and brazen it was."
Smith did not respond by press time to a letter from the Towson Times, seeking comment for this story. His attorney in 2003, Kenneth Ravenell, could not be reached for comment.
It's a traumatic time for Fick, 59, who doesn't want Smith to get out of prison and has spent recent months urging people and community groups to write letters opposing parole for Smith.
"I would like him in for the whole sentence, and then I don't have to worry about him," she said. "I'm asking for 25 years of peace."
She said she has requested an open hearing for the scheduled date of Feb. 17. She will be allowed to address the parole board for up to eight minutes.
"I am going to take my whole eight minutes that they give me, to say what I want to say," she said.
The Kathy Fick who opened the letter last fall was not the same Kathy Fick whose fingers bled as she tried to fight off her attacker 12 years ago.
"I've learned a lot about myself," she said. "I'm a much stronger, more confident person."
'What was he thinking?'
"Your honor, this is the second hardest day of my life," began Fick's 12-page victim impact statement that she read aloud to Judge Kahl in June 2003.
She was 46 and had just celebrated her 18th wedding anniversary as she prepared to sell her hand-painted glassware at open houses, according to her victim impact statement. She went grocery shopping and as she was unloading her car, she saw Smith, whom she did not know, park his car and casually walk down the street. Thinking he might be the door-to-door solicitor her neighborhood association had issued a warning about, she went inside her house and picked up the phone to call a friend.
She dialed the number, turned around to shut her front door and Smith was standing in the house.
"I couldn't believe that he had the nerve to just walk in," she told the judge. "What was he thinking?"
And she told the judge, "Little did I know, he had come prepared with a knife, a condom and handcuffs."
She said she fought Smith for the knife and when it fell to the floor, she kicked it away, but then he knocked her to the floor and she begged him not to hurt her.
"It makes me very angry that he made me beg for my life," she told the judge.
When it was over, she said, Smith told her not to call anyone. But she called 911 when he left and banged frantically on the front door of a neighbor, who called Bryan Fick and told him his wife had been assaulted.
"Your honor, imagine getting that phone call," Kathy Fick said.
Soon, the family was receiving flowers and cards of encouragement. Friends came to the house. Some cried.
"Then came the invasion of the news reporters ... right up to the front window," Fick told Judge Kahl. "I did not ask for this invasion of privacy. It just came with being raped."
And then came the emotional aftermath — crying, not eating, not sleeping, avoiding friends.
"It has continued through this entire year and I imagine it will continue for many years," she told Kahl. "Basically, your honor, I have been sentenced to life without the chance of parole. This will always be with me."
Mulling forgiveness
Time, acceptance and a sense of triumph have eased her pain.
"That was the best day for me, saying that [victim impact] statement," Fick said. She still relishes having looked Smith in the eyes at the sentencing hearing and telling him, "It doesn't matter. What matters is that my life will go on. I am free from you."
She ponders forgiving Smith.
"If I do, it'll be for myself, not for him," she said.
She said talking about the ordeal openly and publicly has been therapeutic. On her website's home page, she tells of the assault and states, "It is important to speak out, not only for justice but for your own healing."
These days, Fick is active in her neighborhood as chairman of Wiltondale Citizens on Patrol and a member of the Towson Area Citizens on Patrol, celebrating in solidarity with her neighbors at annual Halloween events and National Night Out activities.
"I love my neighborhood and the people in it," she said.
She is busy with her design business, which specializes in hand-painted glassware, fused glass, tins, slates, pottery and personalized gifts. In 2007, she bought several kilns, and has since bought several more.
She paints pottery and holds Paint Your Own Pottery Parties, at other peoples homes. She is also painting bowls for St. Vincent de Paul's Empty Bowls event in March to end hunger.
Her website's welcome page ends with the words, "Life is good. Enjoy!"