Gail Kaplan lived what many admirers called a fairy tale life. She had a husband and three grown children who were devoted to her, a lovely house in an exclusive neighborhood and friends all over the city. Her family's business at the Pimlico Restaurant was thriving and she relished her newest career in catering.
That was before the night of July 14, 1987, when she was beaten and brutally raped by an intruder in her secluded Mount Washington home. It was an experience that changed her life forever and disrupted the lives of other family members as well, she says.
"My children wanted everything to be the same. Everybody wanted everything to be the same, but nothing would ever be the same again," she said.
Kaplan did her best. She returned to work, underwent psychotherapy and gratefully accepted emotional and physical
support from friends and relatives.
Now, as Rape Awareness Week gets under way, Kaplan is bringing her personal struggle into the public domain. When Saks Fifth Avenue turns its Owings Mills store into a park setting May 5 for a fund-raiser to benefit sexual assault centers in Baltimore and Baltimore County, Kaplan will be standing front and center as its honorary chairman.
Kaplan has been a board member of Baltimore County's Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center for the last two years.
She hopes that addressing the issue of rape in the light of day -- or, in the case of Saks, under the bright lights of an exclusive store that caters to women of means -- will convince more people that the crime can happen to anyone anywhere and that its victims must have a chance to recover from it without suffering undeserved shame.
"I always thought that rape happened in dark alleys and bad neighborhoods, that it happened where there's crime. It didn't happen to suburban white women," said Kaplan.
"But, really, it crosses all socio-economic levels. And it affects every member of your family. You're never the same."
Kaplan's life has changed considerably since that night nearly four years ago when she was home alone and awakened by a man who broke into her house looking for money. When she couldn't produce the cash, he hit her and repeatedly raped her before running away. After the attack, Kaplan immediately phoned a neighbor, police and her husband, Lenny, who was still at work at the Pimlico.
She dutifully did what sexual assault victims are encouraged to do: She reported the crime to police, went to the designated hospital rape-care unit for an examination and, in the months to come, cooperated with police in their investigation, though a suspect was never caught. She even sought out a psychiatrist experienced in rape counseling the day after the assault.
But no amount of responsible action could prepare her for the emotional fallout she was to experience.
"I remember saying to Lenny on the way to the hospital that I understand now what Holocaust victims went through because it was the first time I'd ever been through an act so horrifying that I had a choice to block it out and not admit it was happening. The brain lets you do that."
She remembers her treatment at the hospital as "a cold, unsympathetic" experience and says she felt "like a pariah" around some acquaintances.
"Nobody knew how to react to me. And I didn't know how to react to them, either. At first, I was very infantile. I would curl up on the floor crying. I refused to wear my own clothes. And I couldn't go back home."
Her family rallied around her after the attack.
"We treated the week following my rape as a period of mourning. I didn't work; Lenny didn't work. Our children came home" from jobs in Chicago and Boston.
Kaplan and her husband lived with various friends for two months after the rape because she couldn't face returning to the scene of the attack. "Finally, I said, 'I've got to go back and try to live there.' "
But it was one adjustment she just couldn't make. They put the Mount Washington house up for sale and moved to a condominium on Canton's new waterfront. The move was not without emotional conflict. "This was where we thought we'd live the rest of our lives, where our kids thought they would be getting married," she says of the house.
About the same time, the couple sold their share in the Pimlico Restaurant and started Classic Catering. The business move, which already had been planned when the attack occurred, was still a welcome change of venue. She was eager to erase all reminders of the nightmarish incident and sank into an uncharacteristic dependence on family and friends.
"I was never really alone day or night, probably for that first year," says Kaplan. That was the worst part; I had to learn again the skills of being independent."
It was indeed an odd feeling for a woman who prided herself on independent accomplishments over the years, which included careers in speech therapy, gerontology and education before she joined husband in the family business in 1984.
Kaplan made more changes in her life last year. In March 1990 the couple opened the Polo Grill at the Colonnade, the expensive hotel and condominium complex on University Parkway. This year they expanded their catering business by merging with The Catering People. Today they live "on top of the store," as she puts it, in a Colonnade condo nine floors up.
Unlike many rape victims, Kaplan had the luxury of making major changes in her life after the attack. Some have to return to work immediately and be scrutinized by unsympathetic colleagues, or live in the place of the attack with constant reminders, sometimes with no family or community support or money for psychotherapy.
National statistics based on police reports indicate that only one in eight rapes is reported, says Bonnie Ariano, executive director of the Baltimore County Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Center. The figures simply confirm the resistance women face in coming forward about being sexually assaulted, she says.
Kaplan says it was probably her discovery of a rape support group at the SADVC in Baltimore County that helped her turn the corner in her recovery.
"I kept saying to my therapist, 'I know I'm better, but there's a part of me that needs to talk to other women who have had this experience.' "
"We started off in Towson and we moved three times because the center was so poor and it had no place to call its own. There weren't even enough chairs to sit on. There were 10 women from very different walks of life, but the common denominator was that each of us had been victims."
The upcoming Saks event, which planners hope will raise $25,000 to $50,000 from the sale of $25 tickets, will benefit counseling and educational outreach programs at the Baltimore County center and the Sexual Assault Recovery Center in the city.
Despite her progress in recovery, Kaplan says, "to this day I refer to the rape as 'my accident.'"
Kaplan finds herself living a more guarded life now.
"But you don't have control over everything in your life," she says, and something apparently unrelated can happen unexpectedly that brings it all back suddenly. Like the day last summer when, walking on the beach with her son, she overheard a voice that reminded her of the rapist's.
"Jeffrey asked me, 'Mom, is it ever over?'
"The answer is no. One of the issues you live with is that it's never gone."