The Story of Ms. D, My Intern and a Survivor

“The Law Stands with Victims” Series: I root for her dream of becoming an international lawyer

 

By Lee Eunui

Published: May 14, 2023

Translated by Jun Jihai

 

※Editor’s Note: This series documents attorney Lee Eunui’s legal battles on sexual violence and #MeToo cases, which have brought controversy in Korean society for the last several years. This is the final article in the series.

One evening in February 2019, I met Ms. D for the first time. With the #MeToo movement sweeping over Korean society, I had a heavy caseload and was doing many consultations with potential clients, so I was working late almost every day. Soon after we began talking, tears started rolling down her young face. Barely twenty years old, she cried during the entire consultation.

Working as an intern at my law office for the last one and a half years, Ms. D has stood with the victims in solidarity. We first met when we were hitting rock bottom, reunited while having the hardest time of our lives, and became happier day by day. Here is our story, and it's for you. ©Lee Eunui

A ‘quasi-rape’ that happened abroad and involved at least two offenders and drugging

In 2018, Ms. D, a university student, visited Europe for academic purposes and took a flight with a stopover in Türkiye on the way back home. In Istanbul, she booked a place via Airbnb for one night. The tardy host showed up late and then offered to buy her a drink at a nearby bar to apologize. There she met the host’s acquaintance, who handed her a drink that made her lose consciousness. It turned out that the drink was spiked.

It was not until the morning that she came around and became aware that she had been sexually assaulted. Despite the shock, she gritted her teeth and went to the local police station. She made a report and statement and then got a physical examination. Afterward, she got on a plane departing for Korea. At that time, she did not have enough time to report the crime to the Korean embassy, and, in fact, it never occurred to her to do so. It was after she came back to Korea that she contacted the Korean consulate in Istanbul because she could not think of other ways to get an update about the progress of the investigation on her case.

Back then, however, there were no set guidelines for supporting Korean victims who have suffered sexual violence while abroad. To Ms. D, who was already distressed by the sexual assault in Türkiye, the talks with the Korean consulate’s police attaché in Istanbul only made it worse, leaving her with more emotional scars.

What happened to Ms. D is substantially a ‘quasi-rape’ (one involving drug usage) committed by at least two perpetrators, including the Airbnb host. Even though I was not equipped with any relevant legal procedures or serviceable advice for her as a Korean attorney, she made it all the way to my office and burst into tears of frustration. The police attaché had called her and, with his voice raised, asked things like, “Did you actually see them sexually assault you? Why can’t you remember?” and even sent a photograph of the man Ms. D had specified to be the offender, with the question, “Who is he?” In response to a request for information on Turkish attorneys as she needed to hire one, he provided her a list of attorneys that was written in Turkish. Since the day of the sexual assault, she had felt lost in the enclosing fog.

I knew Ms. D must have wanted to give up many times before she met me. The very morning she opened her eyes after the sexual assault at the Airbnb in Türkiye. The moment of realization that she was running out of time to catch her plane. The moment when she stood in front of the Istanbul police station that she had found by repeatedly asking strangers. The moment of making a deposition in English to the Turkish police officer sitting across from her. She must have been wanting to forget and let go of all of that if she could as soon as she crossed the border into Korea. Nevertheless, she did not give up. She did her best. And now she was there with me, face to face.

It is a serious problem, I thought. There are probably other people who experienced similar incidents. And apparently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Korea was either not providing applicable guidelines at all or was doing it insufficiently. I realized there should be public calls for setting solid measures to support the victims of sexual violence abroad. So I connected Ms. D with a reporter from a broadcast station.

On the day the resulting report aired, I heard from the reporter about how Ms. D had been doing since we last met. In that time she had put a lot of effort into straightening things out—scouring Turkish lawyers’ websites to find one specializing in criminal cases, getting herself that attorney, and returning to Türkiye to give her deposition again. In addition, I learned that she agreed to publicize her story not just because it was important for her to resolve her own situation, but also because she wanted to protect other young women travelers, many of whom use Airbnb, from going through the same problem and getting hurt by the indifference and incompetence of Korean consulates in foreign countries. That was what I heard, on one day in March 2019.

A re-encounter with Ms. D, now accused of defamation

With that epilogue-like news from a reporter, I thought Ms. D had found an ending to her story. Until I met her again in 2020. That year, the Istanbul consulate’s police attaché, who had come back to Korea, reported Ms. D for defaming him with false information. I was baffled to meet her as the accused, not the victim. To my relief, however, she seemed far more cheerful and energetic than before. The police attaché had also filed suit against her for damages in the amount of one billion won for the harm he had allegedly suffered as a result of her sharing her story with the media.

In the resulting process, the police went so far as to summon Ms. D’s ex-boyfriend for questioning, and in general the police and the courts dug out and laid bare the history of her treatments for suicidal thoughts, trauma, and depression due to the sexual assault. The attaché also made a criminal complaint against the media outlet and filed a civil lawsuit against it, too. For Ms. D, everything was a living nightmare.

I was also worried about the litigation expenses for her. Then she said, “Ms. Lee, no worries. My mother said, ‘It usually takes hundreds of millions of won in private tutoring to get a child into the university you went to, but you never needed tutoring once. So we don’t mind spending this money.’” It lifted the burden from my heart and fueled me to work on this case with much stronger willpower.

In November 2021, the court dismissed both the criminal accusation and the civil lawsuit against Ms. D. Through the frequent visits to the police station and the court, we grew attached to each other. Ms. D was a clever, witty, delightful person with burning curiosity. All I had wished for was a quick and successful close of the case, but when the end actually came into sight, my feelings were bittersweet, thinking about saying goodbye.

I distributed a press release regarding the ruling, which received coverage by a media outlet. It triggered a journalist from a daily newspaper to reach out to us for an anonymous interview with Ms. D. She decided to do it without the slightest hesitation. It had taken two years and nine months for her to transform from the college student who wept over her victimization in front of the reporter in February 2019 into a brilliant young woman who talked about overcoming hardship and recovering with a gleaming smile on her face during the interview with the journalist.

A new ambition of becoming an international lawyer to help others like her

During a small gathering to mark the end of the case, we agreed to meet again sooner or later, but I harbored doubts about it. Then, two months later, I received an e-mail from Ms. D. Her tone was as light as if she was chattering next to me. She wrote that she was preparing for law school in the United States and insisted on doing an internship at my law office. She was determined in her writing as she was explaining her ambition of becoming an international lawyer—her vision was to stand with victims who suffer sexual violence while abroad, like herself, by providing assistance for them to make a report without any difficulties and take proper steps to deal with the problem.

I was deeply torn between yes and no. At that time, I was under attack online and offline from groups that defended (supported) sexual offenders and from the forces of backlash. So I had to be cautious about having someone join my office. Nevertheless, I was really fond of the attitude she had shown while rising to her challenges: the sexual assault and subsequent damages, and even the secondary victimization. If there was something I could do for her, I wanted to do it. So Ms. D, first a victim and then my client, became my intern.

When she asked for the internship, Ms. D said she wants to be an international lawyer who helps others who have been sexually assaulted in foreign. The photograph above shows a page of the study planner she used while preparing to get into law school in the United States. She jotted down the closing lines of the TV drama The Light in Your Eyes.

From the first day of the internship, she has never been absent and has tirelessly read thick binders of records and finished her assignments. She has followed this lawyer to a slew of police stations, courthouses, broadcasting stations, and lecture rooms with dauntless footsteps. My original expectation was three months, but she spent six months with me—and then another six months. We opened our minds and had honest conversations about what we watched and listened to, and I shared the joy and sorrow of being a lawyer, which sometimes made me feel that her positive impact on me was greater than the lessons she learned from me.

In this way, a year passed, and on the threshold of spring, Ms. D took the LSAT and started filling out application forms. Now, she has begun to receive acceptance letters from top law schools in the United States. One of them even offered a scholarship of 130 million won and wrote movingly, “We believe you will be an asset to our school.” All the tears and the pain she had to endure were paying off with the wonderful news that made us laugh.

Currently, Ms. D is still getting acceptance letters from US law schools, one by one. She has not made a final decision yet because she is still waiting for calls from some remaining schools. In September, however, she will start attending whichever lucky school she chooses. When this spring ends and summer arrives, she will leave for the United States, but instead of thinking about saying goodbye, we are happily scheming and preparing for what we will do together farther in the future. When we first met, she was having the worst time of her life, and I was going through a very difficult time in mine as an attorney. But we reunited as mentee and mentor, and now, we are moving forward together.

Ms. D, whom I feel proud of, the victims of sexual violence who are still in the course of treatment and recovery. And the youth who feel lost about what to do with their lives.

I dedicate this writing to you.

Lee Eunui became a lawyer after graduating from law school in 2014. She opened “Lee Eunui Law Firm” right in front of the Seoul High Prosecutors' Office and has been handling cases of sexual violence and sex discrimination. She is not dreaming of extraordinary justice or immersive progress in our society, but a world with common sense, a world where reasonable thoughts and discourse are valid. She has been on the frontline of a battleground for nine years as a lawyer and as a writer who has published books such as Leaving Samsung, It’s Okay to Be Sensitive, Ready to Feel Uncomfortable, and Gentle Violence.

 

*Original article: https://www.ildaro.com/9628