MOST DANGEROUS PLACE
"One of his best. ... Grippando gets underway with a bang and never lets up, springing a series of carefully calibrated surprises in and out of the courtroom guaranteed to catch even the canniest readers unaware." (Kirkus Reviews)
(SWYTECK NO. 13)
According to the FBI, the most dangerous place for a woman between the ages of twenty and thirty is in a relationship with a man. Those statistics become all too personal when Jack Swyteck takes on a new client tied to his past.
It begins at the airport, where Jack is waiting to meet his old high school buddy, Keith Ingraham, a high-powered banker based in Hong Kong, coming to Miami for his young daughter’s surgery. But their long-awaited reunion is abruptly derailed when the police arrest Keith’s wife, Isabelle, in the terminal, accusing her of conspiring to kill the man who raped her in college. Jack quickly agrees to represent Isa, but soon discovers that to see justice done, he must separate truth from lies—an undertaking that proves more complicated than the seasoned attorney expects.
Inspired by an actual case involving a victim of sexual assault sent to prison for the death of her attacker, James Grippando’s twisty thriller brilliantly explores the fine line between victim and perpetrator, innocence and guilt, and cold-blooded revenge and rightful retribution.
"Grippando's series featuring Swyteck gets better with each new addition, and this one did not disappoint."
- Madderly Review
"Grippando weaves a complicated but compelling plot. ,,, Readers will find themselves liking this lawyer."
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Behind the book
“Seattle Police Department, how can I can I help you?”
It was winter 2015. Had I been in Seattle, I would have dialed 911. But I was in Miami, three-thousand miles away from my eighteen-year-old daughter Kaylee. So I phoned the police department directly.
“My daughter just called me,” I said in a panic. “She was walking home to her apartment. A man stopped his car and tried to get her inside.”
“Where?”
“Queen Anne area.”
“Are you with her?”
“No,” I said, and then I rambled on with more information than was necessary. Kaylee was in Seattle and finishing high school online while sharing an apartment with a seventeen-year-old girlfriend. Both were dancers at the Pacific Northwest Ballet.
“Where is your daughter now?”
“In her apartment. I just got off the phone with her. She’s crying and really upset. I think—I’m worried she may have been assaulted.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, but she’s hysterical. Can you please send a police officer to check on her?”
“How old is your daughter, sir?”
“Eighteen. Just eighteen.”
“I can’t send anyone. If she wants to report a sexual assault, she has to call and report it herself. You can’t report it for her.”
I pleaded for a minute longer, but the decision was firm: the police would not go.
Kaylee sat alone in her apartment on the phone with her mother. I checked flight information to Seattle. Kaylee assured us that she had run, that the man had not forced her into the car—that she had not been sexually assaulted. But as parents, we wondered: was she like so many other young women who just didn’t report?
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According the Department of Justice, only one out of every three sexual assaults is reported to law enforcement. Statistically, the largest group that doesn’t report is college-aged women. The most common explanation given is fear of retaliation. Second was the victim’s belief that the police would not do anything to help.
Though my research for Most Dangerous Place began as a personal matter, it soon grew bigger. The crisis of rape on college campuses has been much in the news lately, with astounding reports that as many as one-in-four women will suffer nonconsensual sexual contact. These numbers startled me. This meant that thousands of women my daughter’s age live in fear that, if they report a sexual assault, they will be targeted again by their assailant or ignored by police. What might a woman feel forced to do in that circumstance?
My search for an answer led me to the controversial case of Norma Patricia Esparza. In 2012, Ms. Esparza—a wife, mother and respected psychiatrist living in Geneva—returned to the United States for the first time since college. She was immediately arrested and charged with the 1995 “revenge murder” of a man who had sexually assaulted her when she was a twenty-year-old student. Three things were undisputed: (1) Esparza was sexually assaulted; (2) she didn’t report it, but instead went to a campus nurse, who’d given her a “morning after” pill, and (3) Esparza’s attacker was brutally murdered. The question was, did Esparza have anything to do with it? Prosecutors maintained that Esparza was a manipulative killer who had taken the law into her own hands. Advocacy groups argued that she was victimized all over again. The truth, perhaps, was somewhere in the middle—between justice and revenge.
Quick Facts
Only 344 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police. That means about 2 out of 3 go unreported. See Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2010-2014 (2015).
Among college-aged victims, 20% of female students and 32% of nonstudents report. See Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Rape and Sexual Victimization Among College-Aged Females, 1995-2013 (2014).
The most common reason for not reporting is “fear of retaliation,” followed by a belief that police wouldn’t help. See Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010 (2013).
More than 1 in 4 female undergraduate students say they have been victimized by nonconsensual sexual contact during college. See Report on the AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct (Sept. 2015)
