Artis is 33, two decades past the night in 1987 when a man slipped through her window and forced himself on her. She had tried to forget that 12-year-old girl, telling herself that the bad guy was in prison and her life should go on.
Then came August. A DNA test proved that Dwayne Dail, the man she'd pointed out as her rapist so long ago, was innocent.
Now what steals her sleep is guilt. A panic she can't quite explain or temper makes her walk.
"I'd tried to block it out. I never really dealt with it," Artis said. "Now, I'm having to deal with it because I'm grown. It feels like it's happening all over again."
Though newspapers typically don't identify victims of sexually assault, Artis asked to be named. She says she's tired of acting as though her rape "was a dirty little secret."
"I was 12," she said. "I didn't ask for this to happen, but it did and it's my life."
Since her life turned on its head in August, Artis' mind had been wandering to 1987.
Artis had just started sleeping in a room of her own that summer. She'd turned 12 that spring, and her mom said big girls should sleep in their own beds. On Sept. 3, as Artis slumbered, a man crawled through her bedroom window.
Artis ran for the door. The man grabbed her from behind, sliding a knife to her neck. He told her she was pretty and that he'd seen her around the neighborhood.
He whispered he'd kill her if she fought. She didn't. She swallowed her screams.
Artis hasn't felt a part of that girl since.
"When I talk about that 12-year-old girl now, I talk like she's not me," she said.
After the rape, Artis would crawl in her mother's bed each night, refusing even to go into her bedroom. She wondered what she'd done to make the man come to her bedroom window, instead of any other girl in the neighborhood. Artis worked to avoid drawing attention to herself. She smoothed her hair back in ponytails, wore shirts that swallowed her, and talked softly.
A month after the rape, Artis and her mother walked home from her grandmother's house. She spotted Dwayne Dail, then 19, goofing off with a cluster of buddies in a nearby yard. Artis froze.
Dail's face startled her, something familiar in his features. Artis told her mother he was the man who hurt her.
Conviction
Artis was sure of herself. That man had raped her, she remembers saying over and over, to her parents, to police, to a prosecutor.Nearly two years later, Artis saw Dail for the second time, staring down at him from the witness stand in a Wayne County courtroom. She could only sneak a glance, still terrified of the man she thought attacked her.
A few days later, Artis watched him fall apart as the judge read the jury's verdict. She remembers him screaming his innocence. She saw his mother sob and deputies carry him off. She told herself that's how all men act when they've been accused of such an awful crime. It didn't occur to her that Dail might be telling the truth.
Now, she wishes everyone, police especially, had listened to him.
"I know he seemed cocky and arrogant. But what if police had listened to him a little more and me a little less?" Artis asked.
Wondering over the years
Over the years, Artis started to forget Dail's face. The details of that night faded, too. Artis reminded herself by logging onto the state Department of Correction's Web site and staring at Dail's mug shot. She'd drive by her old apartment complex, looking for something she can't quite explain. As she got older, she wondered now and again if she'd gotten it right.
"I paused sometimes and thought, `Was it him?' " Artis said. She shook away the doubt, reminding herself that she wasn't alone: Police had told jurors it was Dail, too.
Artis resents the fear the rape brought her. She doesn't travel far. She often keeps to herself and frets when her children aren't with her. She won't let her daughters, 15 and 10, go to school dances or ball games, worried something might happen to them.
Now, when Artis' husband works the graveyard shift, she asks her mother to come and stay over.
Artis feels like that 12-year-old girl is back. She's angry with her for being wrong about Dail and ruining his life.
Friends tell her she can't be blamed for picking the wrong guy. She was just a girl, they remind her.
Grace from wrongfully accused
Dail has never blamed Artis either. He knows she was a girl who suffered a terrible thing. It was the job of police and prosecutors, he said, to have seen the weakness of evidence.Artis has trouble believing her friends and digesting Dail's graciousness.
She's desperate to meet Dail, to look him in the eye and apologize.
Artis saw him in the Wayne County courthouse one day last December, both there taking care of other business. Dail didn't seem to recognize the woman the little girl had become.
Dail looked the same, barely aged beyond that 19-year-old boy she helped send to prison. Artis looked at his face, then turned, losing her nerve to speak.
New suspect
On Monday, another man -- William Jackson Neal, 52, of Goldsboro -- was charged in the September 1987 attack.
DNA evidence, which proved last year that Dwayne Dail was not the rapist, led investigators to Neal, who is three years into a seven-year term in state prison for a string of burglaries.
His name arose after investigators analyzed a drop of semen from the girl's nightgown and matched it with Neal's DNA profile in a database of N.C. convicted criminals.
I was 12. I didn't ask for this to happen, but it did and it's my life."
Tomeshia Lasha Artis
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