Rape in a Small Town: The Florence Holway Story

After watching this documentary, I cannot help but admire Florence Holway for her unwavering inner strength in her quest for justice. In my opinion, her will power stemmed from her zest of life, reflected in her beautiful watercolors.

I am also left with a bitter frustration toward the flawed human justice, especially in a country that prides itself as being civilized, fair, and caring towards its citizens. I don't want to call it a justice "system", because obviously the "system" is what people make of it, and people are often callous, selfish, lazy, ignorant, etc. It's human justice, and it's deeply flawed.

I wish the documentary answered some questions regarding the perpetrator though. Was he a local man, how did he pick Florence's house, what was his background?

Instead, the documentary is mostly a monologue from Florence's perspective only, with corroboration from Florence's son, daughter-in-law, and a police woman.

Raping a woman is bad under any circumstances; breaking into a woman's home and raping her is worse. Florence Holway was 75 years old when John LaForest broke into her isolated home, raped her, sodomised her, and fell asleep. Showing great presence, the mother of five made her escape and drove over to her son's house where she was greeted by her astonished daughter-in-law. LaForest was found still asleep in her bed, and was promptly arrested.

This documentary interviews Florence and others; she describes her violation in sickening detail. Unsurprisingly she swallowed much of the propaganda of the sexual grievance industry, but she was rightly indignant that the prosecutor in charge of the case agreed to a plea deal without consulting her, twelve years, which most reasonable people would consider inadequate for a crime of this nature.

We follow her to LaForest's first parole hearing, and hear about how her case led to changes in the law, not all of them good. Florence Holway was the kind of woman no one should mess with, and in spite of being confined to a wheelchair when this documentary was made in 2004, she survived another eight years dying at the advanced age of 96. LaForest was parolled but quickly recalled to prison. At some point he was released again, also at some point presumably after his second parole, he found a woman dumb enough or desperate enough to marry him. In December last year, by then fifty, he was arrested after allegedly threatening his by then estranged wife with a gun. Leopards do sometimes change their spots, but Florence was right about this one.