6 July 24 - 30, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents trunk. Promising to close it for her, she said the man crawled into her backseat, closed the trunk from the inside, and then reached around to grab her throat again before pulling her into the backseat where her raped her. “His hand was around my neck, probably the entire time. And every time I would say no, he would say, ‘You don’t tell daddy no,’” she said. As Matysiak drove home that night, she called the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) hotline. The next after- noon, she went to the emergency room in Dallas County for a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) exam. She recounted her story to doctor after doctor, and then, after asking to press charges, to detective after de- tective. She was in the emergency room for nearly 12 hours. She remembers being cold and then numb. While in Greek life in college, Matysiak was taught all the things the victim of a sex crime is supposed to do: who to call and how to report. Don’t shower before you go to the emergency room. Bring the clothes you were wearing with you. Hand over any evi- dence to the police. She followed those in- structions, although in some cases, it didn’t matter. When she went to the emergency room, she brought the clothes she’d been wearing on the date in a plastic bag, but no one ever took them. They’re still sitting, untouched and un- washed, in that bag shoved into a corner of her closet. She doesn’t know what to do with them. The Black Hole of Reporting Over the next six months, Matysiak at- tempted to urge the Dallas Police Depart- ment to work faster, afraid another girl would be harmed during the time the inves- tigation took. “He does know a police report was made,” a DPD detective texted Matysiak in February, four months after the rape. “If he attempts to call you, please let me know and record him.” “Does he know it was me?” Matysiak re- sponded a few days later. The detective told Matysiak they’d give her a call to answer any questions she had. After that call, Matysiak didn’t hear from the detective again. Text messages provided to the Observer show that Matysiak attempted to contact the detective in late April and early May. In the second message, she went as far as to tell the detective that she’d posted about her rapist in a Dallas Facebook group called “Are We Dating the Same Guy.” Another girl had messaged her about a simi- lar experience with the same man, and was willing to come forward if it would help Matysiak’s case. Both messages to the detec- tive went unanswered. On May 27, 2025, in the middle of the workday on the last day of school, Matysiak received a call from a DPD detective differ- ent from the one she’d spent months at- tempting to communicate with, who told her that a Dallas County grand jury had de- clined to indict the man she’d accused on rape charges. In the six months of investiga- tion, detectives told Matysiak they never spoke to the man she’d accused. Matysiak was not allowed to speak to the grand jury and has no idea what information was shared on her behalf. Hanging up the phone, she walked back into the staff meet- ing she was in the middle of, face red. “[The detective] just said there wasn’t enough evidence and they dropped it. My first reaction was like, well, is there anything I can do?” She said. “And she was like, ‘There’s nothing. You can’t really do any- thing about it now.’” While upset, she wasn’t entirely surprised. She’d spent the previous months researching the “scary and sad” statistics surrounding vi- olent sex crimes. According to Garcia, the co- ordinator with the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, only around 10% of sex crime survivors decide to report their experiences to authorities. An even smaller percentage than that ever sees justice. An investigation by NBC News released earlier this year found that Dallas is one of several major cities where less than 4% of reported violent sex crimes result in a conviction. Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Chicago had simi- larly low conviction rates. “[Molly’s] story, for me, is my normal day,” Garcia said. “In my 25 years of experi- ence … I have rarely seen a case go from the start, which is where I meet the victim at the hospital, all the way to the finish — trial and conviction.” The grand jury process, in which a jury of citizens is presented with evidence of a crime to determine whether there is enough evidence to warrant criminal charges, is “completely confidential.” Advocates for sexual assault survivors still do not fully un- derstand how it works. Part of this secrecy is to ensure that the principle of innocence un- til proven guilty is upheld — after all, “it is the criminal justice system, not the victim justice system,” Garcia said. Still, within that secrecy, hundreds of thousands of survivors like Matysiak are left wondering where their case went wrong. Once the summer started, Matysiak be- came listless. Then she became angry. Then furious. The final words of the detective who’d called to tell her the case was dropped, that there was “nothing she could do,” echoed in her mind. “It felt like more and more of me was taken away by the justice system,” she said. So, she turned to the internet. Not All Red Flags Are Equal Women have always found ways to talk about dating, but as a United Nations special report noted in 2021, the COVID-19 pan- demic increased women’s reliance on online spaces for those conversations. And though life has since returned to normal, those on- line spaces have thrived. Facebook groups called “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” exist for almost every major city as a way for women to avoid cheaters or to vet their latest online dating app matches. In early 2023, when TikTok and Unfair Park from p4 >> p8 “THERE’S NOTHING. YOU CAN’T REALLY DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT NOW.” - POLICE DETECTIVE
