http://www.startribune.com/467/story/846610.html

Last update: December 01, 2006 – 12:12 AM

After 22 years, rape suspect faces charges but not accuser

The victim, who wants to be known as a survivor, says her satisfaction of seeing him in court fell short when he didn't look at her.

Margaret Zack, and ANTHONY LONETREE

Finally, nearly 22 years after the sexual assault that she relives simply by closing her eyes,
Mary Bridges was in a Hennepin County courtroom Thursday hoping her alleged assailant
would look her in the eye -- just so he'd know she was there.

"He wouldn't," she said.

Charles L. Lewis, 50, was still being evasive.

On Thursday, Lewis was in court on a charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, a charge
that had been filed shortly after Bridges said she was raped in 1985, but that remained unresolved
when he fled a short time later.

Earlier this month, however, Lewis was extradited from Rhode Island. And while Bridges had
the satisfaction of seeing him in court, there was some disappointment, too, she said, in Thursday's
proceedings.

Because the case was so old, District Judge Stephen Swanson continued it to Dec. 20 to allow
the parties time to gather information and documents.

And there, too, was the suspect's apparent refusal to look at his victim.

Bridges said that she still remembers the shape of his eyes.

"I'll never forget his face," she said. "It's older, but it's the same."

Sudden attack

The criminal complaint and police reports offer this account of the assault:

About 3 p.m., on Jan. 15, 1985, Bridges, crying hard and barely able to speak, flagged down
a squad car at Chicago and Franklin Avenues to report that she had been raped.

The assailant, she said, was a friend of her boyfriend whom she knew only as Charles.

At her apartment, where the assault occurred, police found Lewis asleep on the couch, naked
from the waist down. An officer woke him up, and within two days, he was charged with criminal
sexual conduct.

The assault had occurred suddenly. Police reports say that Lewis pushed Bridges down, grabbed
her by the throat and -- after proclaiming, "You're so pretty. I want you to have my baby" -- raped
her and forced her to perform oral sex. She gave in, she told police then, because she didn't want
to be hurt anymore. There were bruises on her throat and to the left side of her face.

The suspect, interviewed then by police, said he couldn't recall there having been any assault.

As for where Lewis has been during the past 21 years after he fled, information is sketchy.

Minneapolis police spokesman Lt. Greg Reinhardt said a criminal history report that he had seen showed
that Lewis was arrested for felony theft in California in the early 1990s. Since 2000, he also had been
arrested multiple times in Rhode Island, Reinhardt said.

But it wasn't until his most recent arrest, and apparent incarceration, Reinhardt said, that
Rhode Island authorities alerted the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office that Lewis was in custody.
Reinhardt said that he believes that with his time up there, and his release imminent, authorities
probably said, "Rhode Island doesn't want you anymore."

Lewis, who waived extradition, was taken into custody at the Hennepin County jail in early
November.

On Thursday, Bridges, who said she slept only two hours this week, said some people have
asked how she could show her face publicly. "I do it for others so they have the strength," she said.
"I want to show the world I did nothing wrong."

She received no professional counseling after the assault, she added.

"I'm no longer ashamed," she said. "I was hiding inside myself all these years. What he did really
screwed up my life."

Now, she said, it's a relief that he's locked up. But she wonders if he can get out on bail again and
if he will take off again.

If people recognize her, Bridges said, she asks that they don't stare or think of her as a victim.

"I'm a human being and a survivor," she said.