Rape victim’s story hits close to home

In May 2005, our neighbors Carl and Irene Johnson walked across the street to wish our youngest daughter a happy first birthday.

In their mid- to late-80s, the Johnsons had seen the balloons on our mailbox, the cars in our driveway and a bunch of little kids in strollers wearing cone-shaped birthday hats.

My wife and I loved Carl and Irene. Carl was a modest man but when pressed would tell about his experiences playing violin with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Irene would tell about the days when the two of them owned and operated Whiteland Orchard. “It was a good environment for raising kids,” Irene said.

When they walked over to our home that spring day, Carl and Irene knew nothing about a horrific sexual assault a few weeks earlier against their 26-year-old granddaughter.

Neither, of course, did I.

As a breaking news reporter, I write almost daily about the victims and perpetrators of crime. Rarely do I have personal connections to either. I comb through hundreds of police reports each day, looking for incidents to report that rise above the rest. Another day, another series of crimes.

On Feb. 12, though, one report led to one of the most unusual experiences of my career.

A 39-year-old Carmel man walked into the Marion County Sheriff’s Office to confess to a rape he committed in the spring of 2005, when he worked as a teaching assistant at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

The victim, he said, was a student.

The names were redacted in the police report, but the sequence of events was clear. He confessed. A detective reached out to the victim, who at the time, like many victims of sexual assault, was reluctant to come forward. But she absolutely wanted to press charges now. Trouble is, Indiana’s five-year statute of limitations on the crime of rape had expired. So no charges, only more anguish for the victim.

My initial story on the incident about “the woman” was posted on our website within an hour or so of my finding the police report. We developed the story further for the next day’s newspaper.

Veteran courts reporter Tim Evans and I discussed writing a follow-up story examining Indiana’s statute of limitations for rape.

The next day, I had a message on my phone from a woman who said she wanted to talk to me about a story I wrote. I called her number but got no answer.

Later, I noticed an online comment posted on my story about the rape. A woman named Kathy Wendt posted a name identifying a man that she said was the rapist.

Who was this Kathy Wendt? I wondered. I looked her up on Facebook. Seeing her photo and other information on her page, I realized that I knew her — had met her, anyway. It was Carl and Irene’s daughter. I’d even visited the Christmas tree farm operated by Kathy Wendt and her husband, Robert.

I looked up Kathy Wendt’s phone number and called her. Was she really sure, I asked, that she knew the rapist? And if so, how did she know?

“My daughter is the victim,” Kathy Wendt told me. “I believe she left you a phone message.”

I looked down at a name and number scrawled on my notepad. I saw the name Jenny Wendt.

The unidentified rape victim in the police report was the granddaughter of our old friends and neighbors Carl and Irene Johnson.

I called Jenny back, and we set up an interview. I realized our connections went even deeper. Her boyfriend and I went to the same high school. His brother is a good friend. Jenny, 35, and I established maybe a half-dozen other mutual acquaintances.

She spoke openly and easily about the rape. She said that years after the fact, she was now ready to go public with her story if we could name her attacker: Bart Bareither.

She wanted to expose him.

She wanted to help keep other women safe.

She hoped her story might help encourage other rape victims to come forward.

She was not a nameless victim of a crime. She was Jenny Wendt, and she was a victim of rape.

All those years ago, she said, she was afraid — afraid of facing her attacker in court, afraid of losing a he-said/she-said legal confrontation, afraid of how people might look at her or even blame her. The attack had been brutal, and she had lain in bed several days before getting needed medical treatment. After that, she just wanted to push it from her mind.

Carl and Irene Johnson never read my stories about how their granddaughter was raped and how her attacker, who confessed but is still unpunished, compelled her to come forward.

Irene died in 2009 at age 90. Carl died in October at age 98.

They never learned about the rape of Jenny Wendt because no one ever told them.

Now, though, Jenny Wendt is telling her story to everyone.

Call Star reporter Bill McCleery at (317) 444-6083. Follow him on Twitter: @BillMcCleery01.