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STATEMENT FROM THE AUTHOR

Roberta Roper*

Stephanie Roper, 22, was the daughter of Roberta and Vince Roper of

Maryland. She was kidnapped by two men after her car broke down on April 3,

1982. Over the next five hours, they repeatedly raped and tortured her. They then

took her to a deserted shack in another county and repeated these crimes.

Stephanie made several attempts to escape. When the killers recaptured her for

the last time, they beat her with logging chains, shot her to death, burned her

body, and attempted to dismember her. During the trials of the killers, the court

excluded Stephanie’s family from the courtroom and never notified them of

continuances.1

April 3, 2012, is the thirtieth anniversary of the murder of our daughter, Stephanie Ann

Roper. That date is also the eighth anniversary of the drunk-driving crash that took the life of

our first grandchild, Samia Roper. 2012 is also the thirtieth birthday of the organization that was

founded by my husband, Vincent, and me in tribute to our slain daughter. Originally created as

the Stephanie Roper Committee & Foundation, Inc. (“Committee & Foundation”), this statewide

non-profit began on a grass-roots level and today continues to serve victims of all crimes as the

Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, Inc.

People often ask how we can do this work. They believe that serving crime victims and

their families must be very difficult, depressing, and challenging work. My reply is, “How could

I not!” Difficult and challenging, it has been. Yet victim advocacy and assistance is work

inspired by the strength, courage, and dignity of victims and survivors themselves. We speak on

behalf of those who do not have a voice and cannot stand up for their rights. And these efforts

are sustained by the satisfaction that other crime victims have been given new hope and healing

to live as survivors.

* The author is the founder of the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center.

1 Jon Kyl et al., On the Wings of Their Angels: The Scott Campbell, Stephanie Roper, Wendy Preston, Louarna

Gillis, and Nila Lynn Crime Victims’ Rights Act, 9 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 581, 582 (2005).

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Reflecting on these thirty years, we are humbled at the extraordinary efforts and

achievements that have changed the treatment of crime victims and have brought distinction to

Maryland as a national leader for crime victims’ rights and services. From the dark ages of our

family’s experience beginning in 1982, to a more enlightened time today, crime victims’ rights

and services have advanced from nothing (then) to a wealth of statutory and state constitutional

rights (today). Additionally, programs provide support and legal services to enable crime

victims and their families to access tools to rebuild lives shattered by criminal violence. And

while these achievements have made a difference in the criminal justice system’s treatment of

crime victims, we should not be deceived or complacent that justice for victims has been

achieved. Far too many American citizens have suffered the consequences of a criminal justice

system that is flawed in regard to the role of crime victims.

The heinous crimes committed against our daughter, Stephanie, and the criminal justice

proceedings that followed became the catalyst for changes and created a movement to establish

rights and support services for crime victims in Maryland. Ours was but one example of

thousands of families who suffered similar undeserved consequences. Like other victim

survivors across America, my husband and I were desperate to find hope and healing for our

family as well as preventing others from enduring our experience. As we struggled to find new

meaning and purpose in our lives, we began an uncharted journey for victim justice that

continues today.

Stephanie was the oldest of our five children, a bright and gifted young artist about to

graduate magna cum laude from Frostburg State University. In that early spring of 1982, she

came home to Croom, Maryland for a weekend visit with her family and to prepare for her senior

art show. Upon returning from an evening out with friends, Stephanie’s car became disabled on

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a country road in Brandywine, Maryland. Two men stopped, but instead of helping her, they

kidnapped her and, over a five-hour period, repeatedly and brutally raped and tortured her. They

took her to a deserted shack in St. Mary’s County, where they fractured her skull with a logging

chain, shot her, dismembered her body, and set it on fire.

Stephanie had done nothing to deserve becoming a victim of crime. We, her parents and

her four surviving siblings, should have been treated with dignity and respect, received

information, and been given the right to observe the trial and to provide a victim impact

statement to the sentencing court. This did not happen. Instead, we were shut out of the

courtroom and silenced at sentencing. Unlike Stephanie’s convicted killers, we had no rights to

information, no rights to observe the trial, and no right to be heard at sentencing. Likewise, the

court’s lenient sentence did not match the severity of the crimes. Our children asked us why

liberty and justice for all did not include us. As parents, we were challenged to explain to them

that the system we had taught them to believe in, to trust, and to respect, was responsible for

these additional injuries.

Somehow despite this tragedy and injustice, we would find ways to triumph over evil.

With the support of many, and through the advocacy of our organization, more than seventy-five

pieces of legislation would be enacted to provide victims with rights and support services.2 The

most significant achievement was the passage of a Maryland State Constitutional Amendment

for crime victims’ rights passed in 1994, and approved by voters by 92.5%.3 Despite the

opponents who said our efforts would make a victim of the constitution, these accomplishments

stand as a beacon of hope to all crime victims today.

2 See The History of Crime Victims’ Rights in Maryland, MD. CRIME VICTIMS’ RESOURCE CENTER,

http://www.mdcrimevictims.org/laws-and-policies/history-of-crime-victims-rights-in-maryland/ (last visited Mar.

17, 2012). 3 GOVERNOR’S OFFICE OF CRIME CONTROL & PREVENTION & THE MD. STATE BD. OF VICTIM SERVS., THE RIGHTS OF

CRIME VICTIMS IN MARYLAND para. 1 (2007); see MD. CONST., DECLARATION OF RIGHTS, art. 47.

PHOENIX LAW REVIEW

The crimes against Stephanie and the response of the criminal justice system captured

public attention and mobilized citizen support for the efforts of the Committee & Foundation in

ways that are rarely seen. Ordinary people identified with Stephanie and with our family.

Ordinary people rolled up their sleeves and were prepared to work!

In light of this success, one might then question, “What is there left to do today? Why

are efforts to amend the United States Constitution for victims’ rights necessary to pursue?”

Advocates in Maryland and across America have learned, despite their best efforts and

successes, that until the fundamental law of the land provides equal justice for victims as well as

those accused or convicted of crime, crime victims and survivors will remain second class

citizens! We have learned that enacting statutes and state constitutional amendments without

enforcement power and without the power of the nation’s highest law continues to leave victims’

rights dependent upon individuals, not imbedded in the law of the land. Victims’ rights, like

those of the accused or convicted, deserve the protection of our Constitution. They should not be

a-roll-of-the-dice and dependent upon the will of an individual. As one victim said when

comparing his rights to those of the person who committed the crime, “Treat us like a criminal.

Then we know our rights will be protected and enforced because the Constitution requires it!”

Acting upon the final recommendation of President Ronald Reagan’s Task Force on

Victims of Crime and the results of efforts in their respective states, advocates banded together

as a national coalition to seek the passage of an amendment to the United States Constitution

beginning in the late 1980’s. We worked with diligence, did our homework and overcame many

of the misperceptions of our critics. And yet we have been held hostage by political power

brokers and amendment opponents, despite the truth that this is neither a liberal nor conservative

issue, but simply a human rights issue that is the right thing to do.

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On April 22, 2004, the U.S. Senate passed a federal statute in lieu of a federal

constitutional amendment.4 In good faith, advocates accepted the Crime Victims’ Rights Act,

5 as

a critical opportunity to prove, once and for all, that statutes are simply not enough. A

constitutional amendment is the only means to ensure that crime victims’ rights are fully applied

and that victims are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect.

Since the passage of the federal law, we continue to witness the failure of this statute to

protect the rights of crime victims. We have witnessed exemplary programs that offer legal

representation to crime victims shut down and funding ended. And without legal representation,

enforcement of victims’ rights once again becomes dependent upon the good will of an

individual. While we are deeply grateful to the amendment’s sponsors, Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ)

and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) for their unwavering bi-partisan leadership, we are left with the

evidence that this failure represents yet another broken promise to America’s victims of crime.

We ask everyone to pause and remember with us and to celebrate our accomplishments

and those of the victims’ rights movement to date. Stephanie believed that one person can make

a difference and every person should try. We also ask citizens to commit or to re-commit to

keeping this legacy of hope alive. We urge them to actively support the passage of an

amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that “justice for all” includes all victims of crime.

4 See Justice for All Act of 2004, Pub. L. No. 108-405, 118 Stat. 2260 (codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3771 (2009)).

5 Id.