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My brother was born shortly after our parents were married. They thought another child, a girl, would be along soon after. They waited and waited. Finally, their wait was over and I made my appearance. From the moment of my birth, I was spoiled, pampered, and protected. Oh so very protected.

So, when my husband and I started our family I resolved to treat our kids the same no matter which gender they were.

Our daughter came after two sons and we were overjoyed. But, we were not overly protective. She was not spoiled or pampered. Well, maybe a little spoiled. Because of my determination to raise my daughter to be independent, I didn't worry about her having trouble with boys. We lived in a small city in Minnesota, which was safe to the point of being squeaky clean.

I did worry about my sons. They seemed so much more vulnerable. What if a girl accused one of them of date rape? I talked to them about it and they said they had grown up to respect women. I don't think they saw it like it I did. I explained my fear but they said I was worrying too much.

In the fall of 2000, my husband and I moved from Minnesota to Vermont. Our oldest son moved at the same time to attend graduate school at Penn State. Our daughter graduated from Johns Hopkins and she and her husband moved to Boston where he was going to attend law school.

Our middle son Tim was the only member of the family still in Minneapolis. He was living off-campus with friends, working and going to classes. We joked about how we all abandoned him. A joke that would come back to haunt us.

Tim is not the communicator of the family. He rarely called and never seemed to get our messages. One evening in March of 2001, I remarked to my husband that we hadn't heard from Tim in awhile. So, I called him and amazingly he answered. I asked him how he was and he said he was fine but my mother's intuition was on full alert and told me that he was anything but fine.

I told him he sounded funny and asked again how he really was. He started to cry and managed to tell me that he had been accused of date rape. I was thunderstruck. The thing I had feared most had happened. I couldn't believe it.

Not Tim. Not the sweet gentle boy who always came inside from playing just to get a hug. Not the young man who said he'd never find a girl as intelligent as his sister and as loving as his mother.

I tried to offer some kind of comfort but this was very new territory and all I could do was listen and assure him that we were there for

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