Embarrassed, she initially didn’t want to report attack. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office's investigation is ongoing. A Phoenix New Times exclusive.

It was just after 2 a.m. on a pitch-black Friday morning when Bernadette Greene-Placentia’s life changed. The Democratic candidate for Congressional District 8 strolled across a parking lot to repair a damaged campaign sign. It was a routine she’d followed all summer. This time, she only made it a few yards.

An attacker smashed her over the head. She blacked out. She woke up to find a strange man on top of her.

Greene-Placentia struggled to open her eyes. She felt a sharp pain below her waist. The attacker was pulling his penis out of her.

She heard him mumble something like, “-ic bitch, not a very good fuck,” which her mind filled in as “Democratic bitch,” she recalled. She wasn’t sure that was exactly what he said.

One leg was out of her jean capris. She wore brand-new tennis shoes and a campaign t-shirt. Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. “Not even worth it,” she heard the man say as he moved away. He wore black boots and had small feet, she recalled.

The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running. She heard music.

She doesn’t remember pulling up her pants or picking herself off the asphalt parking lot. She doesn’t remember closing her Jeep’s hatch and putting her foot on the gas. She doesn’t remember pulling her car into the driveway and collapsing into her bed.

“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” Greene-Placentia said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”

  • cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works
    117·
    2 days ago

    Some things I noticed:

    Your account is 5 months old and has 614 posts and 5.67k comments. That’s 37 comments and 4 posts per day. Many of your posts involve some kind of left leaning political issue or they appear to be reposts of popular articles from reddit. Your photo is AI generated.

    All of these things lead me to believe that this is basically your job or that your account is shared by multiple people or that it was created specifically to engage with Lemmy users around the time of the election and that it acted as a repost bot for the first few months of existence to mimic engagement. This is how the disinformation bots work, they create accounts a few months before elections and build up karma or some kind of legitimacy, then when an election is a few months out they crank out a ton of engagement/outrage bait. It’s also possible that you are so passionate about lemmy that you treat it like your job, I wouldn’t rule that out. But one thing you are most certainly not is a casual user. You have an agenda that you are trying to push one way or the other and you work very hard to promote it. I’m glad that unlike reddit, lemmy post history cannot be hidden.

    • CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      14·
      2 days ago

      For Christ’s sake, Velma is well-known around here. She does literally none of the things you’re talking about except for bringing a woman’s voice and experience to this male dominated space.

      Even if she was some sort of organization only posting to “rile up” the voter base (she’s not, let me be clear about that), rape happens and is always horrific. It should always rile you up. If it doesn’t, I have serious concerns. Maybe you need to look inwards and determine why you’re having this reaction to someone posting that rape exists and is happening now.

    • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
      9·
      2 days ago

      To expand on your comment-

      I purposefully set out to make Lemmy more welcoming for women and minorities after I first started browsing here and stumbled on several comment threads that were absolutely horrifying - men talking about how “consensual and willing” 14 year olds are around rock stars was a specific one. Comments from minorkeys and TubularTittyFrog were highly upvoted despite being really sexist.

      Because I’m stubborn and enjoy forums like these, I made it my business to post the articles that I read. So I do. I post every article that I read that I think is interesting.

      It’s not my fault that you think a woman with diverse interests and a strong sense of justice for crimes against women is someone with an agenda outside of wanting to make this place more diverse.