A man on the street had offered her $20 for oral sex. But once they were in the weeds he pulled out a knife. He told her if she screamed he would kill her. When she offered some resistance he stabbed her. "He was trying to stab me in my vagina," she says. He stabbed her thigh. "It's kind of bad because I actually never ended up doing anything about it. It ended up turning into a big infection."
"I had seen this episode of Oprah years ago and this girl had been raped--her survival skills kicked in and what she did was tell the guy that he didn't have to do that to her, that he could do better," she says...
"I got outta him that he and his girlfriend had gotten into a fight and that she wouldn't have sex with him and that somebody was gonna have sex with him that night. He made me hold his phone that had porn on it. He never really pulled his pants all the way down. And at this point I'm bleeding pretty badly. I'm lying on glass outside of this bar. I had like little bits of glass in my back. I remember being really scared. Then it just got to the point where I was just numb. I asked him if he could stop at one point so I could smoke a cigarette. He let me. I got him to put the knife down because I was being good and listening to him. He stabbed the knife in the dirt. He said, 'Just so you know I can pick it up at any point.' I think in his head he thought that I was scared enough. In my head I was trying to figure out how the hell I was going to get outta there. And it occurred to me one of the things he kept asking me to do was lick his butt. And he was getting off on this. The last time he turned around and asked me to do this I pushed him. I had myself set up to get up."
She ran naked into the street. The commotion attracted the police. A passerby gave her his shirt to cover up. At 5 feet 5 inches tall she weighed only 86 pounds. Her skin was gray. Her feet were so swollen she was wearing size 12 men's slippers.
She would last four more weeks on the streets, until a private investigator hired by her mother found her in September 2012. He called her mother and handed the phone to Pagano. "I told her to leave me the f*ck alone, just let me die," she says. "And she told me that she was not going to let me die out there. She said, 'You will not be sleeping on the streets of Camden tonight.' "
Because Pagano had a raft of outstanding warrants the investigator took her to jail, but her physical condition was so bad the jail refused to accept her. She was hospitalized for two weeks. She went into a methadone program that cost her mother $20,000.
"I was so hurt and so broken," she says. "I was in shock. When it all wore off I would wake up at night screaming, sweating, I had peed myself a couple times in the middle of the night. I still have nightmares. A lot of it goes back to that last rape. A lot of it has to do with E-frie."
"I live in a shitty little apartment, at 31 years old, with a roommate, who used to be sober and is now a stripper," she says. "I have a crappy car. I will never have a prestigious job. I've never been more happy in my life."
This summer she will regain custody of her son.
She tells me about her new boyfriend, José. She speaks his name as if the fact of José is a miracle.
"He knows everything there is to ever know about me and has never judged me, never," she says. "If I'm in a funk, he says, 'Just go to the 5:30 meeting,' " referring to a daily Alcoholics Anonymous session. "He doesn't even know what the 5:30 AA meeting is."
"I struggle with God," she says. "I have to believe that I haven't been put through this to give up. And there's been a lot of times when I wanted to do just that. I sat through Camden County jail [on an old warrant] sober. I was looking at all the same people I used to be out on the street with -- being called Gucci again."
"I think the one thing I am most grateful for is that I am scared today," she says...
"I'm scared of the law. I never was. I'm scared to lose what little I have. Not the material things -- but I look at my son now. I remember the day that I had him and thinking this was it. And looking back I think I thought that this was gonna fix me. But it didn't. And I learned that nothing is going to fix me. Liam's not going to fix me. Those [AA] meetings are not going to fix me. They're going to help. Jeannette's going to help. All these people in my life are going to help. But the only person that can fix me is me. And that's a hard pill to swallow when you've done nothing your whole life but f*ck it up. And one of the biggest things I still can't get over is that even when I'm doing something right, I still feel like I'm doing something wrong. I always have that feeling that it's not good enough. That I'm not good enough. And now here I am at 31. I have a huge criminal record. I have horrible credit. I lost a house. I lost a car. It amazes me that my mother still looks at me knowing what I've done -- and she doesn't look at me any differently. And [when I go wrong] she'll be the first to tell you, 'That's not my daughter, that's what my daughter does when she's not thinking straight.' "
Liam, 5, recently learned where his dad is. Before, when he asked, Pagano had answered by saying only, "Your dad loves you very much." But eventually she had to tell him the truth. The boy cried for more than an hour. He asked his mother to play a game in which she is a cop who arrests him so he can go to prison and talk to his father. It is a game they play often.
"He's going to be 11 when [his father] gets out," she says. "Liam wants to know if he's going to be in his life. I can't give him an answer. It's really sad that for $578 [the father is] sitting in prison for nine years. I'm not condoning what he did. He did it. He's guilty, but nine years?"
"The system is set up for us to fail," she says...
"Ten years from now I'm still just going to be a number. I'm always going to have an SBI [State Bureau of Identification] number. I'm always going to have mug shots all over the Internet. Liam's father is going to be out when he's 42 years old. And what the f*ck is he going to do? And they expect people not to go back. What's he going to do? I realize everyone's got a choice, but the state won't even help me. They're not going to help him. I'm not saying people shouldn't pay for what they do. Most people don't change. I'm not going to say that they do. But some change. I fight everyday to be a better person. I fight to fit into society."
The manager of the diner comes over to tell us he is closing in 15 minutes. He looks at Pagano. He sees she is distraught. "Take your time," he says gently. We are drinking coffee, pouring in little containers of creamer and stirring it too long.
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