An anchorwoman at a television station in my hometown of Charlotte recently got an unpleasant surprise–the man who raped her 30 years ago is up for parole. She’s still very much scarred by that ordeal, and wants to make sure he serves the remaining 20 years of his sentence.
Last week, Maureen O’Boyle took a break between newscasts at WBTV in Charlotte to share a personal story–she is a rape survivor. Watch here.
O’Boyle, whom you may know as the former anchor of “A Current Affair,” was just 21 years old when James Starling barged into her apartment in Macon, Georgia early on the morning of April 4, 1986. He was arrested shortly after raping another woman. Starling pleaded guilty to both crimes, and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Last month, O’Boyle was watching the Academy Awards with her daughter, Keegan. When Lady Gaga sang “Til It Happens To You,” a song from “The Hunting Ground,” a 2015 documentary about the campus rape epidemic. As several rape victims and survivors came on stage with Gaga, Keegan noticed her mother choking up; she is well aware of how scarred her mother still was from what happened to her. On a lark, Keegan wondered how old Starling would be today.
On a lark, O’Boyle searched for Starling on Google–and discovered that he was up for parole in April. She also discovered that Starling has been considered for parole 10 times since 1993–without her knowledge. As she put it, “my world stopped.” She wasted little time drafting a petition to the Georgia State Board of Pardons urging it to deny Starling’s bid for parole.
Anyone who thinks 50 years was too harsh should read the details of O’Boyle’s ordeal. At the time, she was working as the morning anchor at WMAZ-TV in Macon. Starling had frequently watched O’Boyle’s show at the auto repair shop where he worked. Unknown to her, he’d broken into her apartment several times while she was at work–so he knew her routine. A few weeks after O’Boyle’s roommate moved out, Starling attacked. He pinned her to her bed, put a knife to her throat, and threatened to kill her. For five hours, he forced her to pose for pictures in pornographic positions while wearing lingerie he’d stolen from other women’s homes. He only stopped when her coworkers at WMAZ called wondering where she was.
O’Boyle first told her story to People in 1992, six years after her rape. As proof of how scarred she was, she told her bosses at WMAZ that she couldn’t appear on air again until the monster was caught. It turned out she didn’t even feel safe in Macon; she spent the next month at her parents’ house in Charlotte. When she flew down to Macon to get some things, she spoke with a woman who had been raped around the same time as she had, and they noticed their ordeals were similar. Police checked on the two women’s leads, and discovered that Starling had recently been arrested for burglary in a nearby town.
When police finally caught him, they found several trash bags filled with undeveloped film depicting dozens of young girls whom he apparently violated in a manner similar to how he violated O’Boyle. Confronted with that evidence, Starling confessed. Nonetheless, psychologists concluded Starling “could never be fixed.” They also found that he has deviant sexual tendencies and harbors extreme hatred toward women. Cliff Notes version–Starling needed to be kept behind bars for as long as legally possible.
No doubt O’Boyle was thinking about those trash bags when she urged the parole board to keep Starling locked up. She ended her petition with this:
“My daughter, your daughters and granddaughters deserve to wake up every day knowing justice is being served because James Starling is serving his full sentence. Protect women. Don’t let this rapist and monster free.”
She said it a lot better than I could. We simply cannot take another chance of another girl or woman being scarred. Sign this petition, and send O’Boyle some love on Facebook and Twitter.
