The Poisoned Dart

THE POISONED DART
B.P. Franklin
(Beverley Will)

NEWS HEADLINE
Seven-month pregnant television newscaster raped by high profile media personality

Synopsis

Katherine Bates, a popular television news caster, is appointed host of a new show, The Interview, which becomes the highest rating programme in the history of Channel X.. She is happily married to Walter Leverson, a television film producer, and is seven months pregnant with their first child when she is violently raped by a high profile media personality, known to them socially. She wants immediate action taken against the rapist but is persuaded that this could be disastrous for her and for their coming child. She must hold this secret all her life.
Katherine has a nervous breakdown, loses her career. She suffers the psychoses and their manifestations common to victims of rape. She feels guilt and shame as all rape victims do, as though she has somehow caused it. The depths of despair, her loss of self. Regression into the past, to innocent childhood; replaying the traumatic event, nightmares, tension and fear when it seems a man is following her. She cannot face people. She locks doors and windows, checking them over and over.
She wants revenge; to see the rapist in the dock like a murderer, because he has destroyed her marriage and her life. Could she ever have justice or must it come from the grave? She commits suicide in the belief that this will strike at the rapist’s conscience and make him suffer and bring about a kind of justice. Her lifelong friend and confidante swears she will get that justice and writes Kathy’s story; deviously involves the rapist and finally forces him to dredge up and struggle with his demons and eventually bring about his own internal destruction.