Laura's busy now. So busy that she says she doesn't have time alone at home to think about the rape.
She's hanging out with friends after school.
She's applying to a program at CCRI that would allow her to spend her senior year on campus and earn both high school and college credits next year. If she gets in, it's her ticket out of Burrillville High School.
She has an after-school job.
Neither Laura nor her parents had thought life would be this good again.
"The decision to get back to school was the springboard," her father says.
It's like someone in the family had an illness, her parents say. But the whole family is on the road to recovery now.
"Is it all the same? No," her father says. "Will it all be the same? Nope. But will it be close? Yep."
Laura knows it, too, says her mother after a recent conversation.
"She said, 'I'm getting better, aren't I, mom?' "
* * * * * *
She has dreams for the future again — less detailed, but dreams nonetheless.
"I just want to have a career, get married, be a mom and live in a house," she says. "That's it. It's simple, but I like it."
She's interested in law, but being a lawyer takes a lot of work.
Maybe an investigator, because of Detective Richardson, her mother suggests.
Richardson has become like a second dad to Laura, her family says. And Marilyn Kelley and the school social worker are like her moms at school.
"That's OK," Laura's mother says. "I like that we share her. . . . It's like we're a group. I trust them. They're like practically all the ones I trust that's not family."
"I don't trust anyone," Laura says.
Kate Bramson
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Kate Bramson, a 1993 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, has been on the Providence Journal reporting staff since August, 2002. Prior to joining the Journal, she was the education writer for the Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota. From October, 1995 to Feburary, 1997, she was news editor for Budapest Week and The Budapest Sun in Hungary.
Bob Thayer
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Bob Thayer is an award-winning feature photographer who has been on the Providence Journal staff since 1978. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College and the Columbia School of Journalism.
Mimi Burkhardt
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Mimi Burkhardt has served in several roles since joining the Providence Journal's copy desk in 1980. She has been night metro editor, an assistant city editor, and a projects editor. For the past three years she has been a training editor, working closely with the newspaper's two-year interns and other reporters on the state staff. It was in her role as a consultive editor she worked with Kate Bramson on the award-winning story.
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