Wisdom, Circuit Judge: David Wiley, the appellant, and Eugene Cunningham, a co-defendant, were arrested on March 17, 1971, in connection with an alleged sexual assault ... on twelve year old Maxine Lewis ... they were charged with carnal knowledge ... and taking indecent liberties with a minor child.... The jury found Wiley guilty.... The principal issue on appeal is whether there was sufficient corroborative evidence to take the case to the jury. We find there was not sufficient corroborative evidence.

-- United States v. Wiley. 492 F. 2d 547 (D.C. Cir. 1973)

It is said that what is heard is a delusion of the senses. That sound consists of waves. That the wave is a momentary shape produced by energy traveling through molecules of air, or wood, or steel. Whether this wave is heard by the human ear as sound, it is said, depends on the frequency of the vibration of the sound. It is said that there are vibrations too rapid for the human ear and vibrations too slow, that vibrations of sound increase in warmer or thicker media, that the structure of the inner ear increases or decreases the frequency of sound waves, that sound waves of one frequency mask the presence of those of another frequency so that the ear hears only one sound when there are two, that many sounds together are heard as undifferentiated noise, that there is no absolute relationship between what produces sound and what is heard, that what is heard is a delusion of the senses and cannot be said to be real.

(It is established in the law that the testimony of an alleged victim of rape must be corroborated. It is said that corroboration is required because the complainants in such cases too frequently have an urge to fantasize or a motive to fabricate. Therefore the credibility of the alleged defiled, it is said, must be approached with skepticism, especially when the complainant is a young girl.)

It is therefore said that sounds do not exist without ears and a mind to hear them, that all sound exists only in the mind. (And the evidence that shortly after the alleged event a witness said that he saw the alleged victim on the street, crying, in a disheveled condition, upset and without a coat though the day was cold, and that she told him she had been attacked and pointed to her alleged attackers a short distance away, is held not to be corroborative, nor is the evidence of another witness that she appeared to him crying and saying that she had been raped held as corroborative since this is evidence that some event took place but not necessarily evidence that sexual intercourse took place.) And since sound is a product of the mind, it is further argued, it is absurd to believe that sound can exist in an unthinking substance, in the violin, or the wood of the violin.

And since all evidence for the existence of matter is sensual evidence of a like deceptive kind, existing only in the mind, it is concluded that matter exists only in the mind. (It is therefore the judgment of this hearing that the defendant was innocent of rape and that no such crime took place.)

***

Since the existence of matter is unverifiable Each of us can say we have heard footsteps behind us and since sensual data are deceptive each of us tried not to show fear it is questioned if there is any reason since in acting the part of the victim to examine what is called reality we may become the victim or if there is any way each of us has hidden what we are that anything can be known each of us has denied desire since no existence can be verified since it has been said to us that it is our own lust to be known and therefore which is lived out in the body of the rapist how can the act of knowing be known and our terror which inspires attack and therefore neither mind nor body and our own guilt can be said to exist which attacks us through his hands and therefore all existence even to the point of our own death is denied.

***

Startracks. Spiral nebulae. Craters of the moon. She lets herself fall. She falls into the room of her wants. The room where the demands of women are endless. Where her voice has endlessly demanded her to go. This room which reveals her. Where she is clumsy again. Where she is awkward in her grown-up clothing. Where she aches. This room of the revelation of all she thought horrible, and of her endlessly demanding body. Of all she shrank from in herself. This room filled with herself. She fell into this room. This room of outcasts. Where we uncover our bodies. Where we meet our outcast selves. The room in which she does not mock herself. This room filled with darkness. Where we go into darkness. Where we embrace darkness. Where we lie close to darkness, breathe when darkness breathes and find darkness inside ourselves. The room of the darkness of women. Where we are not afraid. Where joy is just under the surface. Where we laugh. Where laughter fills us utterly when we see what we thought was horrible. Where our demands are endlessly received. Where revelation fills us with glee. The room which she said she needed. The room without which she was sure she would perish. The first room in which she experienced space. This place where she could finally breathe. The place where she breathed out the stories she had not believed. The room where we confess we never believed those stories were about us. The room where she cast those stories from her forever. Where we began to feel the atmosphere wants us. Where she began to believe the horizon. This room of her wants. Of her desiring. This room of her desiring to live. This place which allows her to exist. Where the women stare into each other's eyes. Where the daughter feels the life of the mother. Where our words are undressed. And we touch. This room of our touching where the mother teaches her daughter to face her secret feelings.  The labyrinth of her knowledge. Where she has her own reasons. The coral skeleton. The crystals of frost. Of her knowing. This place of her wandering. The circles of the tree's growth. The beehive. The room of her first wandering and of her finding. This place where she finds her way.

***

The shape of the labyrinth. The shape of the cave. Space divided and not divided. Space mutable, we say, separation becoming union. Space changing. The new shape. Melting and transformation, the crystal and the seed, the endless possibility of form, as in the metal measuring rod, which changes its shape at the speed of light, we say.

The Hexenhaus destroyed (the witches reborn) the zoological garden opened (the reappearance of species) the prison razed (crime renamed) acoustics transformed (madness released) the buried (plants to flesh to earth) uncovered.

The rectangular shape of his book of knowledge, bending. The shape of our silence, the shape of the roofs of our mouths. Darkness.

***

Space where, in her circling motion, she found an opening.

We say we are brilliant with light from the stars that began millennia ago and now burn in our minds.

We heard of this woman who was out of control. We heard that she was led by her feelings. That her emotions were violent. That she was impetuous. That she violated tradition and overrode convention. That certainly her life should not be an example to us. We were told that she moved too hastily. Placed her life in the stream of ideas just born and we should have little regard for her, even despite the brilliance of her words. That she moved from passion. From unconscious feeling, allowing deep and troubled emotions to control her soul. But we say that to her passion, she brought lucidity and to her vision, she gave the substance of her life. For the way her words illuminated her life we say we have great regard. We say we have listened to her voice asking, "of what materials can that heart be composed which can melt when insulted and instead of revolting at injustice, kiss the rod?"

By her words we are brought to our own lives, and are overwhelmed by our feelings which we had held beneath the surface for so long. And from what is dark and deep within us, we say, tyranny revolts us; we will not kiss the rod.

-- "Woman and Nature -- The Roaring Inside Her," by Susan Grififn