(CBS) Anyone who knows Laura Neuman, 38, knows how much she enjoys her life in Annapolis, Md. A hard-charging businesswoman, she works hard and plays hard.
But life hasn't always been such smooth sailing. In fact, Laura says she spent two decades living in fear as a victim of rape. Correspondent Susan Spencer reports on this broadcast that first aired last fall.
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"It's really devastating. I mean, it's something that just completely overshadows your life. And it's not something that you ever recover from fully," says Laura.
It's been almost 20 years since that horrible night when she was attacked. Laura, then 18, had just moved out of her parent's home in Baltimore. With dreams of college and a career, she was ready to take on the world.
On Oct. 14, 1983, Laura says, she fell asleep watching television. She says she heard a noise while she was asleep, but she thought it was her roommate returning home.
"It sounded like a shuffling noise in the background," she recalls. "But then, of course I was awakened, and without going into too much detail, I did wake up to a gun to my head and a pillow over my face."
According to the police report, an intruder entered Laura's apartment through her roommate's window and forcibly raped the frightened teenager in her own bed.
"It was fear, it was shock. I was certain that there was a really good chance I wouldn't live through it. I really thought I might die," she says.
She didn't see her attacker, and she says she didn't struggle during the attack: "You know, if I could change one thing, looking back over the years, feeling like I'm strong and capable of taking care of myself, I would have fought. But in fact, I didn't."
So why does she have second thoughts about it? "It's really a life sentence to be raped," she says. "It's always vivid in your mind."
When police came to investigate, Laura immediately sensed something terribly wrong. The detectives seemed to doubt her story, thinking perhaps she'd known her attacker - and only decided after the fact that this was rape.
"All the responding officers that night had been males. And a female came in and really it started to look like an interrogation," recalls Laura. "It became quite clear to me at that point that they definitely did not believe this had happened."
But far worse than that, she says, her own family didn't completely believe her, either: "The response was, we believe something happened. But our perception and our perspective on it is really based on what the police department told us ... We believe that maybe it was someone you knew or what is commonly referred to as date rape."
Laura was shocked by their reaction. "Always believe your children and support them," she says. "Even if it's really difficult to do that."
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