Rachel Brown
speaker
1,519 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 5 Aug
Rachel Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.
Appearances
She hadn't seen this article since she was 16.
At the time of Ruth's assault in 1946, there were many articles published about her attack.
The Fort Scott Tribune at the time wrote, Branded by a hot flat iron, Ruth Smock, 16-year-old Fort Scott high school girl, was resting today following an attack upon her early last night by a man whom Fort Scott police called a sex maniac.
In high school, Ruth had moved to a neighboring town for a better education, where she lived alone in an apartment and worked a part-time job at the phone company in Fort Scott.
She had been on her dinner break when she was attacked.
She had come home and a man had followed her in close behind.
He grabbed her and she fought back.
Here's Fred Mann, a journalist who covered Ruth's story extensively in the 1970s.
She woke up on the kitchen floor, seeing the man above her heating a hot iron on the stovetop.
Her memory comes in flashes as she's in and out of consciousness.
Eventually, she woke up again and the man was gone.
she had a deep wound on her inner thigh from the hot iron.
After being treated by a doctor, Ruth's parents reported the incident to the police, who interviewed her.
Not only was the police interrogation mortifying, the newspapers took her story and ran wild with it.
At 16, her name and home address were published in the paper alongside her high school photo.
It's hard to imagine a paper today publishing a teenager's name and photo, not to mention her address.
Ruth was a minor and the victim of a crime.
This is like the 1940s era version of doxing.
Ruth's family's response was to pretend the assault hadn't happened.
But outside her home, the attack was whispered about all through the community.
Showing 1301–1320 of 1,519 · page 66 of 76
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