Maureen O’Boylecouldn’t stop crying — and she couldn’t figure out why.
“It was bizarre,” O’Boyle, 55, tells PEOPLE. “I was hysterically crying and I couldn’t understand my emotions. It was just such a shock. I was literally wailing.”
The single mom got the stunning phone call out of the blue on March 18. It was someone from the Georgia Bureau State Board of Pardons and Paroles, who said he periodically checks on high-profile cases and discovered thatJames E. Starling had died in March 2018.
“He said usually there is a phone call from the prison, but that call was never made,” O’Boyle explains.
The Georgia State Prison in Reidsville did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Maureen O’Boyle.Courtesy Maureen O’Boyle
O’Boyle was 22 and a morning news anchor in Macon, Georgia, in 1986 when she woke up to find Starling naked and on top of her, holding a knife to her throat. He was a loyal viewer who’d stalked her for months before breaking into her apartment that night.
For the next five hours, Starling terrorized O’Boyle, blindfolding her with a pillowcase, forcing her to be photographed in lingerie he had stolen from other women’s homes, raping her and repeatedly threatening to kill her. She learned that he’d secretly broken into her apartment on numerous occasions to steal underwear and photographs and move her belongings around.
“When you deal with a traumatic event, it never goes away. You’re always in fight or flight mode.”
In and out of therapy for years, O’Boyle — whoopened up about her nightmare in PEOPLE’s March 23, 1992 cover story— says she still suffers from anxiety attacks.
When she learned Starling was dead, she was anxious to know how he died. After fighting to keep him in prison, O’Boyle worried that he may have died of suicide.
“I was concerned,” she tells PEOPLE. “I fought really hard to keep him behind bars, and I was worried that with no option of parole, he might have harmed himself and taken his own life, and I wanted to know.”
She was relieved to learn he died of natural causes after being transferred from the prison to a hospital. Now she’s done crying over his death, O’Boyle says she’s arrived at the point where she is relieved — and angry.
“I always wanted him to apologize,” she shares. “I’ve gone from being confused about why I was crying to now I’m kind of pissed because he never reached out and apologized. I don’t know if he was ever really sorry.”
Going forward, O’Boyle says she’s going to focus on her advocacy work: helping other survivors understand what she’s figured out and the importance of talking to someone.
“I want other survivors to know that you have to continue the process of healing,” says O’Boyle. “Declaring yourself a survivor is the first step, but to thrive, you have to work with someone, talk to someone. It can be a group therapy session or calling a crisis line — just check in with someone who understands that this is an ongoing process.”
“It never goes away,” O’Boyle tells PEOPLE, “but learning to cope with it is what surviving — and thriving — is all about.”
To contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 1-800-656-4673.
source: people.com
