By Cindy Schroeder
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Tonda Hignite-Soisson (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

Just as John Walsh helped missing children and Candy Lightner created Mothers Against Drunk Driving, an Independence native hopes to focus national attention on survivors of rape.

Tonda Hignite-Soisson said she was raped in her gated Florida home by a man released from jail only five hours earlier - despite a neighbor's repeated attempts to get a protection order to keep him out of the community.

Now, the petite Simon Kenton High School graduate is on a mission.

Ms. Hignite-Soisson has begun an intense campaign for tougher sex-crime penalties and to increase awareness about rape and sexual assaults in the six weeks since she said she was brutally raped in her Lehigh Acres, Fla. home by a twice-convicted sex offender.

Her efforts have drawn the attention of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has pledged to make it easier to get restraining orders against people who pose a threat and to toughen sex-crime penalties.

She also is forming the non-profit organization, RARE, which stands for rape awareness, relief and education. And Lifetime Television has filmed a documentary about her crusade that is scheduled to air in February.

"Had I been hit by a drunk driver or diagnosed with cancer, people would have been rallying round me,'' the 38-year-old dance instructor and mother of two said. "But instead I'm beating people upside the head saying, `No, I was raped.'"

"Women are not the reason for the crime," Ms. Hignite-Soisson said. "We are the recipient of the crime. And I will not be made to feel like I should be ashamed or guilty."During last month's visit to Northern Kentucky for her 20-year class reunion at Simon Kenton High, Ms. Hignite-Soisson began researching Kentucky's sexual assault laws for ways to make them tougher.

She also has announced plans to campaign for a national law aimed at stopping stalkers before they become rapists, and is asking anyone who supports her efforts to contact her at misstonda@cs.com.

Carol Jordan, executive director of Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton's Office of Child Abuse and Domestic Violence Services, says Kentucky law already has a key provision that Ms. Hignite-Soisson is lobbying for in Florida.

"One of the things we've done here in Kentucky is create a special protective order that says relationship is not relevant when it comes to stalking," Ms. Jordan said.

In most states, including Florida, she said, accusers who want to obtain a restraining order against a stalker must prove that the two are married or living together or have some sort of relationship.

"What we did in Kentucky was to go back in this last (legislative) session and say, `If I'm a stalking victim, and somebody's stalking me from my workplace, I not only want to get him convicted of stalking, I want to get a protective order too,'" Ms. Jordan said.

In Ohio, residents can get an anti-stalking protection order if someone who's not related to, or living with them, engages in a pattern of menacing behaviors, said Staci Kitchen, executive director of the Ohio Coalition on Sexual Assaults in Columbus. Other types of restraining and civil protection orders are available for victims who are divorced from, or who have lived with their attacker.

Two years ago, Kentucky legislators also enhanced the penalties for sex abuse crimes and changed the law so that victims could sue their stalkers for civil damages, Ms. Jordan said.

"I think starting where she lives (to change Florida's law) is clearly a good approach," she said.

Gov. Jeb Bush an advocate

Ms. Hignite-Soisson was upset when she learned that the man charged in her assault had been released from jail just five hours before he allegedly raped her. She told her story to a Fort Myers reporter less than a week after her attack.

Her purpose was two-fold: to help erase the stigma of rape and to push for tougher laws to keep people like the man charged in her attack behind bars.

After reading of Ms. Hignite-Soisson's attack, an aide to Gov. Bush called her, soliciting her suggestions on proposed legislation dealing with sex crimes.

As Ms. Hignite-Soisson stood by him last month, Gov. Bush vowed to introduce a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years to life for repeat sexual offenders and some of the worst first-time sexual offenders. He also pledged to make it easier for victims who aren't related to their attackers to get restraining orders against them.

"We incorporated Tonda's comments into our (proposed) legislation," a staff person in Florida's office of Budget and Policy said. "She helped provide the impetus to move it along."

Rape in a gated community

Four years ago, Ms. Hignite-Soisson's accused attacker, Christopher Hiatt had served three years for stalking a woman in her gated community.

Soon after his release from prison, another local woman and her two daughters called the Lee County sheriff's office to complain about a stranger fitting the description of the 23-year-old Lehigh Acres man who was lurking in their yard.

Authorities told the women that they couldn't do anything about Mr. Hiatt because the suspect was not related to or living with them, and he had not committed two violent acts or threatened violence against his accusers.

"Because of the loopholes in the law, this man was able to work the system," Ms. Hignite-Soisson said.

The neighbor who accused Mr. Hiatt of stalking her was finally able to get him jailed when she wrote down the license plate number of his truck and police arrested him on a stolen car charge.

"He did a month on the stolen car charge, got out of jail, and five hours later, he raped me," Ms. Hignite-Soisson said.

The divorced mother of two is 5 foot 1 and weighs 90 pounds - no match for the 6 foot 1, 182-pound stranger that she encountered her living room at 2 a.m. on Sept. 13.

After a 10-minute fight that left Ms. Hignite-Soisson and her attacker bruised and breathless, Mr. Hiatt held his victim in a head lock and threatened to break her neck and kill her two young children if she didn't stop fighting, Ms. Hignite-Soisson said.

He then dragged her into the backyard pool after the rape to try to wash away the evidence, she said. But said she managed to hold a fistful of semen above the water.

"She was able to keep that evidence without him knowing that she was doing that," said Deputy Larry King of the Lee County sheriff's department. "She also scratched her attacker's face, leaving identifiable marks and making it very easy for our detectives to spot him on a nearby road."

Investigators are still awaiting the results of DNA testing. Mr. Hiatt, facing felony charges of sexual battery with a deadly weapon or great force and first-degree burglary, is being held without bond, pending his next court appearance on Nov. 25.

Megan's mom offers advice

The Northern Kentucky native also has support for her efforts from the New Jersey woman whose daughter's death inspired "Megan's Law," which required convicted sex offenders to register with local authorities.

Maureen Kanka was inspired to change the law when a convicted pedophile in her neighborhood killed her 7-year-old daughter, Megan, on July 29, 1994.

"This man who'd been convicted of sexually abusing two other children was living across the street from us, and we had no knowledge of what he'd done," Mrs. Kanka said. "Megan was his third victim, and he succeeded in killing her. I think it was disbelief more than anything that fueled our quest."

Thanks to public pressure and "tremendous legislative support," Mrs. Kanka succeeded in getting a sex offender notification law adopted in New Jersey 89 days after her daughter's death.

During the next two years, Megan's family learned to use the media to get their message across, and they successfully lobbied to have federal grants for law enforcement withheld in states that were slow to adopt "Megan's Law."

"When we started this process, we had absolutely no knowledge of how government works or how deals are made," Mrs. Kanka said. "It was a grueling process, but it was worth it in the end.

"I wish (Ms. Hignite-Soisson) luck."

E-mail cschroeder@enquirer.com