this was in my local paper yesterday

we are allowing this man to continue to rape isabelle over and over and over again. i am agast, i am shocked, i am angry.

Rapist Keeps Confronting Victim, Via Courts --------------------By LYNNE TUOHYCOURANT STAFF WRITER September 15, 2005DANBURY -- When her ex-husband was sentenced four years ago to 13 years in prison for kidnapping and raping her at knife-point, "Isabelle" thought she was finally beyond the reach of the man who had stalked her and threatened to kill her if she did not return to him. She was wrong. He is stalking her still. And Allen Adgers is using the same judicial system that convicted and sentenced him to obtain the subpoenas that have enabled him to haul Isabelle into court to answer a raft of civil lawsuits he has filed against her, most of them alleging a betrayal of their marriage vows. Adgers, 41, fancies himself a jailhouse lawyer and has filed more than a dozen lawsuits against judges, wardens, a probate judge, the former governor, Connecticut Public Television and, of course, Isabelle. Acting as his own lawyer, Adgers is the one who questions witnesses, including Isabelle. He had her on the witness stand in Superior Court in New London July 26, when he tried to elicit testimony that the sexual assault in Hartford's Keney Park was in fact consensual. It was rapist questioning victim. Adgers, who was living in Hartford at the time, left out the part about abducting her at knifepoint and hitting her in the head with a hammer until she lost consciousness. "So the state was correct when they said that when you offered yourself twice ..." one query by Adgers began."I didn't offer myself. You raped me," Isabelle retorted.He was allowed to ask her who she had sex with on that night in June 2000. "Besides you raping me, no one," she replied. Tired of his badgering, Isabelle announced that she did not want to answer any more questions. "You stay up there as long as I have questions," he ordered. And when she finally left the witness stand, the official transcript captured the remark he made to her: "You got fat, too. Your face look all beat up."Isabelle spent Wednesday in a conference room about the size of a prison cell outside a hearing room in Superior Court in Danbury, waiting to testify in yet another proceeding. She had to take a day off work and travel from the Hartford area, and she will have to return Friday. Adgers refused to interrupt his own testimony to spare her a return trip, and Judge Referee Sidney Axelrod told him he didn't have to. Adgers has stoked fear in Isabelle and angered prosecutors. Attorney James F. Papillo, the state's chief victim advocate, spent the day in the Danbury court and walked away seething and seeing the need for more legislation to protect victims."She's been brutalized by this individual, and the system is allowing him to brutalize her in another way," Papillo said."We've gotten legislation to protect victims from civil lawsuits during the pendency of a [criminal] prosecution," he said. "We need to go beyond that to protect victims like [Isabelle], where someone is using the system to harass her and torment her."After watching Adgers ramble through his presentation, which included disparaging remarks about Axelrod and the credibility of the entire judicial system, Papillo muttered, "What a tremendous waste of judicial resources."Isabelle has moved six times. Each time Adgers has her served with a subpoena he gets a receipt that records the address where service was made - and learns her whereabouts. He has had four years tacked onto his sentence, which now totals 17 years, for sending her harassing letters."Every fear that I had before that I thought was gone is coming back," she said this week. "Now I am stressed out. Now I see him over and over again. I call it a nightmare. It's ridiculous."In New London, Isabelle faced her attacker alone. There was no lawyer to intercede on her behalf. She is 41 years old, 5 feet 2 inches tall, and on the day Adgers attacked her, she says, she believed he was going to kill her. To have to respond to his questions amounted to another assault, she said. "I was in rage. I was in shock," she said. "This was uncalled for. I tried to explain to the judge, but he didn't want to listen."That judge, Robert J. Devine Jr., this week denied Adgers' attempts to secure money damages against Isabelle for not adhering to her marriage vows to support him without question in the face of all adversity. She has appeared in Superior Court in Hartford in response to a variation of the same civil complaint. But because she didn't file a written response, or pleading, to Adgers' lawsuit, she is in danger of having a default judgment in the amount of $100,000 entered against her later this month. Wednesday in Danbury marked the first day of hearings in Adgers' habeas corpus petition - which typically is most convicts' last-ditch effort to win a new trial by claiming new evidence or that their trial lawyers were woefully inadequate. Adgers has managed to weave his violation of the marital contract claim into his habeas petition, and subpoena Isabelle to testify. Senior Assistant State's Attorney Angela R. Macchiarulo made so many objections to Adgers' disjointed presentation that she remained standing through the hearing. "This is merely his attempt to re-victimize the victim," Macchiarulo said during a recess. Isabelle spent most of the day in the small conference room with its slit of a vertical window, still hostage to the man who abducted her five years ago. The night before she said she was doing the best she could and was praying. "I would like tomorrow to be the last day. But coming from him, knowing him, I don't think so," she said. "I don't think this is going to stop."A discussion of this story with Courant Staff Writer Lynne Tuohy is scheduled to be shown on New England Cable News each hour today between 9 a.m. and noon. Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant