"Norma could remember few details of what had happened to her. She thought she had lain by the side of the road for several hours. The rest of the evening passed in a haze. When Weddington gently probed for more, Norma’s story became confused and vague. She thought the rapist might have been one of the men who had disrupted the circus earlier in the evening. What had happened to the women who were with her? Sarah asked. Norma said she did not know, she only knew that when she managed to rouse herself, she was alone. She stumbled back to her motel room, only to find it empty. Her roommates had vanished, taking her belonging with them. She did not report her rape to anyone, nor did she talk to or even see anyone in the hours immediately following the rape. She crawled into bed. When she awakened in the motel room the next day, Norma was still alone. The circus had left town without her and, in the course of doing so, had left her with no money, no way even to pay for the motel for another night. A defeated Norma decided she would return to Dallas, where her family and friends lived She knew no one in Augusta, Georgia, whom she could ask for help. Norma telephone an old friend in Dallas to ask her to send enough money for the bus trip home. To her chagrin, the friend wired only the exact amount of the bus fare Norma sold the taxi driver the radio from her motel room to pay for her fare to the bus station. The trip back seemed endless, Norma said, particularly since she had no money to buy food and thought she had changed buses several times."