I started working in downtown San Diego a few months before my 18th birthday. I developed a routine of parking in the same spot everyday and walking as quickly as I could to get to work on time. One day, when I arrived, there was a distressed looking man standing near the curb outside my building. As I entered, he followed close behind me as if he was in a hurry. After the elevator doors closed, he told me there was a man injured on the floor below us and he needed my help to move him to safety. I told him I was late and didn’t have time, but he pleaded with me until I changed my mind. Once we were in the stairwell, he pulled  out a knife and pointed it at my side as he ordered me to get in the closet and take off my pants.

Proverbs 2:11-12 indicates that understanding can deliver us from the way of an evil man, “from the man that speaketh froward things.” The Hebrew word translated froward, tahpûkâh (tah – poo – kaw´) means a perversity or fraud (8419). Tahpukah is derived from the word haphak (haw – fak´) which indicates reflexive action including changing your mind or turning one’s back.

The man that spoke to me in the elevator was a serial rapist that had already abducted and raped several women in the area surrounding my work location. His objective was to get me to abandon my plan to go straight into the office so that I could help him do a good deed. In the moment when I decided to turn my back on my responsibility to my employer, I became a victim of his evil plot and was unable to escape what was about to happen to me, being raped at knifepoint.