Because of that, her doctor advised her to seek temporary disability leave. Hughes turned in her request to the city nurse on March 28, she says.
A few days later, on April 2, she was called at home and asked to come see Wilson. The chief and an internal affairs officer greeted her and her father. While seated in the chief's office, Hughes says, Wilson pushed a paper toward her.
"Sign it," she recalls him saying.
Hughes read the paper: It was a letter confirming that she'd received another letter stating that she'd been fired for filing a false police report. Hughes says she asked what she'd falsified and received no answer.
"I repeatedly asked, and they would not tell me," she says. "They just ignored me. So I decided to appeal it because I did not lie. I did not falsify."
Wilson remembers the meeting differently.
"We sat there in my office with her for an hour and a half explaining how we reached that conclusion," he says. "We told her she could appeal her termination to the city manager."
Chief Wilson made the decision to fire her. Filing a false police report is class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $2,000 fine. He said he'd decided not to charge her with a crime and simply fire her instead.
"There is a significant difference in concluding that someone has made a false report and then actually proving it beyond a reasonable doubt in the court room," he says. "In this case, we felt like this lady has been through enough. It is within our discretion not to [file charges]. We didn't."
Hughes signed the papers, then filed her appeal.
The first thing she did was hire Luther Jones to represent her during her appeal hearing. Jones, a certified labor and employment law specialist, decided first that he needed to reassure himself that Hughes was telling the truth. He asked her to take a polygraph test and pay for it herself. She did.
"I told her that if we are going to fight this, there are always those people who are going to say that she is lying," Jones says.
Jim Lauderdale, a 15-year veteran of polygraph work, gave the test, which Hughes took twice. The first time, results were inconclusive--possibly because of Hughes' stress medication, Lauderdale says. The second time she took it, however, she passed. When she answered questions about being attacked in her home or whether she lied to the police, the polygraph indicated she wasn't being deceptive. As a result, Lauderdale says he's convinced the attack occurred.
With polygraph results in hand, Hughes and Jones then set about trying to build a defense.
The May 13 hearing ended up being a raucous disappointment for Hughes and Jones. The police officers involved in the investigation were present for the meeting at City Hall, as well as Chief Wilson, City Attorney Charlie Hinton, and City Manager Jeffrey Muzzy.
Muzzy told Jones and Hughes that he was only there to listen to why she shouldn't be fired. Jones replied that it was impossible for Hughes to state her case since the city had refused to give her any information about why she was fired. The meeting grew ugly, degenerating into a shouting match between Jones and Hinton. Chief Wilson eventually ordered his officers to leave the meeting, which lasted only 15 minutes.
Muzzy says he was finally able to get Jones and Hinton to stop screaming at each other long enough for Hughes to make a statement. Hughes says she doesn't remember what she said. Whatever it was, it didn't change anyone's mind. A month after the meeting, Muzzy upheld her firing.
The overall picture that emerges from police reports is that Hughes is a jilted lover who made a last grasp for attention from her former beau.
"We tried as hard as we could to determine that this did happen," says Gregg. "But no way could we find that it did. Everywhere we looked, everything told us that this did not happen."
Hughes still insists that her story is true. Her psychologist, Dr. Michael Cunningham, who has been treating Hughes since February 18, says she is suffering from traumatic stress disorder as a result of the attack. He says it is a moderate case.
It is possible to fake the symptoms--which include depression, an inability to concentrate, sleep disturbances, and anxiety--if you know them, he says.
"If [Hughes] had looked it up, I suppose she could" fake the disorder, Cunningham says. "But I doubt she is. I don't believe she is making this up."
These days, Hughes insists she just wants to clear her name and get on with life. Since the attack, she has lost her job and her friends. She can't return to her home for fear of being attacked again.
"You can't tell me I wasn't attacked in my home," she says, her voice resolute. "Why in the world would a person do something false like this? Why would someone make something like this up? I'm not that sort of person."
She pauses and fiddles with her pack of cigarettes. She got something that night from her attacker that she's never had before: Fear.
"That's what that man gave me," she says. "He took a lot away from me, but he sure gave me some fear.
