She would later be asked by a Sunnyvale police officer whether she considered getting away from her husband when he was assaulting her.
“The victim told me she did not think she could leave,” the officer would write in a report. “In the past if she did anything other than take the assault it made her husband angrier, and the assault was worse. She added that he had already assaulted her that evening, and this was the second assault. She clarified the suspect used both hands to hit her on both sides. Initially his left hand held her right ear, but then he switched to striking her with his left hand.”
By the time of that report, Rastogi had taken the video and other evidence she had gathered with her iPhone to the police. Her 38-year-old husband was arrested and ended up pleading no contest. The device she helped refine seemed to have become an instrument of justice.
But to 36-year-old Rastogi’s dismay, the top charge against Abhishek was reduced from felony assault to felony accessory after the fact, with an accompanying misdemeanor of “offensive touching.”
When did the San Francisco Bay area become such a cesspit of violent misogyny?