Rape victim 'came forward for Amanda'

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - The parallels make her shudder -- the same age, the same home, and both at sleepovers.

And, she is conflicted: If she had reported Cecil Wallis Sr. to police for raping her 14 years ago during a sleepover, could she have prevented the death of Amanda Lankey?

Or, would she have suffered the same fate?

"If I would have went to police with what he did to me back then, I don't think I would be alive today, and I think that if I would have said something, maybe she'd be here today," said the woman, now 27 and living in Texas.

She was 13 in 1998, spending the night at Wallis's home with her best friend. Both girls were 7th-graders.

She had spent the night there before.

"In the beginning, I would stay the night over there, and he seemed normal, the nice, normal parent," she said of Wallis. "Then, things would be said here and there that just wasn't right.

"It's kind of like he just wanted to gain your trust, and then, after that, he just flipped."

She said Wallis raped her and her best friend at his home one morning, each girl witnessing the other's assault.

"He brought me home right after it happened," she said.

She said she was afraid; she'd seen him lose his temper.

"If he had any idea I was going to go home and say, 'Hey mom, this is what happened,' he wouldn't have brought me home.  I would have never made it home."

She says she never let it happen again -- never spent another night there. She and her friend kept quiet.

"I didn't say anything; I didn't tell my mom; I didn't tell anybody. It was between her (her friend) and I, and we kept it that way until recently."

She moved out of Michigan, she said, and lost touch with her best friend.

Six years later, in 2004, a girl she'd never heard of -- 13-year-old Amanda Lankey -- spent the night at the same home. That's where Amanda was last seen. Her body was found two weeks later.

"I didn't know in 2004 that Amanda came up missing. I had no clue, nobody contacted me and told me about it."

She said she was on the Internet in the fall of 2011 when she came across a story about Amanda's death. Within weeks, she said, she talked to her old friend, to Amanda's mom, and to police, telling detectives about the rape.

"My whole reason for coming forward was for Amanda, really."

It led to first-degree rape charges last year against Wallis Sr. -- involving the two girls from 14 years ago. He also was named a person of interest in Amanda Lankey's death.

But last year, on the day he was supposed to be in court for the rapes, Wallis hanged himself.

Questions were never answered.

"Amanda needs justice," the rape victim said. "I don't think just because he is no longer alive doesn't mean that that's justice for her."

Prosecutors have charged Wallis' sister, Candace Wallis-Baumgartner, a former White Cloud police officer, and her son, Marcus Wallis, with perjury in the Lankey investigation.

"He didn't do this alone, and anybody else that was involved needs to be charged, needs to be held accountable for what they did and for what they didn't do."