was working as a realtor at the time and was inspecting an empty property when she was attacked by an assailant posing as a handyman. Her husband arrived in time to capture the man and hold him for the police. The incident sent Lychner into a deep depression for a time, but she rallied as her attacker sued her from prison for psychological distress (Swartz 22).
Joe Lychner, Pam's husband, notes what the two found out after the attacker was first captured:
It turned out Pam's attacker, William David Kelley, was a convicted rapist and child molester who had gotten out early under Texas's mandatory release policy. Mandatory release, used to ameliorate the major problem of prison overcrowding in Texas, enabled inmates to get out early once their in prison "good behavior" time and their time thus far served added up to the length of their sentence (Weller 72).
Some time after Kelley was sent to prison, the Lychners visited Judge McSpadden, who had presided at the trial, to tell him of the latest development:
The defendant, from prison, had just filed a civil suit against them for the "pain and suffering" he had undergone during the scuffle with Joe in the closet. I'd been on the bench 25 years and thought I'd seen everything, but that shocked even me (Weller 72).
The distress this caused was compounded when she received a letter telling her that Kelley was up for a parole only two yeas into his twenty-year sentence. It was this event that convinced her to find ways to fight back. She began asking different people and groups what could be done and found considerable resistance, as noted by Andy Kahan, director of the Houston Mayor's Office Crime Victim Services:
Pam called me in August 1992 and told me her attacker was up for parole. I showed her how to write a protest letter to the Board of Pardons and Paroles. I told her we had a tremendous early release problem in Texas, corruption within the parole board, and t...