Public Speaking Experience

The Ghost in the North Western Reporter

If you walk into any law library in this country and pull down volume 466 of the North Western Reporter, you will find me on page 747. But you won't see my name. You won't see my face. You will see three letters, bleached of all humanity:

T.L.H.

To the state of Minnesota, I am case law. I am a 1991 landmark decision on the Rape Shield statute. I am a standard footnote used by lawyers to argue about 'sua sponte' jury instructions and 'upward durational departures' based on victim vulnerability. For thirty-five years, the legal system has treated my survival story as if it were public property—a tool for cross-examination, a clinical guide on how to sentence an abuser.

But today, I am stripping away those three clinical initials. I am here to tell you that I am not a footnote. I am the ghost in their law books, and it is time I spoke in my own voice.

I am no longer just three black initials in a law book.

I am Tamara Lyn Houts.

When lawyers read State MN v. Jeffrey Howard Kobow, they see a clean victory. They see a conviction that was successfully affirmed. What they don't see—what they don't teach you in law school—is the sheer, exhausting cruelty of the machinery of justice.

They don't tell you about the hung jury. They summarize it in one sentence: 'The first trial resulted in a mistrial.' They don't tell you what it feels like to be a 14-year-old child, sitting on a witness stand, spilling your gut-wrenching truth to a room full of adults, only to be told: 'Not good enough. Do it again.' They don't tell you the courage it takes to walk back into that courtroom for a second full trial, facing your abuser all over again, knowing the system might break down a second time.

They don't tell you about the legal ambush. My abuser’s defense team spent hours trying to find a loophole in the Rape Shield law. They wanted to dig into anything they could to smear my character, to confuse a jury, to make me look like a liar for speaking out. My case permanently closed that loophole in Minnesota. It established that you cannot harass a child with unproven past accusations. But standing as the shield that stops that arrow is a heavy, painful weight to carry.

For over three decades, my story belonged to the state. It belonged to judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. But the system closed my file in 1991—I didn't.

Through social media, through video outreach, art exhibits, public speaking engagements and through platforms like TikTok, I have taken back what was mine. I stepped out from behind the initials 'T.L.H.' to show the world that behind every single piece of historic criminal precedent, there is a real person who had to survive the reality of the pages you are reading.

I do not share my journey because I am trapped in 1991. I share it because right now, there is someone out there trapped in the exact same legal maze I survived. There is a survivor sitting outside a courtroom door right now, terrified, listening to a defense attorney try to dismantle their character. I speak so they know they are not alone. I speak to turn a cold, dry legal brief into a living map for survival.

The courts gave me a verdict, but art, music and advocacy gave me my voice.

Thank you.

 

I've been speaking publicly about my story since it happened, after I turned 16 and went through two courtroom trials, I first spoke to an auditorium of Psychology students at the University of Minnesota, Duluth Campus in 1991.

I'm currently available for public speaking engagements, and have been a member of the RAINN Speakers Bureau since 2019.

To contact me for speaking engagements, send details via email, to: icu@headfulofeyes.com. Put "Speaker Needed" in the "Subject" line.

Thank you for reaching out. I look forward to meeting you at your next event. Tamara