People stare at the scars on his throat as he waits in grocery store check-out lines. Sometimes they ask if he has a cold. Sometimes they ask if he fought in Vietnam. He never served in Vietnam, but he tells people he did, because he knows from experience that they won't want the truth. The truth is, eight years ago a stranger jammed a knife into his gut, spilling the intestines out of his slight frame, then slit his throat as he lay calling for help. It's those details people don't want to hear - details that still rattle him, causing his hands to shake uncontrollably, calling attention to nails bitten down to nothing. The sandy-haired young father is just one of several million people victimized by aggravated assault in the past decade. The attack swept away his optimism and trust, his devil-may-care fearlessness. Taking its place is fear - fear so real that after telling his story, he asked that his real name and hometown be kept secret. ``We live with the realization that it doesn't happen to somebody else,'' said the boyish, 33-year-old we'll call Larry Roberts. ``We know that people will hurt you.'' Murders may steal the headlines, but the number of serious assaults dwarfs the number of killings. Assault victims survive, but often are changed forever. ``The trauma of having looked at the jaws of death is something that is very rough to deal with,'' said John Stein, deputy director of the National Organization for Victims Assistance. Some 559,270 people - roughly the population of Columbus, Ohio, - were injured in aggravated assaults last year alone, according to the National Crime Survey, which annually interviews members of some 49,000 households and extrapolates from that to the entire nation. The survey found that 1.1 million others were victims of an attempted aggravated assault with a weapon - a gunshot flew by them, for example. On the night of June 6, 1982, Roberts was on leave from the Navy and interested mainly in getting in a last day of scuba diving before his aircraft carrier departed in two days. He was pitching a tent in a park when two strangers struck up a conversation. They seemed friendly enough. Then without warning, one of them stabbed Roberts in the abdomen and ran off with his scuba gear, wedding ring and $4 in cash. ``When I thought he was gone, I started to holler for help,'' Roberts said, a catch in his now-raspy voice. ``He came back through the woods and he tilted my head back and slit my throat twice. And then he tied my feet together and my hands back to two trees.'' Roberts eventually worked free, dragged himself 250 feet to a dirt road, holding in his intestines and pressing his chin toward his chest to keep the blood from spurting out. Help finally arrived the next morning. He spent 10 months in the hospital, undergoing at least 10 operations. The fear took over when he emerged from the hospital April 18, 1983. ``I used to take a gun with me wherever I went,'' he said. ``I was scared to death.'' In the next two years, Roberts moved his family six times. ``Something would happen, something would trigger me and we'd be gone,'' he said. They stopped running five years ago in rural Maryland so their elder daughter could start school and enjoy a semblance of a normal life. Four years ago, Roberts and his wife had a second daughter. In the meantime, his attacker pleaded guilty to attempted murder and served six years of a 10-year sentence before being freed as a model prisoner. Roberts still fears him - even though he believes his fear is irrational. He also insisted that the assailant's name not be used, in part because he doesn't want to antagonize him. Even now, Roberts' home is guarded by a large, loud dog nicknamed Norad, after the nation's early warning system for nuclear attacks. At night, their home is awash in light. Two sheriff's deputies live across the street. Roberts and his wife never employ baby-sitters because they don't trust strangers. The attack destroyed Roberts' career plans. The Navy discharged him involuntarily because he could no longer perform his job. Desperate to catch up for time lost, Roberts pushed himself too far. He has had a drinking problem. He spent two months in a psychiatric hospital last year. Today, he takes things more slowly, teaching scuba diving only part time while attending college. And after years of shying away from the world, he now tells his story to police groups, hoping to sensitize officers to victims' needs. ``The victim is a piece of evidence,'' said Andrew Turner, a criminal justice instructor at Wor Wic Tech Community College and a former Maryland police officer who has arranged some of Roberts' talks. ``If the guy survived, you had a good case. He could come and testify against the perpetrator.'' Turner said. ``Police don't see a guy healed up'' but still needing emotional support. Roberts finds the speeches therapeutic, despite the toll they take, and he has established a network of people who will help him when he cracks from the strain. It is important to Roberts that he controls the impact of the attack and not the other way around, but he conceded, ``It has given my life a different direction.'' Now there's yet another fear: AIDS. Roberts had numerous blood transfusions in 1982, before blood was tested for the deadly disease, and he refuses to be tested now. ``If I'm going to die of it,'' he said with a grimace, ``I don't want to know about it.''
