Instead, she discovered, she could become a survivor.
Some parents question how this could have happened at the school.
She also contracted Hepatitis C from her blood transfusions, leaving her with liver damage.
But standing on the side of Highway 59, between Freer and Laredo in Texas, she was suddenly surrounded by the gang of six, bundled into a truck and driven away from the scene.
She says she had to undergo emergency operations, spent four months in hospital and needed a hysterectomy following the sadistic gang-rape in November 1981.
James, now 42, was later told about the real culprits.