The image of Troy Graves, Center City rapist and murderer of Wharton student Shannon Schieber, is fixed indelibly in my mind.

Not because I myself was one of the numerous women in Philadelphia and Fort Collins, Colo., who was victimized. Not because Graves possesses such unusual features. But because, on the contrary, his face is all too familiar: a nondescript, benign-looking young man you wouldn't necessarily fear or even notice walking down the street. A normal-looking guy - capable of the most heinous crimes against women.

Graves was convicted on May 30 and is to serve two consecutive life sentences for his crimes. The question now is: Do we feel any safer walking our streets?

Many of us certainly breathed easier when we heard that this trail of fear, which dates back to June 1997, had reached an end with Graves' confession and subsequent plea bargain and conviction. But the memory lingers of how things were before.

While the rapist was at large, I worked in an office near Rittenhouse Square and lived across town. For years I left the office late in the afternoon and walked home. I was sometimes the last one to leave.

That routine became increasingly uncomfortable. I was not sure it was good to be in the building alone; on the walk home, I often watched men approaching me on the street. As I watched, I attempted to match their faces with the composite sketch postered around Center City: a face and description so ordinary it was impossible to feel safe.

My male boss shared my concern, offering to pick up cab or bus fare so I'd be less inclined to walk home alone.

So the news certainly is a relief. But rapes and other assaults against women continue - and so do the psychological effects of living in a society in which crimes against women have become, if not an accepted, at least a familiar fact of life.

As a Philadelphia native, I have early memories of watching TV news coverage of the Gary Heidnick case involving the freezing of women's body parts in Heidnick's basement after drawn-out rituals of torture. Still closer to home, I remember when there was a serial rapist who had been attacking women on the platform at the Chelten Avenue station. That was the station my mother, along with many other commuters, depended on to get her to and from work every day from our Germantown home.

My father and I met her there every evening. I remember her rage at not feeling safe about walking the three blocks in her own neighborhood. This was a rage I would soon come to understand.

Every day we reassure ourselves. When we hear of an assault, we think: "Thank God it's not me." We think: "The media may be blowing such stories out of proportion. No reason to be alarmist." Or is there? Perhaps we are too willing to normalize that which is fundamentally abnormal. And perhaps we too often ignore that these crimes frequently are gender specific: committed against girls and women in most cases.

This fact creates a division in how we, as women, are made to feel - a division we as a society have not quite fully recognized, given voice to, or attempted to heal. A woman's insecurity, a woman's lack of safety is not confined to Center City Philadelphia. It is a feeling with which women everywhere are in some measure familiar.

What Troy Graves did represents a woman's worst nightmare coming true. And while Graves' conviction and imprisonment allow us to wake from this nightmare, we continue to live in a society in which we must watch our every move.