Meet Carlos Lavernia. After sixteen years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, he's free. Or is he? How does one reenter society after such a long time spent as a Rip Van Winkle? With great difficulty.

Lavernia moved in with his stepdaughter in Leander and began to rebuild his life. He phoned his mother in Cuba, who had thought he was dead because he was too ashamed to write her from prison, he said. She plans to visit him in May.

He used some of the $435,416.65 he received from the state for wrongful imprisonment to buy upscale cars for himself and his stepdaughter. He started a home-remodeling business. But the money couldn't solve everything. Something was wrong. His stepdaughter's house was isolated and reminded him of a penitentiary, he said.

So he moved to South Austin a few weeks ago. Now, he said, he's been afraid to leave his sparsely furnished apartment except to work. He avoids nightclubs and won't walk along Town Lake near his apartment. "I'm scared of women," he said. Both cases against him relied on the testimony of female witnesses. A woman testified in 1985 that he raped her while she was jogging along a trail by Barton Creek in 1983. DNA tests weren't available at the time, and Lavernia received a 99-year sentence.