We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out

by Annie E. Clark

  I mean, I don’t have some crazy story. I didn’t have bruises. I kinda felt like, “Did I let this happen?” But we never talked about rape back then. Rape in 1985 was a stranger pulling you into a stairwell, it wasn’t at a toga party with a boy who was in college, at least we didn’t think of it that way back then.

  It happened, it was horrible.

  That’s my story, and I’m sorry it’s not so eloquent.

  * * *

  I wanted this story to be a letter to my daughter. But I have to deal with myself and I still have these ghosts.

  I would have shared everything with her before now, but I don’t want to burden her with it. I was very strong for her when she was young. I didn’t have to rely on a guy for anything. I wanted her to be self-sufficient, too.

  I love her. I love her so much, but she can be so self-reliant. I wonder if I did that to her. She’s a self-reliant person, you know that.

  I never told her.

  * * *

  The impact? Oh, I’m not sure where you want me to go.

  I went back and finished college. I never got married. I just wanted her to grow and be healthy. I worked odd jobs.

  Then when my daughter was almost five, I got a job offer at the university. I was a secretary and then I moved positions. I didn’t have day care. She stayed with my parents. I was on the waiting list for day care and every day at lunch hour I would beg and beg to be moved onto the employees’ waiting list. It was a beautiful facility and so cheap.

  It was like that until she started school. I was always a single mom.

  My daughter isn’t going to live in a man’s world. She’s going to live in her world.

  She’s beautiful and smart and successful and now she can be so self-reliant. But now, I can take a step back, you know. I’m so proud of her.

  * * *

  I don’t know. I don’t want to think. Because if I wanted to think and if I felt comfortable doing so, then I would tell her something about what happened to me.

  I can’t write a letter about what happened. If I ever tell her it will be out loud. I’m going to visit her soon, so I might say something then.

  But I don’t think telling her is going to help her in any way.

  I don’t ever want her to see her mom as a victim.

  Right After

  Johanna Evans, photographed one week after the assault. (Photograph courtesy of Johanna Evans.)

  PART III

  TRAUMA AND BETRAYAL

  Rape by Chloe Allred (acrylic on canvas)

  We need to stop assuming that trauma builds character. Sometimes it does. But it also builds fear. It builds pain. It suffocates and it paralyzes. I didn’t return from challenges as a stronger person. The bottom line is that it shouldn’t have happened. I know it makes other people feel better to imagine that my trauma has made me stronger, but here’s the thing: this experience belongs to me, not them.

  —Alice Wilder, survivor who attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  For many survivors, strength comes from moments in time before their assault. When we were girls, our parents told us that we were going to do great things.

  I was a competitive soccer player, who dreamed of success after seeing the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team of 1999 win the World Cup. Aside from sports, I was also interested in politics and in following in the footsteps of my grandfather, Charles Whitley, a former U.S. congressman: “I’m going to run for office,” eight-year-old Annie said.

  In sixth grade, I announced that I wanted to go to college. I, Andrea, would be the first one in my family to do so. I (literally) dreamed of going to school, and this goal was fueled by what my abuelito always told me: “Nunca, nunca, nunca pares de luchar.” Never, never, never give up. I believed that I could do anything I set my mind to.

  We were meant to believe that trials were good and that defeat builds character, but those life lessons don’t always hold true in cases of assault.

  It’s comforting to read survivor narratives and think, “What happened was awful, but look how they grew from that experience!” However, the harsh reality is that violence shouldn’t be romanticized, and that courage isn’t necessarily bestowed by it.

  The people in this book are some of the most powerful individuals we have ever met; but they aren’t anomalies, and their survivorhood, healing, and activism aren’t supernatural. We are all people, just like you. To borrow a phrase from the late academic and disability advocate Stella Young, our stories are not meant to be “inspiration porn.” They are merely the truths and daily realities of violence.

  Therefore, just as we wanted to actively make space for multiple narratives of assault in this book, we also want to make space for multiple truths in response to trauma. Assault sometimes shatters pieces of ourselves, and the way we put our own mosaics back together—or don’t—is an individual process.

  Some survivors report their experience immediately, while others wait years, and still others never want to report, or can’t report. Some survivors undergo a terrible reporting process that revictimizes them, while others experience a supportive process at their schools. Some people, particularly people of color, queer people, and others in marginalized communities, may not feel safe going to the police.

  Survivors who have a negative experience with police, who are not believed by officials at their school, or who are blamed even by their friends often describe the responses of unsupportive individuals as almost a second rape. That betrayal of a trusted institution compounds the already existing trauma. Over 30 percent of survivors develop a psychiatric disability as a result of their assault. Rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are higher among survivors of sexual violence than among combat veterans. Depression, anxiety disorders, and other invisible disabilities are common in survivors, but often, survivors who have these invisible disabilities do not receive the academic accommodations, compassion, understanding, and support that they merit.

  Trauma manifests itself in many ways, it can accompany us for years, and it can reappear when we least expect it. Violence, once visited on us, often stays with us after the moment it happens, and its true impact is perpetuated by the society that tolerates it.

  Our Stories, continued

  ELISE SIEMERING

  So the guy who attacked me had already left campus to go home for the summer. High Point had promised Mom and me that they would not let him return until he gave a statement, and I’d driven away for the summer thinking, “It’s gonna be okay.” But that summer was complete hell. The Student Life people at High Point made me come back to campus three times. Back and forth. After I got home, they called us and said they’d contacted him. He had a “family emergency” and could not travel, so they took his statement over the phone. During our last meeting, they made me come up [to campus], and it bothered me that they were making me, the victim, do more work than the person who did the assault. During the summer, I went for counseling, attempting to make progress toward healing. Each time they called, I felt like I was taking another step back. That summer in June, I interned with my old youth group—we were taking the kids to beach camp—and we got the call that I needed to come to High Point. They then sat down with me and said he denied all accusations. He’d said, “Oh, Elise asked me to have sex.”

  At that time, they told me that he had done the phone interview and so he would be allowed back on campus. I remember sitting in the parking lot with Mom, and crying, and then something snapped. I said, “We’re gonna go to the police.”

  One of the biggest blessings I had in my whole case were the two detectives assigned to me. A lot of people I’ve talked to in similar situations didn’t have that; I personally couldn’t have asked for any better. We went straight to the police station. The detectives were two women, which made them easier to talk to, and they told me I was not the first case at High Point who had been treated that way. They told us they were not surprised.

  The police did a whole write-u
p and they said to me they would contact High Point, and contact him, and that one of the biggest problems was that High Point was legally supposed to contact them as soon as I reported. High Point was not supposed to give me an option of calling the police or not.

  The police asked me who I had talked to about the assault. I gave them the names of five of my friends. I still had those text messages.

  They had to call my friends, three girls and two guys, as witnesses: Marie, the other guy who had been with me in the library that night, and other friends who were also friends with my attacker.

  Later that month, the police called me with an update, and this is when I found out who my friends were. The only one who was willing to speak to the police was Marie. The rest refused. People I had thought would be there for me weren’t. They wouldn’t talk, so that made the case harder. That whole summer I debated: “Do I go back to High Point?”

  I decided, “This is my university just as much as it is his. I’m gonna go back.”

  That fall I went back a week before classes started. Upperclassmen help freshmen, and I had committed to doing that before the assault.

  I was in the student center, and within minutes I saw him, hanging out. Why was he on campus already? He was not helping with freshman orientation, so he was not supposed to be on campus. I called Mom and said, “I’ve been on campus five minutes and I’m seeing him.” My parents were moving my stuff in. At that point, with all the stuff Student Life had put us through, Mom said, “That’s it. We are going to talk to the president of the university.”

  We set up a meeting and met with him. It was the worst meeting I’ve ever been in. I sat there like a statue. It got heated between my parents and him. My dad was baffled why he wasn’t getting this.

  * * *

  I decided, “This is my university just as much as it is his. I’m gonna go back.”

  * * *

  I started my fall semester. It was so hard. Rumors started. Some of his fraternity brothers would call me names. They would see me in an elevator and call me a bitch, and say, “You’re lying!” and yell stuff at me. People on campus were talking about it, and it’s a small campus. You see the same people every day. Mom asked if I wanted to get a restraining order. I said I didn’t know how much that would help.

  We did a verbal agreement with him through the school: You stay away from Elise and she stays away from you. That semester they put me on “Care Watch” and required me to go see a counselor at the school. I had to go through counseling sessions. I was already seeing a therapist. What made me upset was this therapist was working for High Point. It was like she was defending them. It was so hard to open up to her; she was an employee of the school.

  That semester, I hated going out. My grades started slipping. Before the assault, I was honors. But I spiraled my junior year. I was still getting calls from High Point wanting to know information. I had the criminal case going on; the police officers told me he had refused to come in and talk with them. They called him multiple times. So they had to get a warrant and come to High Point to find him and talk to him.

  My junior year, I went to the head of Student Life because the verbal harassment had gotten too much for me. I said, “He’s having people come up to me and say stuff. I’m getting harassed.” The head of Student Life, the woman who had interviewed me, looked at me, and said, “Elise, I don’t know why you’re still having trouble with this.”

  Two things I remember most—Student Life and her. She said, “It’s been months since this happened. Why aren’t you over this?” She told me I could go through student court; it was made up of professors and students.

  * * *

  She said, “It’s been months since this happened. Why aren’t you over this?”

  * * *

  I had two professors I absolutely loved. And both of them stood up for me. Both of them went to Student Life for me. One went and basically said, “What the hell?” The other knew about how the judicial board worked, and she said, “Elise, there’s no point in putting yourself through that. Rarely do they ever do anything about it.” She was so upset. “I want to save you from more heartbreak and struggle. You should just continue with the police.” My junior year was very hard. I struggled a lot. My grades went down. My GPA plummeted. I was not social.

  LAUREN

  We didn’t have to come together for a hearing. We had both made statements, and the associate dean and the actual dean of the college sat down with some other people to decide if consent was present, and if what happened was sexual assault. It was determined that it was indeed sexual assault, and about a week later, I received a phone call from the associate dean while in a PAL (Program of Advancement of Learning, my extra-help resource) class, saying it was found obvious there was no consent, so he was dismissed from the school. I was with my PAL advisor and another student, and I cried tears of joy. I was so happy to finally be able to feel safe and free on campus. He had been off campus since the assault, but he did have to be on campus for the meetings. During those times, RAs would escort me to classes by driving me.

  A moved out of Curry, since he had been found responsible by the school investigation. The process of meetings with the district attorney’s office lasted until the end of January my sophomore year, one and a half years after the assault; at that time, my parents signed on my behalf to put the criminal case on hold. I can resume the case any time in the next five years, which is when the statute of limitations is up. I know I will never be going to court with him since I can’t stand to see his face again. I feel that would do more harm than good on my behalf.

  ANDREW BROWN

  At the time I blocked it out. “One of those crazy college hookups,” I told my friends. “You’ll never believe what happened last night. Isn’t that funny? Ha ha,” and it worked, until I would see him around. My blood pressure would rise, my heart would beat faster, my vision would narrow, and I would just try to get out of his sight.

  Even though I was experiencing those symptoms, it took me more time to put together that the way seeing him made me respond meant I was trying to protect myself by portraying what happened as something it wasn’t.

  I was trying to rationalize what happened. But then it all came crashing down.

  I suddenly started seeing him every day. I was in an opera and on a different part of campus every day, and there he’d be.

  One day I saw him in an eatery, and saw him hug a friend of mine. So I later went up to that friend and said, “Who was that?” It was the first time I heard his name.

  I kept seeing him on campus. It led to a complete panic attack in the shower one morning. I just started shaking, couldn’t tell where I was. I realized I was not okay, and this had to stop.

  So I went to Health Services at Brown. They told me, “Physically you seem okay, but Psych Services might help you better.”

  Between the questions of “How are you doing?” they asked, “Are there any major stressors in your life?” I mentioned I had been assaulted. That was the first time I said anything to anyone within the Brown administration about what happened. It was to a counselor, a therapist. She responded pretty neutrally, in the sense that she didn’t try to put words in my mouth.

  I said, “Maybe I was sending mixed signals?” and she said, “Well, you did say no.”

  She suggested I talk to an advocate, and that’s when I met this incredible woman, Bita Shooshani. I started seeing Bita about every week. It was with her that we really started breaking down, “What is it about this experience that is giving you these reactions right now?”

  It was seeing him. We came to the conclusion that based on that, the best thing would be to go through the campus adjudication process. So I filed a complaint at the start of May 2012. I submitted an online complaint to the Office of Student Life.

  Brown is changing that process, but at the time they didn’t have a Title IX complaint form or a Title IX office; I had to file a complaint through the Student Life office as a violat
ion of the student code of conduct.

  Typing the complaint brought a bit of panic that something that happened to me that was so personal would be shared with other people.

  I got an email about three hours later, saying, “We received your complaint; we have a few more questions for you. Assess which offenses he could be tried under.”

  It was offense number three, 3a and 3b; 3a is nonconsensual anything and 3b is penetrative nonconsensual contact.

  I went to talk to them in the office, and they said, “Well, it’s late in the semester for us, so we’re going to do this next fall.” I just assumed that was the way it was. It was coming from people who did this thing for a living, and I didn’t know.

  The looming complaint process was hanging over me all that summer. Then the process got rescheduled three times that fall—once due to Hurricane Sandy, but it was rescheduled twice after that.

  The Office of Student Life said they couldn’t find a panel. So the hearing was set for November. The frustrating thing was that my advisor—a representative provided by the school—had to step out, and then I had a second one. And then she had to step out, so I went back to the first one. On the other hand, my advocate, Bita, was a constant through it all.

  No one on campus seemed to know much about the process. No one talked about it much. So I really didn’t have a baseline of what to expect going in. I was pretty nervous. Bita tried to help me, but it was still sort of going in blind.

  In another step of mismanagement, the attacker never sent in a statement. So we had no idea what he was going to say. It made our job of preparing a lot more difficult.