We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out

by Annie E. Clark

  I had been surviving. Now I could begin to thrive.

  It was the first step in feeling safe again.

  The second step was when I packed up my moving truck and my dad and I drove away from school. I didn’t realize how toxic the situation had been until I left that campus. I was smiling as I left the city limits, and I realized I could put this whole thing behind me. There was no greater feeling. I wouldn’t have to be scared for my life anymore. I could move forward and rip down the façade I had made to stay alive.

  I can now say that I survived. I have moved to a state far away. I’m learning that I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore, that I can finally have peace. I am trying to learn not to live in fear. I have a wonderful man in my life who can protect me and be there for me. I am now learning that it is safe to allow my heart rate to slow just a little bit more each day. Having my family’s support when I decided to move made the decision that much easier. We still talk every day.

  The small town I’m in is wonderful. There are tons of kids here, and I love hearing their laughter. There are older people happy to see a friendly face in the grocery store. It’s nice, because nobody knows about SMU.

  And I feel really safe. We know most of our neighbors.

  It is a 100 percent fresh start. Nobody has to know what happened to me. This is a safe place to learn who I truly am.

  AYSHA IVES

  I graduated from Rutgers in 2000 with a degree in psychology. Then I took a year off, because there was so much going on with me that I needed time to just be. Then I went back to graduate school at Virginia State and got my master’s in psychology in 2003. I had my son in 2005. He’s ten now. I’m not in a relationship with his father. We dated for about four years. I was in my early twenties when I met him and he was almost fifty. Then my son was born. As I got older, I got more assertive, and my son’s father got less tolerant. So it ended. He’s part of our son’s life sometimes.

  I now live in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia, and I’m in a relationship with a wonderful man. We’ve been together eight years. Hopefully we’ll be married soon. I started writing my book about three years ago. I knew I was still healing, and I didn’t know what else to do. I had tried therapy and the therapist wasn’t a good fit. She opened a big can of worms near the end of a session one day and then tried to rush me through it, looking at her watch. I said, “It was safe in my unconscious, and now you’ve opened it up and left it here!” I felt really unsafe. On the drive home I decided I would not go back to therapy.

  Instead, I went back to writing, which has always helped me heal. I wrote every day and finished the book very quickly, within a couple of weeks. I remember crying as I was processing it. I remember at some points not wanting to write any more. But I also remember that when I finished, I could say the word rape, which I had not been able to say before. I had finally reclaimed power over what had happened.

  Then, when my writing was published, I was able to complete the healing process. I had been afraid of what people would think of me. One person actually said, “In order for him to rape you, he had to get your underwear down, so you must have helped him.” That person had been a friend.

  * * *

  I remember at some points not wanting to write any more. But I also remember that when I finished, I could say the word rape, which I had not been able to say before.

  * * *

  My other two books were celebrated. This one, it was almost too painful for my family and friends. “Keep quiet about that. Why are you telling your business?” Well, it’s my story, and now I was no longer afraid of the stigma. When the book came out, I could say, “This happened, and I don’t have to carry the shame of it. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were. It was my body and someone wanting to take control of my body is not okay. It wasn’t my fault. And this is not going to victimize me anymore.”

  I attribute my healing to the love of God, my boyfriend, writing, and my son. I would say God helped me the most. Now, as my thirty-seven-year-old self, I look at twenty-year-olds and they seem so much younger to me. Twenty is so tender. They’re so young. I want to protect them and help them.

  I’ve been a therapist for about twelve years. I work for the Department of Juvenile Justice with incarcerated kids, high school kids. In juvenile detention centers. It’s interesting. They wanted me to get certified to do evaluations on sex offenders. I declined. But as I got more training and realized that sexual violence is a cycle, that helped me to forgive my attackers. I try to look past what they did to me and see them in that dynamic—as an abused child. It’s such a vicious cycle. Some of the young girls I see tell horrific stories.

  My goal is to write more books and do speaking engagements on the topics of healing, infiltrating rape culture, blaming the victim. I want to help demolish rape culture and help the victims heal.

  * * *

  But then I started writing and I felt better, freer. It was the removal of the shame, which had been such a heavy burden.

  * * *

  As for my own healing, I can’t pinpoint a specific moment. I just evolved. I went from living in shame to trying to suppress the experience to depression and then to triggers and still trying to bury it. When I was not whole, I didn’t sleep a night through. Every night, I would wake up between twelve and two. It took me so long to tell my story, because I was fearful people would point fingers. But then I started writing and I felt better, freer. It was the removal of the shame, which had been such a heavy burden. All that victim-blaming—“Well, if you hadn’t been drinking,” or “You brought him to your dorm room. You opened the door.” When I stopped buying their story and made the decision to heal, I was able to start thinking about all the other hurting people out there.

  ANONYMOUS V

  Looking back, the first real step to healing was taking a semester off and giving myself permission to not graduate in four years. I am a rape survivor and I am strong, but I am not the girl I was when I started college and I might not be on the same staircase. Accepting that as my reality doesn’t mean I like it, but it’s made me more grateful for what I do have and less spiteful of those who are more fortunate.

  When I stopped tracing every present problem back to that night someone violated me, the images stop coming up as easily. As time goes on, I’ve stopped having the dreams so much. I went to a women’s group for PTSD, and I’m glad I did that. It helped a lot.

  After reading about Emma Sulkowicz at Columbia, I made a conscious choice to try and let go. I wanted to feel less angry every day. My anger was exhausting. To me, Emma’s mattress project is the physical manifestation of my ruminations. I thought about her mattress project and how terrible it must be to carry it around every day. It forces her to think about her assault for twelve hours a day. I didn’t understand how you could carry such a burden and move forward, find new things, and do something good.

  I didn’t want to carry the weight of my rape anymore, so for a while, I purposefully disengaged from the national conversation about assault. This was when the Rolling Stone story about “Jackie” and the University of Virginia was blowing up. I thought, “I don’t have to read this today. Or tomorrow.” I realized I didn’t have an obligation to be on top of the “assault on campus” news. I gave myself a little bit of permission.

  There can be a lot of pressure in the community to go forward and do something. But you don’t have an obligation to anyone besides being in this moment, or any other moment. Don’t let even well-intentioned people pressure you. Allow yourself to take a break. Sexual assault has been affecting everyone for generations. You can take a month off or a year off, and come back to it. Sometimes, for me, an accomplishment is not doing something; turning down an event or an invitation and just focusing on myself is an accomplishment. Knowing when it is not healthy for me to listen to conversations about assault or see a screening of The Hunting Ground, setting healthy limits—these are the victories that we don’t take enough time to praise.

&
nbsp; There are no awards at graduation ceremonies that say “This person got out of bed and went to class every day, followed up with therapy, and took her medication.” Success in life after assault can be measured with long-term goals, but my days were broken up into so many short-term goals that seemed like mountains. Your goals can be on an hour-by-hour level. Those goals are just as important as the big goals, because there will be days when getting out of bed and making yourself walk by a building that is triggering will be a huge victory. There are anniversaries of assaults and hearings that will make putting on shoes seem too exhausting to even consider. You could read a news story that shakes you. The world is unpredictable, and it takes a lot of time to feel like you have control again. You won’t get enough recognition from other people for how much work it takes to keep moving through the world, so try to give yourself praise.

  * * *

  There are no awards at graduation ceremonies that say “This person got out of bed and went to class every day, followed up with therapy, and took her medication.”

  * * *

  It is hard to find pride in cleaning your room, doing laundry, and cooking a meal. Your world can feel small compared to what your friends are doing. I’ve had those days. When I need to, I look back on where I was four months ago, six months ago, a year ago, two years ago—and it’s okay. I’m okay (so much better than okay now, actually), and it feels remarkable. Most survivors I know feel this way; life was a black hole and then you look around one day and it’s not. You didn’t think you could get from point A to point B and suddenly you’re at point C. I’m not complaining.

  I don’t believe in that saying “time heals all wounds.” Time passes. I found peace and meaning in my life again when I went looking for it. A big part of mindfulness is being aware of yourself and your emotions. I had to take stock, look outward. When I was in the PTSD women’s group, I realized how my trauma had hurt everyone in my life, not just me. It got me out of self-pity mode.

  Then, I focused on behaviors. I started exercising again. I read a lot of Mary Oliver’s poetry. I found a goal: to go back to college in the spring of 2015. It gave me a purpose. I tried for acceptance. For months, I focused on a quote that I put on my mirror: “Holding on to anger is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die.”

  Overall, thinking about this time last year and my life today, I’m so much happier now, and I realize that you can’t rush the process of healing. It sounds trite, but I don’t think that putting on a brave face is helpful. You couldn’t be more of a mess than I was, but I wasn’t crippled by this experience. There’s something called “post-traumatic growth.” I think we all get there; we find meaning out of our experiences and we find more value in the positives we do have. It’s very hard to see when you’re at the beginning, very hard to see, but at some point, you’ll be okay. I remember I wanted an exact timeline for how long it would take (six months? a year?), and I can’t offer that. But it does come.

  I will graduate this spring with my rapist. I know a lot of people transfer. I didn’t because of the way my brain works: I felt that my leaving would be because of him, and that any new environment would be tainted because of that outlook. Staying was also because of him, so both ways were problematic. I wanted to show I have some sort of resilience. If the rape hadn’t happened, I would have stayed, and I wanted to stay on course.

  I have two thoughts frequently:

  1. This is my life. This is it. This is where it’s going.

  2. It’s amazing how you can adjust to anything, and anything can become your new normal.

  Those ideas can be baffling and scary, but also comforting. Although it takes a while to put change into practice, as time goes by I identify myself less and less as a “survivor.” That idea used to be in the forefront of my mind, but now it’s in the background. The overall issue of sexual violence can be disheartening when you read about colleges failing to provide justice, the staggering rates of attacks, or prevalence in the military. It can make you feel sick, like it’s everywhere and insurmountable. But the huge challenge of dealing with it creates such a wonderful community. You can find support in places you wouldn’t even know to look.

  I got an email a week ago from a father in France who read one of my articles and responded across oceans. When I read it, I was in my room, and it was a moment for reflection. He said, “It seems like you found some peace,” and I thought, he thinks I sounded peaceful when I wrote that article in November; now this is July, and I am so much more peaceful than I was then. I felt proud of myself for the distance I’d come since November and gratitude toward him that he’d bothered to write me, a stranger from a foreign country.

  I messaged him back, which was actually pretty embarrassing. His was a French name and at first I thought it was a woman but it was a man. I just said thank you. It shocks me that what I say gets so far.

  An International Facebook Exchange

  Dear V, I came across your story.… While looking for legal terms for a translation!! Strangely, I read it all, and I wanted to praise your courage and maturity when you are only 21 or 22. With two girls (I’m 33) you can imagine how such a story moved me.… All the best, Jean

  June 26th, 10:55pm. Dear Jean, Thank you for taking the time to write to me and I really appreciate your kind words. I never thought that I would correspond with so many women after writing the article. It goes to show, unfortunately, that stories like mine are not particularly unique. There are a lot of people who feel like the violence I experienced is familiar to them. They see it in their personal lives, the communities they live in, or in their countries. It’s overwhelming how common sexual violence against women is. I hope that the increasing awareness campaigns can help reduce it. Anyway, I have done a lot of work to “move on,” and I am in a much happier place now. There is pain after violence, of course, but there is so much good left in the world. There is a life of happiness. Thank you so much for your congratulations! I don’t take enough time to stop and think about how far I’ve come from my low point. This message made my night. Be well. Sincerely, V

  FABIANA DIAZ

  The summer is the worst ever, because of the reminders. It’s been almost impossible; all that pressure of reminders that come just from living a normal life. No one talks about that part of it. And it’s almost worse because it’s reliving it. It doesn’t end. I will have my really bad days and good days. The rape changed me, for sure. My sister calls me this boring grandma. I don’t schedule things for after sunset. I don’t go out. If I do, I have to make sure I have really good friends with me.

  In my junior year I said, “This university needs more activism.” There was something missing. I started working with the Dean of Students office. I felt like she believed me. She’s been an ally for me; actually, the whole office has. I knew them from my process.

  I decided to apply for a residential staff position, like being an RA. My RA had helped me. The dean gave me an assistant’s job, in charge of her advisory board, and I got involved with the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center. I had started doing peer counseling for other survivors and I began to take part in “Carry That Weight,” where you carry your mattress with you across campus as a form of protest against sexual assault.

  One day I was getting ready to walk out with my mattress by myself, and I was in the community center and all of a sudden I saw a friend and she said, “I wanna come with you,” and suddenly I wasn’t carrying it by myself. Walking with that mattress showed me I have the ability to make an impact on somebody else. I got affirmation from people I didn’t even know—people would come by and help me carry it, even for ten seconds. Survivors do that for each other. We’re struggling, but we’re here and still standing.

  That showed me that I’m not alone. And that I can be that support for others. People care. And people want to help. And that’s really cool.

  With that motivation, I decided to start a movement called Culture Shift. There was a white foot
ball player who had raped a girl his freshman year, and he played all the way through his senior year before he was finally dismissed from the school. I told the vice president if that person had been a different race, his punishment would have happened more quickly. There’s privilege in sexual assault. And people get more upset about a [football] losing streak than a sexual assault.

  * * *

  People get more upset about a [football] losing streak than a sexual assault.

  * * *

  We wanted to name the movement Culture Shift because that’s what we need.

  We had a retreat for student leaders, a two-day thing with a ton of material, to start a dialogue about what we can do as students. We’ve just started, but we have a lot of goals.

  Sometimes we forget how powerful activism can be. In the Diag, the large open space in the middle of Michigan’s central campus, we created a giant “M” out of forks. They were all teal, because the National Sexual Violence Resource Center polled groups that fight sexual assault and the groups voted the teal ribbon as a symbol of sexual violence prevention. We calculated the number of students on our campus who had been assaulted, using 27,999 as the total number of undergraduate students and using the statistics of one in four women and one in six men. We wanted to use 5,806 forks, a fork for each survivor; but we were only able to get our hands on about 1,200 forks, so we decided one fork would equal five survivors. People would come up to the display, read the signs, and walk around and really look. It was very powerful, one of the most powerful things I’ve done.

  It’s cool because you see the power of the survivors’ voices; they’re actually being heard on our campus. We’re not afraid anymore. Before, it was a stigma, but it’s my identity now. There’s an empowerment that comes with it. But it’s hard to do this. It’s exhausting. You get burned out so easily.