GUILFORD — In January of 2015, a young woman was sexually violated by a star swimmer from Stanford University. This young woman has shown the courage to speak not only of her own trauma and loss, but of the common experience of women around the world who are the victims of sexual assault.
In her address to her attacker and to the court, the unnamed victim brought to light the excruciating aftermath of the assault, describing an experience shared by millions of women, yet almost always suffered in secret, invisibly.
“I stood there examining my body beneath the stream of water and decided, I don't want my body anymore. I was terrified of it[...]. I wanted to take off my body like a jacket and leave it at the hospital with everything else,” she said.
The 22-year-old victim was sent home and encouraged by the hospital staff to return to her “normal” life. This, of course, proved to be impossible.
“I tried to push it out of my mind, but it was so heavy I didn't talk, I didn't eat, I didn't sleep, I didn't interact with anyone,” she said. “After work, I would drive to a secluded place to scream[...]. I became isolated from the ones I loved most.”
“You bought me a ticket to a planet where I lived by myself,” she said, addressing her attacker in court.
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With rape, there is only Before and After. Rape is an event that forever changes the very fiber of a woman's being. It is irrevocable.
Yet women's bodies, souls, and minds have a phenomenal capacity to heal, when the opportunity to heal is given.
In the instance of rape, the opportunity to regain health, to put one's life back together, is too often blocked because of the overpowering negation of the event itself.
Most often, this suppression of truth is imposed by a culture that for millennia has dismissed the sexual degradation of women in order to perpetuate the act - and to maintain the societal status quo.
And for many, the event is pushed back to the recesses of a woman's consciousness, in order to cope and to survive.
“I still don't have words for that feeling,” the victim of the Stanford rapist stated. And later, she said, “I felt too empty to continue to speak.”
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The courage of the victim/survivor in the Stanford case is astonishing. By stepping forward to insist on accountability and the exposure of this criminal act, she not only set the example for other women, she also sacrificed and postponed her innate need for personal healing.
She wrote of the trial: “Instead of taking time to heal, I was taking time to recall the night in excruciating detail, in order to prepare for the attorney's questions that would be invasive, aggressive, and designed to steer me off course, to contradict myself [and] my sister, phrased in ways to manipulate my answers.”
Where the perpetrator spoke of his personal distress at having fallen from grace at Stanford and in the public regard, the victim/survivor reached beyond her own suffering to acknowledge that of her attacker, in a display of true benevolence.
“We have all been devastated, we have all been trying to find some meaning in all of this suffering,” she said. “Your damage was concrete - stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me.
“You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.”
The rapist, now 20 years old, was found guilty of three felony counts and was sentenced to six months in the county jail. The sentence was met with outrage and prompted a response from Vice President Joe Biden, among other prominent national figures.
The irony - if there is irony in this situation - is that the Stanford rape case is among the very small fraction of rape cases that result in any accountability at all.
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We continue to live in a world of collusion through silence, bred by the isolation of invisible trauma. Perhaps we are on the cusp of a new culture of accountability, if we can only stand together and find the courage to speak out and confront our individual truths, with the assurance of solidarity and mutual support.
In her closing remarks, the still-unnamed victim said, “To girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought every day for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you.”
“As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, 'Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save - they just stand there shining.' Although I can't save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can't be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably; you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably; every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you.
“To girls everywhere, I am with you. Thank you.”