OUR SYSTEM DOES NOT PROTECT US

how dare you tell me? how dare you point it out? how dare you pull back the curtain and lift up the rug and let it all out where it can be seen? i was comfortable! i could go through my day with my hands over my ears and pretend it wasn’t there. the snarling and yipping and howling could just as well have been a creaky floorboard or a clunky old pipe. but now you made me see it and i can’t pretend anymore and i can’t be comfortable and i feel guilt and i feel shame for turning my eyes away when it ran out to snatch another meal. it’s not my problem! but now you made me look and i don’t want to see it so i’ll shove you in there with it and lock the door and pretend your screams are nothing but the wind. you can’t stop the wind.

Most sexual assault is perpetrated by people we know, not by some mysterious stranger. It’s not straightforward. We don’t want to believe that someone we know would intentionally harm us, but that’s exactly who has the means to do it. Our social bonds are complex. Our feelings are messy. We (hopefully) don’t go around assuming our friends and family and community members are out to get us. We assume they have good intentions. We don’t want to “cause problems” or “ruin” anyone’s life. We don’t want to create waves. We want to understand. We want to heal. We know that it can take 4-7 tries for someone to leave an abuser for good. We’re expected to keep family members in our lives no matter how horribly they treat us. Why are we made to believe that sexual violence is invalidated by maintaining a social relationship with a perpetrator? ...

Content warning: This article contains references to sexual assault, police indifference, and suicidal ideation. In March of last year, some mailers went out to raise awareness of the local Sexual Assault Response Team, endorsed by Prosecutor Diana Moers. A few bright yellow billboards popped up around town. “Sexually assaulted? Call 911,” they read. Driving down the road one day, it hit me - what my doctor explained was a PTSD flashback - the memory of someone handing me a SART flyer. “This is for you,” they said. Was it a joke? No. It was a confession. Not a confession of guilt, but a confession of conceit. Five months earlier that person had exploited my cognitive disability to rape me. It was a misunderstanding, I thought. It was my fault for freezing up and not being able to speak and not understanding what was happening until it did. It wasn’t intentional. It couldn’t be. We could talk it through…but why wouldn’t they talk about it? Now I knew. They wanted me to know. Handing me that flyer meant, “Go ahead. Call the number. Nothing’s going to happen to me.” So I called the number. I reached out. I pled for my safety, for others’, for justice…and no one did a thing. ...

We all know about the “freeze” response, that deer-in-the-headlights look: You’re home alone and hear the back doorknob jiggle. Your eyes go wide, your hair stands on end, you hold your breath and stay very, very still. You think of grabbing a weapon, but your feet are rooted to the floor. You close your eyes and hope whoever is there goes away. You’re camping in the woods. You suddenly wake up in the middle of the night. You hold your breath and listen. There’s a snuffling sound outside your tent. You can sense something large moving around—a bear. You lay stock still and wait for it to leave. ...