I'm a survivor of
sexual violence myself and one of the things that
I was most struck by
was the absence
of voices
and faces, the absence of real names and
you know when we talk about
out sexual violence we use pseudonyms.
We blot out faces
we really encourage
a form of invisibility and
I've worked on the issue for a long time, about twenty years
and I remember thinking at at one point that if I could get every woman
I've ever met in a room
to share her story it would be a powerful
and really amazing gathering and that our collective stories married to
our faces
and are real identities
met a gap in the culture
that existed that I think has made world less safe for all of us
and made it less just for victims.
I'm a mother of a survivor of
sexual assault, a victim of sexual assault and it happened a long time ago it happened in
nineteen ninety and
it still is with me
and certainly with my daughter and has influenced
part of my work and definitely her career
and even though I did a lot of public speaking it was always something that
had humor and I could use motivational techniques and all of a sudden here I am
speaking about this which is totally different.
I can itellectualize about it
without a problem and talk about and dialogue with people and
every now and and
it interests me and
i find myself guarding
against that even now
to not go to that place
and yet that place is really a big part of me.
When I first got the phone call she was half a country away
and uh... I can remember
the very words
she couldn't talk to me
and I said "Anne you need to talk with me or I can't help you" and she just was kinda
moaning softly and crying
she wouldn't talk and then finally she said the words, "mom I've been raped"
and I remember at that time not
feeling much of anything surprisingly so you think a mother would just fall apart
and go to pieces, but
I really didn't and something happened in me
and I don't know
exactly what it was but I was able to talk with her and
she said "if I call the police, he said he' come back to kill me" and
I said "he'll do that anyway" and
so I sort of hung up that phone and that was that disconnect.
I had the presence of mind to get through that experience in a calm way
thank God. And then
afterward
you know the reality
began to sink in but at first nothing, I had no feeling and this
stayed with me a long time and I never have understood that. That I wasn't
angered, I wasn't anything
except almost numb, totally numb to the whole thing.
A year later at that trial I sat as close to the man that
raped my daughter as I am to you in the courtroom.
When I testified
and I had no feeling.
I didn't feel rage toward him, I was numb,
totally numb.
She was fortunate to come out of that experience alive. She had a knife to
her throat, to her ribs.
She wasn't sure she was going to make it out alive.
She was able to and uh...
she decided because he had a weapon she made the decision, the decision not to fight back.
I think thee biggest
shock to me after I'd gone through this experience with my daughter
was all the people that I knew
came forth to me and said this happened to me or this happened to my daughter
or this happened to my mother
or this happened to my sister and these were people I was with for years,
never knew that.
One person came to me and she was uh...
she had three children,
grown children and she was divorced and she told me that happened to her when she
was eighteen.
She never told her family.
Never told her husband she said you know I might still have my family if I had shared that.
In quiet moments now
sometimes it's harder now than it was then,
inside.
I look back.
I see at the foot of our bed we have
on the other wall there's a picture of her when she was maybe
a year and a half
and I look at that curly hair
that pretty little girl and I think
little did she know
that she would have to experience that and
sometimes I have a hard time looking at her picture because of that.
It's harder now then it was then and in the middle of all the commotion and of all the
support and of all the uh...
everything that was happening
now it seems harder.
Things that I hear are um...
from victims I often hear
victims talk about the importance of the first responder and that first person
they disclose to
and when that person says
"I'm so sorry"
or "tell me how you're doing"
how those words resonate and when instead
they hear
"what were you wearing"
or "why were you out so late." When you set in motion
that model of blaming
and shaming
victims are often silenced and I think one of the most heartbreaking
things about uh...
the work for me
is encountering the stories where victims have been silenced.
Where that first responder
has actively said there's something you did
that allowed this to happen
and therefore
you have not earned
my sympathy.
The advice that I
would give the police is not unlike what I'd say to any
first responder that they have a
colossal
amount of psychic
and practical power over a survivor. Not only um...
a survivor in terms of
her or his
emotional health in needing a compassionate
and strong response but they actually have a terrific
influence
I would argue
over whether that survivor even wants to take the case forward.
If a police officer responds in a way
that's critical
that's disbelieving
that is uncompassionate
those are cues to a survivor
that the world she's about to enter into if she wants to take this case forward
may not be
as safe or as just a place
as she would wish it to be
and very often those first responses will dampen a survivor's willingness or enthusiasm
to ever take a case forward.
What they need to understand is that for this survivor
this is a moment in her or his life
that is so painful
and so personal
and so monumental it's not another night of work
it's their life
and you can't afford
a bad day
on this job and I know that's hard to hear it's hard to say
because I know in my work I have bad days
but when you have someone whose life and their willingness
to pursue justice may be
to some degree hanging in the balance based on your willingness to present
a just institutional face
you have a special
and really important challenge
and responsibility
prosecutors in a sense I always have a sympathy
with prosecutors in that
in a sense we culturally
are not where we need to be which means
we have men and women on juries who
represent our broader cultural attitudes or dynamics and as a culture
we don't understand rape and sexual violence, we don't understand how often it happens,
we don't understand that most of these cases did not involve a stranger
and we need to culturally
come to terms with those things in order to have just outcomes in courtrooms but
having said that
law leads the culture as much as cultural leads the law
which means a bold prosecutor
who understands rape and sexual violence,
who understands the reality of how victims respond, who actually
can make a compelling argument and those arguments are there to be made
there is a compelling story,
there's a public health
and public interest story
that the community needs to hear about why we need to prosecute these cases and
why we need to lock of perpetrators up
and there's a story about compassion and justice
that think the culture and also open to. So what I hope
that prosecutors see
is that there can be a victory
for all of us
in these cases
but we have to try them first.
We have to have the courage to bring them into the courtroom
and even when you lose a case and no one wants to lose a case like this if we
can use that time
and um... those moments in a court of law
to educate those jurors, to educate the judges to make statements to the public
about why these cases matter
we send out a really important message to victims
and we also send out
a really important message to communities
so we always you know we want those cases tried.
I'm always amazed by
and struck by the terrific amount of power each of us,
each of us have
in the lives of victims whether you know it or not
every single person watching this video today is going to encounter
someone who has lived through sexual violence, they may never identify
themselves to you
they may never talk about it
but somewhere along the lines someone you know
has lived through this and you will be talking about this issue or thinking
through this issue or musing on a case that's in the public eye
and what you say and
how you react
and the compassion you bring to that discussion
is going to have
a profound effect
on those individuals.
I think it's important for an advocate to say
two things,
number one, I believe you
and
I'm so sorry.