In case you somehow haven’t gotten it by now, the U.S. does not care about women. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who spoke out against sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh, is still receiving death threats over a month after her testimony, Vox reports.
According to a GoFundMe campaign created on Ford’s behalf, she and her family have had to move four times due to the outstanding abuse she’s endured. NPR adds that she has not been able to return to work as a professor at Palo Alto University, and she now has a security detail.
For anyone (read: most cis men, plus anyone else who has seriously internalized misogyny) who asks why survivors of sexual assault don’t come forward, here’s your answer.
#whyididntreport i was seven.
the next time it happened (at 15), I did report but nobody believed me. i was told by the police that “[they] don’t want to ruin a young man’s life over a stupid mistake”— ? dog teeth (@chapelwolf) November 7, 2018
Ford has been mocked in front of thousands by the president of the United States, who clearly doesn’t understand the ways that traumatic experiences affect the brain and its ability to recall details.
She was also dismissed as a political chess piece by Senate Republicans. The investigation, if you can even call it that, was so limited that the FBI might as well have just asked Kavanaugh if he did it, and after he denied it, shrugged and asked “Well, what can you do?”
According to RAINN, 994 out of every 1000 rapists get off without any prison time. Most survivors decide that such slim odds aren’t worth the harassment they would likely endure if they reported.
Vox reports that Ford asked herself before stepping forward, “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?”
A quick Twitter search for #WhyIDidntReport offers a ton of other reasons why survivors stay silent. One of the most common, echoed by Trump during his horrifying mocking, is that survivors were told not to ruin the men’s lives “over a misunderstanding.”