**Editor’s Note: All names have been changed and all identities have been protected**
I remember coming back to school last fall and being asked for the first time how I got to live in a dorm room by myself. They asked how I managed not to have a roommate and told me that I was so lucky. My counselor had warned that I would be asked this and told me to be prepared with an explanation. With only a few days left until I vacate my room of solitude for the summer, it’s hard to believe I spent a whole year avoiding the real answer.
The truth is that luck had nothing to do with it. In fact, it was the just the opposite.
Under accommodations made from campus Title IX regulations, I was given a room to myself after being sexually assaulted last summer. I wasn’t lucky. I was raped.
I had briefly started seeing John* after moving back home from school when he asked me to visit him for the weekend a few hours away at his summer internship. One of his close fraternity brothers from Clemson, Alex*, lived in the area and was having a big group over at his river house for a float down the Edisto. My mom was skeptical of the idea because I didn’t know anyone else who was going, but I reassured her that I would be in good hands with John.
I met Alex for the first time when John and I picked him up on the way to the river house. John introduced me to a few of his other fraternity brothers and friends after everyone else started to arrive before the float. He didn’t know many of the other people there either since he wasn’t from the area, but we both made ourselves comfortable during the course of the booze cruise and it was clear that I was out for the count when we made it back to the house that afternoon. Midnight came around and I was ready to head back to John’s and call it a night, but the crowd had taken his keys earlier and insisted we stay in one of the spare bedrooms since we both had been drinking. We went into the room and I could tell he still wanted to spend a little more time hanging out with the brothers and friends he hadn’t seen in a while. I told him to go back outside and he promised that he would return back to me before long.
The last thing I remember before falling asleep is being on the side of the bed furthest from the door on top of the covers. There wasn’t much light in the room and I was still in my bathing suit, lying on my stomach with arms tucked under my chest. The next thing I remember is being woken up to pressure between my legs and something inside me. I was still in a torpid state as I couldn’t tell what exactly was going on or how I ended up on my back with my legs up on the other side of the bed, although I didn’t have reason to question it since John mentioned when he left that we would be intimate when he returned. There wasn’t much light in the room, but I saw someone between my legs when I finally opened my eyes. Moments later I heard an unfamiliar voice say “don’t tell J,” the nickname Alex used for John, and I realized something was incredibly wrong.
No amount of words can describe the intense rush of fear, panic, and confusion that I had in that moment. I became fully alert, instantly sitting up from the bed and pushing him away. I told him to leave immediately and he pulled up his pants and walked out the door, grabbing a pair of keys off the dresser and letting the light from the living room hit his red swim trunks before shutting it behind him.
I sat on the edge of the bed trying to rationalize what had just happened. I was scared, confused, and crying hysterically as I searched for my breath and the bikini bottoms that I didn’t remember coming off. I didn’t know how I got from one side of the bed to the other or how long he had been in there. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I knew it was very, very wrong.
I ran outside to find John and tell him what happened, but the only words I could get out between crying and trying to catch my breath were “it wasn’t you.” I told him what I woke up to and when he asked who it was, I said that I was almost certain it was Alex because of his red swim trunks. John said that Alex was the last person to come out of the house before me and he was sent in to get John’s keys off the dresser. John confronted Alex, and but he said he didn’t know what I was talking about.
John and I drove back to his house that night and I couldn’t understand why he was so stern and unresponsive towards me. He said he believed me, but his silence and obvious refrainment from touching or comforting me said otherwise. I was still crying as we went to sleep and he said we would talk about it in the morning. He didn’t.
I’d already planned to wake up early the next morning to go home since it was Father’s Day. John was still very stern and distant, so I didn’t even bother to change from my pajamas as I grabbed my belongings to get home as quickly as possible. I called my mom soon after I left and she automatically knew something was extremely wrong. I started crying as I tried to spit out the words to tell her what happened. She called a long time friend of hers in law enforcement for advice as to what I should do. I had two options: turn back around and report it, or keep driving and not do anything at all.
One in five college women will experience sexual assault and of those women, 90% will not report it to police. I became one of the 10% that did.
I reported it because I felt like it was the right thing to do. After I got off the phone with my mom, I automatically thought back to when my older brother passed away three summers earlier. I thought about how hard it was to deal with such a traumatic event and not being able to do anything about it. There was no one to blame, no rhyme or reason, no way to make up for what was lost and the damage done. But with this, I saw an opportunity to try to find some sense of accountability for something that I didn’t choose to happen. I saw an opportunity to right a wrong that was done and somehow gain back some of the self worth that was taken from me. I knew what it was like to go through a bad experience and not have an option. But this time I did.
I spent an hour blindly driving around a small, empty town trying to find somewhere, anywhere, to go. I tried to call John and tell him what was going on, but he ignored my calls until my dad contacted him and explained what had taken place since I’d left his house. I had never felt as helpless and inadequate as I did sitting alone on the bench outside the local medical clinic, waiting for it it to open as I clutched my knees to my chest and cried into the pants of my pajamas. I tried to compose myself when the door finally opened and walked up to the counter, but lost it again when I struggled to write the words “rape kit” in the blank stating the reason for my visit. A nurse pulled me to the side and explained that they couldn’t perform the kit there and I needed to go to the hospital in the next town over, but that her husband, a local deputy, had just dropped by to bring her breakfast and that he could take my statement for a police report in the back room. He called it in to the station and a local victim advocate arrived minutes later. John and my parents arrived at the clinic within an hour and he drove me to the hospital. Alex had been texting John that morning and after John told him that I was at the hospital for a rape kit, Alex started to change his story about what happened in the room the night before. I spent the rest of the day being examined and talking to the deputy and my advocate, who both happened to know Alex and his family well, about what would happen next.
What many people don’t realize, and what I didn’t fully comprehend at the time, is that reporting sexual assault to the police is an extremely lengthy, tiring, and messy process. There is no one-and-done statement given to police, a quick arrest, and speedy conviction. After my initial statement was given, it took weeks for several other people who were there that night to give witness statements of their own. It took even longer to conduct a search warrant of the house, taking pictures of the bedroom, measuring distances from the bed to the door, and the set up of the room in order to disprove claims that Alex made saying I pulled him onto the bed. It took a month for him to even be arrested. John had notified their fraternity of the incident when I was at the hospital, but even they delayed action because none could take place until he was formally charged. We were finally notified of a preliminary hearing in January after 7 months of investigating had passed.
A prosecutor presented the case to a judge who would determine where the case would go next, either being sent to a jury trial, being settled in a plea bargain, or thrown out completely. We were warned that there was the possibility of the case not being sent forward at all. Many cases like mine never even get the chance to be heard in court due to lack of evidentiary value and the “he said, she said” claims of the victim and the accused are the only things the court has to go off of.
The judge ruled in favor that the case be sent on to a jury trial, giving it the chance to be heard and have a fair trial for possible conviction. However, it could take up to 2 years before it happens. Defense teams tend to wait for SLED to send back the reports of rape kits before going to trial; cases such as mine where the perpetrator is known are of low priority behind those who are unknown and must be identified to get off the streets. Defense attorneys often use this large time frame to their advantage as a tactic to prolong the case in hopes that the victim will tire of pursuing action and drop the charges altogether, or settle the case faster with a plea bargain that typically reduces punishment of the defendant.
Since the court system tends to let victims down more often than not, I was suggested to file a Title IX claim with my university that aims to assist student survivors. Regulations under Know Your IX give students the right to continue their education by requiring schools to prevent and respond to reports of sexual misconduct without the involvement of the criminal court system. This allows students who choose to bypass the system, and those like myself who often feel neglected by it, to have options based on civil rights rather than the interests of the state (a criminal trial is put against a defendant by the state, not the victim). Colleges must inquire and respond to the victim’s wishes, allowing the survivor’s needs that go unaddressed by the criminal court system that interfere with their education to be promptly met.
To help cope with the night terrors, panic attacks, and social anxiety that came after the assault, my counselor suggested I utilize the accommodations made available under Title IX to get a single dorm room when school started in the fall. I was scared to fall asleep around people and would sometimes wake up short of breath from flashbacks of waking up to Alex that night. A room to myself also meant that I had a private place to take conference calls from investigators working on the cases against him. I could return to a place of solitude when I came back overwhelmed and scattered from weekly counseling sessions and meetings with my legal advocate on campus. Having my own private space was something I needed in order to regain a sense of control and personal security that I felt had been taken away two months earlier.
Coming back to college with this new, overwhelming baggage made me quickly realize that just because I decided to fight back against the assault and sought help did not mean any of the other issues associated with it would go away. I was a loose and unconstrained girl when I left in the spring, and I struggled to hold on to her in the midst of newly developed social anxieties and worries that were present around the places and people I was once comfortable with. I tried to hide it well, but it would surface in the most unexpected and inconvenient ways in my everyday habits and relationships with others. I feared being mistrusted and not believed by friends, had frequent mood swings, and would become angry and defensive if I felt like I was being misunderstood. I refused to go out without taking Vyvanse because I thought it would keep me alert and able to prevent another instance where I could potentially make myself vulnerable. There would be days where I felt fine, and then days where I had to handle legal issues or felt the weight of it made me feel as though I was defeated and without purpose.
One of the most difficult things to handle were the changes that came in the way I interacted with guys. I was either hesitant around them or sought some odd sense of security in feeling as though they would look out for me. I remember my dad making a comment in the hospital about being upset with my brother for not looking over me that night since he was supposed to be my guardian angel. Dealing with the assault did make me miss my brother more than I ever did; I would often think about how he said he would lose it if someone ever hurt or took advantage of me. I think I subconsciously sought out people to fill that void, confiding in my close males more so than females because I wanted to feel that sense of masculine and brotherly protection. I started spending much of my time with one of my best guy friends and his roommates, and I found a peace of mind being around people that made me feel protected and understood that I was a little more fragile than most at the time. But it was also some of the same people that ended up doing more harm than good; one from home told me I had asked for what happened to me because I was a tease after refusing to hook up with him, and one at school suggested the same after accusing me of lying about how I’d been affected and criticizing me for going home with someone else.
People tend to look at you and judge your actions more critically after telling them you’ve been assaulted. You feel as if anything you once did before – going out on the weekends, hanging out with a guy, or dressing a certain way – works against you and the credibility of your experience. Although most won’t come out and say it, they question how much truth is in your story. You can see it in their eyes, how they tiptoe around their skepticism by questioning how much you’ve had to drink, what you wore, and how you interacted with others. They mimic the questions we’ve heard from police when they search for details in a case, but they do more harm than good when the answers end up victim blaming both in and outside the court room. What a woman wears, how much she drinks, and the company she puts herself in is her own prerogative, and so should be her sexual encounters. One thing about becoming a victim is that it gives you a keen eye for truth; truth in what really happened during your assault, truth in the law, and the amount of truth behind every “I believe you.”
When a criminal case is involved, you have to watch what you do out of fear that it could be used against you by the defense. When it is a defense attorney’s job to make you out to be a drunk, lying slut in the court of law, you start paying attention to how others consciously and subconsciously slut shame you as well.
We also notice how rape is normalized, trivialized, and belittled when it is talked about in society with every rape joke, rejected story, and misconception. People think that the legitimacy of rape, defined by the Department of Justice as the “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim,” can be measured by the amount of drama or shock factor surrounding the encounter. It needs to be understood that ALL RAPE IS RAPE and sexual assault is not something to be confined to traditional definitions, in locked file cabinets of stale police investigations, hidden in the journals of survivor memoirs, or left sitting on the couches of counseling services. Sexual assault needs to stop being looked at as a taboo subject; it affects the families, friends, and communities far beyond the individual victim. Combatting sexual assault starts with changing rape culture, but it involves a communal effort of advocacy, attention, and genuine support.
This culture that shames, promotes, and undermines sexual assault is normalized in our communities, making it the primary source that teaches perpetrators that their misconduct isn’t really misconduct. Saying that “boys will be boys” only gives hall passes for people like Alex who can’t comprehend that ONLY YES MEANS YES. If there is not a clear, conscious, and ongoing yes, then it is rape and punishable by law. End of story.
Turning the other cheek and using lack of awareness as an excuse to not confront the problem is no longer acceptable. The shame inflicted on victims should instead be turned on the cowards who commit, coerce, and promote sexual assault and see no wrong in wiping their hands clean after playing in the dirt of rape culture. The cowards like Alex and John, who went from promising his ongoing support in the hospital to later calling me a “crazy bitch” and “pathological liar” in the face of his fraternity, are only two of those who get to benefit from the negative stigma encompassing sexual assault victims while the victims themselves receive the undeserved guilt that shouldn’t be ours to take. Only when what is done in the dark makes it way to the light will there be justice for victims and the calamity they didn’t ask for.
We’ve heard nothing about the case in weeks, and it’s the times of intermission and silence that generate the most doubt. You doubt that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. You doubt if the law is really on your side or if you’re going to only end up played by the ties of a small town jurisdiction scratching each others backs. You doubt the purpose in pursuing action, if reporting it was the best decision after all, and if the outcome will be worth the fight. But I’ve found out that you can learn a lot about yourself when you have to fight to get back what someone took from you.
I didn’t have the opportunity to say no. I didn’t have a chance to prevent what happened to me before it was too late, but speaking out about victim experiences can help those who need it to realize there is safety found in numbers. Every story and every voice matters.
From one victim to another, it is not your fault and you are not alone.
For more information on Title IX, visit http://knowyourix.org.
For more information about SC state law regarding sexual misconduct, visit http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t16c003.php.