"in the name of Love, stop…"

"Stop, in the name of Love,
before you break my heart..."

In light of the recent release of a 2005 video recording of a prominent political figure admitting to sexual assault, and his complete disregard for a woman's inviolable right to be treated with respect and dignity, I have decided to let this post -- which I wrote in late summer -- be published.  I initially wrote it to privately put on record something I have long-held in the silence of my heart.

Sexual assault is not just defined as rape.  Sexual assault can be verbal, visual, visceral, and psychological.  The girl who is constantly exposed to demeaning language, the athlete who cannot run along the streets without being attacked by sexually explicit cat calling, the young boy who is exposed to an older brother's pornography, the countless women who have been threatened with negative professional consequences for having rejected a superior's advances -- these are all victims of sexual assault.

Just the prospect of  having to admit being raped, or touched inappropriately, is terrifying.  The social fall-out is devastating.  The self-loathing is dangerous.  The desire to self-detach from one's body is tormenting and often leads to self-destructive behaviors that undermine one's ability to engage with, and contribute to, society in healthy ways.  That said, here is my story:  

I don't know if this post will have a song to keynote its message. Right now, it feels unlikely. But who knows, I may get inspired. At this point, I am just deeply hurt.

Last night I read another article -- this one about a high school boy who confessed, and was convicted of, raping a classmate. He was sentenced to no more than two years of probation. No jail time. This, on the heels of the report that Stanford rapist, Brock Turner, only served three months of a six month sentence for raping an unconscious college student behind a dumpster in an alley. Both boys were given almost non-existent sentences, because a judge was concerned about the impact that more punitive jail time would have on their young lives.

I am not alone in feeling hurt and outrage. I know this. I am not alone in feeling betrayed by a legal system that should be more concerned with defending the dignity of victims, than the perpetrators convicted of these heinous crimes against humanity. And please hear me, rape is a heinous crime against humanity -- all of humanity.

I am also not alone in feeling re-violated by male judges who worry about the impact on the young men they are sentencing, or by the fathers who defend their sons as simply boys who are making bad choices and mistakes. Or by anyone that calls sexually assaultive language "locker room banter."

My husband, the kindest and most generous man I have ever met, is hurt when I generalize any bad (or good) behavior as gender-specific. I understand his frustration as a man. But we live in a society that treats men very differently than it treats women. We live in a culture that allows a human being with certain body parts, and a history of being treated as superior, to violate the intimate inner sanctum of another human being and calls it simply "a bad choice."

I was raped. It has taken me decades to admit that I wasn't just molested -- as if that had been any less violent. My rapist has since passed away without having faced criminal charges or punishment. For many years, I assured myself that if he were still alive, I would have seen him charged with having committed a criminal act, and punished. This had given me some sense of peace. I believed that, if I had had the courage and opportunity to report him, he would have been punished appropriately.

But each time a rapist is sentenced leniently, a victim is made to feel dirty, small, and ashamed, or a judge fails to see the impact rape has on society -- robbing it of a confident woman, the peace felt by her family, the future partners she will have to explain and apologize to for her insecurity, fear of intimacy, distrust, and terror at an unexpected touch -- I feel violated again, and again.

I am a deeply prayerful woman. I seek spiritual solutions to every challenge I face in my life. I turn to God for health, relationship, financial, and global healing. I have prayed about being sexually violated and the fall-out of that violation -- more than any other issues I have faced in my life. I have found complete healing and freedom from disease, addiction, financial hardship, and frayed relationships. Sexual violation, and the terror it left in its wake still haunt me. I was last violated 46 years ago. I still wake up in the middle of the night shaking and sweating. I still have nightmares of being helpless and unable to elicit a sound when I scream.

I still recoil when I am touched unexpectedly. I still want to say I was molested instead of raped. I still weep when I remember my small body being ripped from its mooring by someone large, heavy, vicious, and overpowering. Terror still rises in my throat when someone chases me up a flight of stairs. I am still shattered in places that you will never see.

So, when you read about another rapist whose life will be negatively impacted by time in jail, I wonder whether his lawyer, the jury, or the judge in charge of sentencing has a daughter, a mother, a wife. I can't help but wonder if every victim of sexual violation were to write him a personal letter would he still think that the impact of a punitive sentence were still too harsh on the life of a boy who simply made a poor choice. Would they still try to blame in on alcohol, the victim's dress, or "boys will be boys…"

This is a gender-based crime. Women are physiologically incapable of genital rape. Rape is not a crime of passion. Rape is a violent act perpetrated upon an unwilling victim -- conscious or unconscious, drunk or sober, modestly or immodestly clad. Rape is not only physiologically traumatizing, but can leave psycho-social scars that undermine a person's capacity to re-enter society, earn a living, engage in healthy relationships, sleep, trust others, walk to their car in a parking lot at night, or build a sense of community.

I have prayed deeply about this issue -- I still pray daily. I have found healing. But just because I have found healing, doesn't mean that this issue isn't one that I feel any sense of peace about. It only takes one post on Facebook about Brock Turner's lenient sentence and early release, and I am fighting -- spiritually -- for my life and my right to love unconditionally. To hear his father's plea for leniency, to see a judge's concern for the effect incarceration might have on his future, to read his victim's heart-wrenching impact letter -- shakes my peace. Peace that is the heartbeat of my spiritual practice.

I was a child when I was raped. And still I was blamed. I was asked to recount what had happened in front of people I knew and loved. I was dismissed as a liar. I was shamed and shunned. I was abandoned and the rapist was embraced as "tempted." I was separated from the only sense of home and community I had ever known. I was manipulated into re-telling the story as "i was only touched." I was maligned and rejected. I was told that I was "damaged goods."

That I am sane enough to write this post today, is a tribute to the power of prayer. That I still feel violated when I hear that 43 year later, a rapist's future is being considered when meeting out punishment for a crime he has admitted to, and been convicted of -- rather than his victim's, who will never be the same -- is horrifying.

Prayer can help us find a way to move forward. Prayer, and an understanding of our inviolable spiritual innocence, can give us a way of looking at ourselves. But if society continues to allow rapists to be seen as "boys who make poor choices" with "girls who were asking for it," we are praying for forgiveness without a willingness for reformation. This is a collective ill, that attacks individuals. It must stop. I can only hope.

And yes, I guess I found a song.


offered with Love,

Kate