1 in 5 women get raped?

How Police And Hospitals Shut Down Rape Victims

I always thought if I was a victim of sexual assault, I would report it. It wasn’t so easy

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daniellecampoamor/how-police-and-hospitals-shut-women-down

posted on Dec. 5, 2014, at 4:40 p.m.
Danielle Campoamor BuzzFeed Contributor

I always thought that if I ever became a victim of sexual assault, I’d say something. I’d be the girl reporting it, sitting on a witness stand and pointing a defiant finger, just like the actresses on SVU. There wouldn’t be a second thought or a deliberate pause; I’d simply speak up because that’s, of course, what you do.

And then I became a victim of sexual assault.

When the police officer was standing in front of me, a pad of paper in one hand and an overworked pen in the other, and asked me if I wanted to file charges, I paused. Tears were running down my cheeks and my legs wouldn’t stop shaking and my best friend’s hand, honorable in its intentions, failed to comfort me. The officer had already asked me how many drinks I had consumed. In fact, he asked me on three separate occasions. He had already asked what I could have possibly said or unintentionally inferred, prior to being forced onto a bed. He had already raised his eyebrows and tightened his lips and wrinkled his brow.

And a part of me already knew.

So, I said no. I just wanted it over. I wanted the judgmental police officer gone and I wanted the flashing lights outside the house gone and I wanted this feeling of disgusting inadequacy gone. I wanted to hide under the covers, away from the monster my mother and father had warned me about since grade school.

I said no.

The police officer nodded, almost thankful that I saved him the extra paperwork. He told me I could change my mind at any time. He gave me a case number and a patronizing pat on the back and said he was sorry. I told him I was sorry too.

That night I cried myself to sleep. The covers provided no comfort. Not from the monsters. Not from myself.

The next morning brought clarity and strength. I called the police department and regurgitated the case number and explained that I had changed my mind. I wanted to do my younger, albeit naive, self proud. I wanted to be that prideful, strong, courageous woman pointing the finger and uncovering the monsters that hide in the darkness, for one had found me and I didn’t want him to find anyone else.

I went to the emergency room. I handed over my driver’s license and told the nurse with the exhausted face why I was there. She turned her head to the side, her eyes trailing to the floor as the words “report” and “assault” left my dry, cracked lips. She called the S.A.N.E. nurse and ushered me to an empty room.

It was there that I was violated again. Only this time, it was on my own accord. I nodded my head and verbally committed and intentionally signed pieces of myself away. I agreed to have body parts examined and photographed and catalogued, transforming my flesh into evidence. I cried as a stranger asked me to show the marks on my left breast. I closed my eyes as the nurse performed the internal exam.

A week passed. I was due to meet with a detective who had already combed over statements and the police report. Once again, I was ushered into a small room. A victim’s advocate sat on the couch across from me. I sat next to the detective, who had kind, weathered eyes. He explained his past history with the department, the number of years he had worked with women just like me. At first this comforted me. He knew what he was doing.

And then the questions started.

And then I knew.

I was asked how many drinks I had. I answered honestly. I was asked about any conversations we had shared previously. What did I say? Did I give him an idea that it would be OK? I was asked what I was wearing. Was I inciting? Was I inviting? Was it really my fault?

Was I even telling the truth?

The detective explained to me that women get “confused” rather regularly. He explained that many a woman sat in my chair, defiantly lying until they couldn’t lie anymore. He told me that drinking and judgment and embarrassment, even boyfriends, can contribute to a woman continuing to cry wolf. He asked me if this was what I was doing. Was I confused? Was I ashamed? After all, I had been drinking.

I said no.

The detective nodded, almost annoyed that I didn’t save him the extra paperwork. He told me he would do what he could, but often times the “he said/she said” cases don’t go anywhere. He assured me that even if it didn’t, a report would be on record. I guess he thought that would be comforting.

That was almost two years ago. Nothing has happened. The evidence is backlogged and the detective is out of contact and the monster is still hiding.

I ended up becoming a victim of sexual assault, and I did say something. I was the girl who reported it, but I didn’t sit on a witness stand or point a defiant finger or act like the strong SVU actresses. I did have a second thought and I did deliberately pause. But, in the end, I did say something.

I said no.

And now, I’m saying no again. I say no to being afraid of a detective behind a desk actually believing you. I say no to a woman being questioned when pieces of her body sit catalogued, collecting dust and indifference. I say no to judgmental eyebrows and dismissive lips and neglectful brows. I say not to the blame resting on the girl sitting on the edge of an examination table. I say no to the burden of innocence falling on the girl with the bruises.

No more.

No.

Eight Women Testify Oklahoma City Police Officer Sexually Assaulted Them

Eight women testified in a preliminary hearing Monday that Officer Daniel Holtzclaw used his authority as a police officer to sexually assault them.
posted on Nov. 17, 2014, at 9:17 p.m.
Claudia Koerner BuzzFeed News Reporter
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Daniel Holtzclaw is led into a courtroom for a bond hearing in Oklahoma City on Sept. 3. AP/Sue Ogrocki

Eight women faced an Oklahoma City police officer in court Monday, detailing how he used his authority to sexually assault them.

Daniel Holtzclaw, 27, was arrested in August after he was accused of assaulting eight women. As the investigation continued, more came forward, and he now faces 32 charges, including rape and sexual battery related to the abuse of 13 women.

Prosecutors have said that Holtzclaw targeted black women in a high-crime area — women who might fear to speak out against him. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his family has said they believe the women have ulterior motives.

On Monday, a 23-year-old woman described how he assaulted her while she was high on PCP and handcuffed to a hospital bed, the Associated Press reported.

“I just really can’t believe it because it’s the police,” she said.

Prosecutors also said DNA from one of the victims — a 17-year-old girl — was found inside Holtzclaw’s uniform pants, The Oklahoman reported. The girl told the court Holtzclaw threatened to arrest her on outstanding warrants, then drove her to her mother’s home. He pulled down her pants and forced her to have sex with him, she said.

“What am I going to do? Call the cops? He was a cop,” she said.

A 52-year-old woman said she didn’t think anyone would believe her story. She had been arrested numerous times and has been convicted of seven felonies.

She said Holtzclaw stopped her, then ran his hand up her shirt and into her jeans. He left without arresting her.

“It’s my word against his,” she said.

The hearing is expected to continue on Tuesday, and a judge will determine if there is enough evidence to move forward to trial.

update

During Tuesday’s hearing, a judge formally ruled that Holtzclaw’s case will go to trial, setting the next pretrial conference date for Jan. 21, 2015. Four felony counts were also added to Holtzclaw’s charges, though one misdemeanor count — for stalking — was thrown out, bringing the total number of charges to 35. News 9 has more detail on the women who testified Tuesday. Nov. 18, 2014, at 5:04 p.m.

How Rolling Stone Gave A Gift To Rape Apologists

The way the magazine bungled its exposé of rape culture at UVA has caused irreparable damage to survivors — and given ammunition to those already disinclined to believe them.
posted on Dec. 8, 2014, at 7:58 p.m.
Katie Klabusich

The default position in our culture is to blame the victim – especially in cases of sexual assault. Some do it for personal preservation reasons — “If I can determine why they were assaulted/abused, I can avoid having it happen to me” — but some seem to be interested only in assigning blame: If only young women didn’t drink so much and party so much they’d be easier to believe when they got assaulted and wouldn’t they even get assaulted less?

By publishing Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s explicit exposé of rape culture on the University of Virginia’s campus and then backing away while blaming Jackie, the victim at the center of the piece, Rolling Stone gift wrapped a “rape victims lie” trope and delivered it into the waiting arms of men’s rights activists, rape apologists, and professional victim blamers. Survivors en masse feared not being believed even before a discredited but widely circulated writer (who had previously doxxed one of the American nurses who had Ebola and spread the false accusation that Michael Brown had a second-degree murder conviction on his juvenile record) spread Jackie’s full name and private information all over the internet for public consumption.

But there is no way to retract the damage that has been done to this young woman or to the countless survivors who will now agonize even more over whether to come forward. To date, Rolling Stone has yet to apologize to “Jackie” directly; the magazine’s updated “apology” to readers only partially shifts the blame to their inability to fact check — which could have protected their source as well as their publication. Spin-off think pieces link to the writer who doxxed Jackie, which only serves to amplify an environment where anyone without a perfect victimology and steel-trap memory can reasonably fear for both their reputation and their physical safety should they have the audacity to speak out about what happened to them.

I have that fear. Despite having a public platform and a degree of credibility that a private citizen doesn’t enjoy, I’m not a good victim. My story isn’t airtight or unchanging. Even now, when I talk about what happened to me during my four-year abusive relationship, my story has alternate versions. Depending on how much I can handle on any given day, I will leave out details or add them back in. Depending on what aspect of my story can be helpful to another survivor or current news, I will emphasize that part of my attacker’s behavior. Does this mean I am lying? Certainly not; it means I am a human being with a complicated psyche and lived experience.

I have softened, updated, edited, revised, reviewed, and reconfigured my rape story. The timeline is fuzzy around the edges, and if you asked me for specific details like exact date, what I was doing earlier in the day, what time the clock read, what either of us was wearing, or how much one or both of us had had to drink, well… I wouldn’t have ever stood up to cross-examination.

The truth is, no one’s life stands up to this kind of scrutiny — and most people don’t have to tell a squeaky clean, totally together tale over and over within hours of a trauma while flinching through exams, bright lights, fears of expulsion, fears that loved ones will abandon them, fears that this all can and will happen again.

Because I didn’t report, I didn’t have to endure the process of retelling my story the way survivors who come forward in the hopes of prosecuting their attackers must. Most sexual assault survivors tell their story around a dozen times the first day they report — to the responding officer; to the triage clerk at the hospital; to the nurse at the hospital; to the doctor at the hospital; to their best friend who took them to the hospital; to their partner; to the detective. Having to tell your story dozens and dozens of times to dozens and dozens of people leads to discrepancies. Of course it does; how could it not?

But it is these common, understandable discrepancies that are being used to threaten a now famous-against-her-will young woman. Trauma victims often experience memory shifts. For some of us, leaving out details is a coping mechanism. For others, there is a fear of reprisal. Still others simply don’t think what happened to them is everyone — or anyone — else’s business. I don’t often tell the story about the time my ex had me up against a wall with his hands around my neck in part because of privacy reasons. And because I think that one incident distracts from the murkier coercion he used to ensure I couldn’t say no on a regular basis. When a man who outweighs a woman by nearly 100 pounds has her feet off the floor, laughing at her as she threatens in a gasping voice to call the police, who is going to tell her she shouldn’t have felt afraid?

It is the way my ex used to manipulate me emotionally that walks a nuanced line, making my story more useful, more common, and more open to attack. He wielded my economic vulnerability like a weapon — knowing that when he came home drunk at 8 a.m. after a long bar shift to find me asleep just an hour before my alarm would begin my next 18-hour workday, who was I to say no if he wanted to? I know I couldn’t have left, but I don’t expect strangers or loved ones to see it from my perspective. The experience of listening to them talk rape and abuse has taught me I can’t be sure who will support me when they find out.

I have had to come to terms with my story gradually over the past five years. I didn’t recognize it as rape for a long time, and processing that information took work and a lot of support. That happens with many survivors — whether they are attacked once or whether they are abused over time and work through the trauma later. There is no right way to deal with being raped; there is only the way you do it.

When a respected investigative journalism outlet incites a national discussion about what a victim is supposed to do, how and when they’re supposed to report, and whether we should even bother believing them, they are actively choosing to support rape culture and silencing survivors. As our “justice” system only sees fit to punish 3% of prosecuted attackers, most victims will only ever have the court of public opinion (should they seek it out) to vindicate them. Rolling Stone has taken that away as well.

Oops. I am taking on the racists on pamela rosa's white people thread.

Hawkeye10 has actually stated that any minority group that has historically suffered persecution is responsible for bringing the persecution upon themselves. I don't remember in which thread he posted this bit of "truth," but he actually did make this outrageous claim.

What do you think of that, nononono? You might want to take a closer look at some of your "allies." I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that most of the white "Men's Rights" advocates either supported Jim Crow or would have had no problem with it.

You shouldn't have removed those photos of lynching victims. Hawkeye10 might have enjoyed seeing them. Besides, hawkeye's guiding principle is "Might makes right."

Of course you do not remember what thread he make some statement who details we do not have a clue about that I am sure you had taken out of content in any case.

Come on you can do better then that.....no I guess you can not do better then that.

I never said anything of the sort, this guys brain constantly gets swamped by his emotions, he cant think straight. Perfect fodder for feminist hysteria he is.

Yuck, I won't be able to stop throwing up for a week.

The thing the feminists need to understand is that claiming that victims can not be expected to correctly remember events invalidates 30 years of sexual assault reforms, which revolve around the assumption that victims can remember events and can with enough encouragement be pushed to report those events to the state. That is the whole reason we no longer had to see bodily injury and no longer need other witnesses.

OOPS!

You are completely misrepresenting my points. Sometimes I get the feeling that you don't even realize that what you're saying is B.S., but in this instance I think you know exactly what you're doing. You know that you're misrepresenting my argument in an attempt to distract from what I pointed out.



The reason it "rarely occurs is because of the anti male culture we live in. And look at your reasoning in the way you constructed that sentence: just because someone has been convicted does not negate them being innocent if in fact they are innocent. Even one wrongly convicted person is too many. This is what I'm talking about in reference to you attempting to derail my points. This is a shady tactic firefly. You know it.



Well, gee I dunno. Maybe because in order to give a prison blowjob, what usually happens in that the victim's teeth are brutally knocked out of their mouth for starters maybe? Maybe because prison rape is almost always anal rape, and that hurts a lot more than vaginal rape maybe? Maybe because prison rape is same sex rape and therefore includes the added humiliation of one's sexual orientation being assaulted also?

But again here you are purposely misrepresenting my argument. In the statement you quoted, I didn't even claim that being raped in prison was worse than being raped outside of prison. I claimed that getting raped and/or murdered was worse. You conveniently left out the murdered part.

Which leads me to wonder, do you honestly believe that rape is a more serious crime than murder firefly? Because all indications would lead one to think so. And unfortunately you are not alone. Society at large does view rape as a more serious crime than murder. And that's because of gynocentrism. Women are concurrently infantilized and deified, and men are demonized and ignored.



And yet again you are misrepresenting my argument. Let me ask you this; how many people openly proclaim themselves to be Bill Cosby fans right now? How many media outlets are defending him? Now I haven't made my mind up on the Cosby issue yet, but what you and most other people are forgetting is that these are accusations. There has been no evidence presented yet. Even the language the media uses to talk about the issue is presented in such a way as if he's already guilty.

And as a side note I would ask why, if these women were so afraid to come forward because of Cosby's "power", and because these assaults have supposedly been going on for decades; why didn't any of these women speak out about this back in the 60's? Cosby wasn't very powerful back then, and he was a black man in 1960's America to boot! If he truly is a serial predator and this behavior goes that far back, why didn't these women call him out then? A black man with little power in the 60's being called a rapist? His career would have been dead in the water in it's infancy.

But back to my point. Cosby's name has been ruined. He had all these projects in the works and the network brass pulled the plug in the wake of the accusations. And that's part of the effect of false rape accusations (if these accusations are false, and I'm not saying they are); loss of money, loss of work, damage to a man's livelihood, his legacy.

Your attempt to distract from my points is feeble firefly. You can do better than that.

You're welcome. I do what I can.

And by the way, feel free to inbox me any time sweety. I like 'em older than me too

I don't have allies. I personally evaluate what people post on merit alone. I've even removed the few people that I had "followed" here (mostly because I don't even really get what that function does.)

I happen to like what hawkeye has to say, but if he says something appalling, I'm not going to support it. And I've yet to have seen this supposed big pile of bigotry you all claim that hawkeye has spouted out.



You find me this bit, and I will respond to it, but I want to see his actual words not paraphrasing.

I'm sure you would be happy to be alone in a room paneled in knotty pine, I set my sights a lot higher, always did. Oh, excuse me, I keep forgetting who I'm speaking to. Let me restate on a level you might be able to understand, hahahahahahahahaha, sweet Jesus, hahahahahahahahaha, OMG he can't be that clueless, hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, oh **** he is, hahahahahahahahaha, whew, that was fun. You should work for the Onion, little dude.

All I read in all that was "Come hither nononono, you make me wetter than a fisherman."

Ohhhh, I'm sorry, I forgot you're stupid. I know that some creepy dudes think everyone wants them, you are one of them. You can think anything you want, thats what got Cosby in trouble. You are way too young to be interesting. Hard to believe? Yeah, I know, peacocks find it hard to swallow. Set your sights on the attainable. I don't find stupid to be attractive, and I'm done raising children.

wrong. The accusations are about his doing, not his thinking.

First of all, it's not "feminists" who've come up with those claims, it's those who work with rape survivors, including medical personnel, who have recognized for some time that they may exhibit symptoms of PTSD, including transient cognitive problems, and, when they do, it is generally taken as a confirmation that they did go through a sexually traumatic experience--it adds to their credibility rather than detracting from it.

Victims who were extremely intoxicated or drugged, and who were raped in such conditions, may have no recollections of their assaults, but that does not mean the assaults did not occur.

Extremely elderly victims, who may suffer some cognitive impairments, or dementia, may not have clear recollections of their sexual assaults, but that does not mean the assaults did not occur.

None of this "invalidates 30 years of sexual assault reforms"--it's not even connected to the most recent sexual assault reforms, which were mainly about giving a simple "No" the legal weight of a valid indication of non-consent, particularly in date rape and acquaintance rape situations. Women no longer had to risk further injury by trying to fight back, they could simply say "No", and that "No" was legally expected to be abided by . Obviously, women who are drugged or severely intoxicated may be unable to do even that, which is why they are legally considered unable to consent.

While a complainant with a clear memory makes a case easier for a prosecutor, a complainant without one doesn't necessarily make it impossible to prosecute a case. It depends on what other forensic and circumstantial evidence the state has found to substantiate a crime. Was there ever a rape trial that relied only on the claimant's testimony, with no other witnesses testifying for the state? I've never come across one.

Memory problems by claimants do not invalidate laws, or any changes in the laws over the past few decades--that's another of the distorted and inaccurate conclusions you often arrive at. They may simply present a bigger challenge for law enforcement and prosecutors, but no law has ever required that the claimant had to have a crystal clear memory of the crime.

https://tv.yahoo.com/news/views-rosie-odonnell-receives-private-message-bill-cosby-184300468.html

The crazy thing is that the vast majority who think that every young male should get a dont be a rapist lecture would be appalled if young women were given a dont be a victim lecture.

Equality escapes us.

I know you're done raising children, but is your womb currently busy?