Silence Won't Work Anymore

A lot has been swirling through my mind this week and I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not to write this post. I’m still not 100% sure if it is the right decision to put all of this down in words and essentially out there for the world to see, but if it helps even one person understand that sexual misconduct can happen to anyone and why it can be so hard for people to report it, then maybe putting it all down will be worth it.

I am glad that individuals of all genders, and some in very public positions, are coming forward to report sexual harassment and assault that they have survived at the hands of some pretty horrible people who clearly have used their positions of power for evil rather than good, but the fact that we live in a society where even with this rape culture exists at such a terrifying rate and when reports like this come out, there are people who are so quick to victim blame makes me sick. I wrote something on my facebook a couple months ago about the upcoming arrival of my first child who will be a privileged white male, and you better damn well believe that I will do everything in my power to raise him to respect others and understand what consent is, how his privilege plays a part in consent, and that he must always have consent. If he wants to hug another child when growing up, you better believe he is going to know you ask permission to hug first. People may think I’m a crazy mom, but I just really want him to understand and do the right thing.

Almost 9 years ago I started working at my first “real” full time job in higher education. I was so excited to be working full time, to have a staff of my own, and to have an incredible group of colleagues that I would get to work with and learn from. I thought that I was walking into a great environment where I would be truly supported and would be able to develop skills that would help me long term in my career. While some of this did happen, there were a few other not so great things that I got to experience. I should also mention that at the time I started this position, I was only 22 years old which meant I was still a little naïve about how the world worked- especially the working world. For my higher ed friends, I should also note that this occurred in 2009 prior to the release of the now (unfortunately) retracted 2011 OCR Dear Colleague Letter.

Within my first three months of working in my position, I (along with a couple other women in the department) were experiencing blatant sexual harassment from a male colleague. I kept quiet about what was going on for a while because I really didn’t know what to do and didn’t want to cause any trouble. Things got to the point though where if I was even in the same room as this individual I was having internal panic attacks, couldn’t focus, and just needed to get away as quickly as possible. My ability to work was being impacted on a daily basis and I can’t count the number of times I cried during the day because of the stress the work environment and the harassment that I was enduring. When I finally did decide to report the behavior I was lucky to have an understanding and supportive supervisor who was there for me and able to help me navigate what to do. Unfortunately, when I reported the situation to our department’s human resources staff and the supervisor of my colleague I was told that I either needed to just let it go or I needed to “talk it out” with my colleague. The thought of having to sit down and mediate the harassment with the person who was causing me so much anxiety was absolutely terrifying and at 22 I didn’t feel as though I would be able to do that. I expected my HR department to believe me and to take appropriate employment action. I didn’t expect to be told to “let it go” nor did I expect to be grilled about what I could have possibly done to have caused the behavior from my colleague, because in their mind I must have encouraged him to make the comments he was making. I felt as though everything was my fault and that I had done something wrong by reporting the behavior and how it was making me feel in the work environment. I had to endure another month of working with the colleague before he was finally either terminated or resigned, for of all things, not appropriately handling a reported sexual assault on campus. And when he did leave, there were people in the department who made me feel it was my fault he was gone because I had reported his harassing, inappropriate behavior.

Fast forward to 2013. I’m older and I’ve worked in higher education long enough to have developed a pretty tough shell. This time I’m working somewhere else and have an experience where a highly intoxicated student verbally abuses me for multiple hours. Not only does this student verbally abuse me, but in part of what he says to me, he makes it very clear that when we arrive at a certain location that he will have arranged for his friends to meet us there so that they can sexually assault me. As soon as I am able to leave the student, I immediately submit a report about the situation. The report has no emotion to it, rather it is me just providing the facts of the encounter. I have a tough shell, but I am absolutely crumbling apart. I’m really lucky in this case that I have colleagues who, as soon as they find out what happened, come to get me to take care of me. Despite the very clear report, through an appeal the student is able to stay, and I have to spend the next month and a half seeing this individual on an almost daily basis. And when we get to the place where he told me his friends would be to assault me, I spend six days in totally fear that at any moment something terrible is going to happen to me. I’m incredibly lucky that it didn’t but that fear was absolutely crippling and having to see the individual so often had me replaying the situation over and over. I was lucky to have access to counseling services which was helpful in processing through everything and I had a great support system in my coworkers and supervisors.

If I had to count how many people know about these two experiences, I would say in total that maybe 15 people in my life know. I honestly don’t know if I ever told my family, though I’m pretty sure my sister knows about the 2013 incident. The first situation, probably only 5 people have any idea about it and what I went through. Even though my situations are nothing in comparison with what others have experienced, they make me understand why reporting can be so difficult. Lots of times people won’t believe you or they will question what you must have done for something to happen to you. Or, you do report, people believe you, but the consequences for the person who hurt you are so small that you are re-victimized on a regular basis.

There has to be a solution to this awful culture that we have established. There has to be a way to hold people, especially those abusing their power, accountable for their actions. There has to be a way for survivors of any type of sexual misconduct to feel comfortable coming forward. We have to do something, we can’t stay silent anymore.