In Defense of Keeping Your Rape Out of the Hands of the Law

I'm going to tell you a story of something that happened to someone I know and obviously, I'm keeping her name out of it. We'll call her "Jane". 

Jane met someone who took her on a first date. He was charming. He was very handsome. He seemed verbose and funny and talkative. They never ran out of conversation. Great food, great conversation. An admittedly naive Jane invited this stranger back to her house post-date to watch a little television in her room.

That was when her date bound her arms and wrists, pinned her legs with his and raped her. 

She doesn't remember every moment of the assault, mostly due to the trauma of it all. But she remembers the pain of her arms and wrists being bound to her headboard, the pain on her legs and the feeling of desperately struggling to get out of the restraints and his grip. 

He mercifully used a condom. Small favors I guess.

When it was over, he just left. Jane woke the next morning in excruciating pain, unable to move her neck, her upper back and with what felt like a sprained left wrist. Her arms were covered in bruises...big hand prints ran up and down her arms in long, strange rows. Her legs were bruised in big, 3-4 inch patches. Her pubic bone felt almost broken. 

She dragged herself to work and later that morning to the doctor. She wore pants and a long sleeved sweater, wanting no one to be able to spy the damage left by her attacker. 

There wasn't a single second of her long time spent in the waiting room of her doctor's office that she even entertained the thought of telling her doctor what had happened to her. She knew that if she did, he would be bound to report it to the police. Jane explained to me that she didn't want to put her family through this, she didn't want to put herself through it and she knew that the odds of proving the rape would be against her as she had been drinking. I don't think she took into account how much physical proof there was left on her body, but it didn't matter to her. She simply did not want to live in this ordeal, being grilled by strangers, possibly going through a long and ugly trial, publicly. 

Jane knew and acknowledged to me that she felt responsible for the fact that by not reporting it, that he would most likely go on to commit assault again. But she resolved that living with that guilt was less painful than putting herself through the legal ringer. 

She told her doctor that she just put her neck and back out that morning, by getting out of bed "wrong" and he prescribed painkillers. That helped her get through the physical wreckage that week.

She told one other close friend of her ordeal that week, only to be reprimanded and lectured by him about her decision not to press charges. She hasn't spoken to him since.

Jane has since wrapped herself in what I think of as an emotionally-protective cocoon. She is frightened to tell others and to be judged. Again. She feels responsible for the assault because she was drinking that night and in her words was "stupid enough" to let the bastard step foot in her home. The bruises eventually healed. Her wrist is a little bit more back to normal. But of course, like every rape survivor, nothing else will ever be the same. Any reminders of what happened to her are all-consuming and painful.

Jane is left with nightmares and a feeling of near constant fear. Especially in her own home.

She is determined to work through it. She'll eventually start therapy when she feels a bit more ready to talk about it. For now, in her vulnerability, she only wants to expose herself and her time to people with whom she feels completely and totally safe with. That's maybe about two people in total, at this point.

I want to stress here that I'm not advocating not reporting rape to the authorities. Not at all. That's not my point, here. I think in the end though, it must, like any other health issue for women be seen as a completely personal decision. And the outcome of that decision should be supported with compassion and understanding by the people close to that woman, regardless of their views of the morality of the decision, itself. 

I believe the bravest people on the planet are the women who make the decision to press charges and see it through our current, incredibly faulty justice system. Jane's story is almost an alternate reality version of another story I read about this week. A story that perfectly reflects the fear rape victims experience in going the legal route. It was the story of Megan Rondini. It's the story of what women like Jane and many in Jane's position fear the most.
Here is the link: https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/how-accusing-a-powerful-man-of-rape-drove-a-college-student?utm_term=.kjz55PXpG

And it's these two paragraphs that I thought most about after reading through this article:

There’s no official guide to reporting rape. It’s the most underreported crime, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which means many victims don’t tell anyone at all. But women are generally expected to do two things if they believe they’ve been sexually assaulted: Go to the emergency room and call the police. “Was it consensual?” Megan's friend asked her when she picked her up that night, the friend told investigators. “Like, did you want to?” No, Megan told her. She didn’t.That’s why they went to the hospital for a forensic exam, even though it was the middle of the night and Megan had just run away from Sweet T’s mansion by climbing out of his second-story window. Afterward, instead of going to sleep, she met with law enforcement for an interview. Megan never imagined that she would soon be cast as a criminal, or that investigators would view Sweet T — really T.J. Bunn Jr., son of an influential Tuscaloosa family — as the true victim. But that’s exactly what happened.

Through various injustices (you'll have to read the full article) and the power and influence that Megan's attacker carried in that community, Megan wound up being treated like the criminal. And ultimately, somehow Megan didn't see a way to keep going, tragically committing suicide. 

This is the nightmare scenario. 

And it reminded me so much of what Jane told me when she first confided her story in me: Her attacker came from money. He was young, good looking, went to an ivy league school and had a promising career in the entertainment industry. 

Jane is poor and alone. Both were drinking that night. Who would the police or a jury ultimately grant more credibility to? Unfortunately, we'll never know. But Jane didn't trust the possible outcome.

The problem here is not whether or not the victim files charges. The problem is WHY so many women do not report their rapes and do not file charges. So many of us do not trust the system. 

How do we fix the system when the system is patriarchal by its very nature and since its inception?