My dad happened to call in the middle of the police interview (he always called me, every night), and I ignored his call.
The female police officer reasoned with me and told me to tell my parents. She also let me take my time. When they left to arrest him, I called my parents. From there, I was brought to a “safe spot,” a place no one else would know about. I was with the RA and the female CD until my parents arrived. They spoke to the arresting officers, and then we left for home. It was about nine p.m.
He had been arrested that afternoon and was held in jail for the night.
After interviewing me, the public safety officer wrote my story out. I went over her typed story with the associate dean and okayed it. A few days later, I had to go over A’s typed-up story and correct it if he had made errors. He lied on both of his statements, the one to Curry and the one to the police, and I pointed that out. My story matched up everywhere.
My ADHD and executive function disorder can make it tricky to communicate, since I know what I mean to say, but my thoughts don’t come out as organized as they would with a typical learner. But in this instance, since I only had to tell my story twice on that one day, I didn’t get super overwhelmed. I was very emotional, but I wanted him gone and I wanted to get justice so I wouldn’t have minded screaming my story if I’d needed to.
ANDREW BROWN
It was the sixth night of college. It fell within the Red Zone, what a lot of social scientists realize is a critical time frame for college students socially, between arrival and Thanksgiving of freshman year, which is why early education about predators on campus is so important for college students.
I had just met new friends, and we were hanging out, laughing, having a good time until late at night.
It was five a.m. and my friends went home, and I was heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready for bed.
I was in the hallway and saw someone cross paths with me. I saw his eyes follow me. I unlocked the door to the bathroom—it was a communal bathroom that required a key to get you in—and was at the sink when I heard a knock.
I remember having the fleetest of questions as to why someone would knock, but figured someone else needed the bathroom, so I opened the door. He walked in and said, “You know, you’re really hot.”
I turned back to the sink as I said, “Thanks, but I’m going to bed. I’m gonna say no, but if I see you at a party I will remember what you said.”
He stepped closer and suddenly started feeling me up while he said, “C’mon, nobody has to know.”
He then moved me into one of the stalls in the bathroom. He was between me and the stall door the whole time. I just froze. I had no idea what to do, thinking, “Is this how people come on to each other in college?” I was so alarmed that I just completely froze.
Then I was saying no, turning away from him multiple times; then I was dead silent, not moving.
The only sound I distinctly remember hearing is the buzzing of the fluorescent lights the whole time. After assaulting me, he just left.
ANONYMOUS S
I don’t believe that anyone goes to college thinking that they will be the victim of a violent crime. Why should they? All I’d ever known was the safety of living at home with parents while going to grade school and high school, and I imagined college would be a four-year extension of that same experience.
When I signed my letter of intent to attend college on a full athletic scholarship, I knew that my future had endless possibilities.
That changed very quickly, however. Only two months into my first semester of college, I was violently raped by another student athlete. The worst part was that I had no idea it was rape. I grew up seeing stories in the media about “date rape,” and my parents gave me the lecture: “Always watch your cup” and “Don’t accept drinks that you haven’t made.” I was naïve; I thought that you had to be drugged, abducted, and then dumped somewhere for it to be considered rape. This was not my case. After it happened, I had a sick feeling for a long time. I remember asking myself repeatedly for months, “What the hell happened that night?”
It happened my freshman year. I was eighteen.
He was a fellow athlete, a football player. We were studying together at study hall and then he suggested I should come back to his dorm to study more.
This is when parts of what happened are really hazy. All I know is that he was walking behind me, and I somehow ended up on the ground outside his dorm. I started to panic. I went limp. He told me to get up. Then he grabbed my left arm under the armpit and lifted me back up to a standing position and forcefully escorted me into his dorm. Thinking back, I still get upset with myself that I didn’t fight back, but I am glad that I survived the attack; it could have been a lot worse.
Later I kept thinking, “You’re a big strong girl, why didn’t you fight back?” I’m not a small person. He and I were almost the same height.
I’ve heard everything in the book, like “Why didn’t you scream?” I was just focused on “Stay alive, stay conscious.” I was crying the entire time. Tears running down my face.
* * *
Later I kept thinking, “You’re a big strong girl, why didn’t you fight back?”
* * *
When it was over, he reiterated, “If you say a word, I’ll find you.” It was straight out of a movie. And then he added, “I’m done with you, you can leave now.”
I grabbed all my clothes and ran back to my dorm. I had a roommate. She saw how upset I was and asked, “What the hell happened to you?”
I said, “I had sex with somebody and I didn’t want to.” She jumped out of her bed and said, “Let’s get you in the shower. We have practice in the morning.” She was an athlete, too.
I stayed on campus and acted like nothing had happened. Everything else is a blur. I don’t remember my classes.
But … I got hurt three weeks after I was raped. In my mind, it’s connected to the rape.
Prior to this, I didn’t talk about my problems. As athletes, you don’t talk about your emotions, you work through them. I would go to practice and give it my all, and that’s what you do. Suck it up. Keep your head down. Do whatever it takes.
My injury was from excessive working out.
I had never been injured before. Then the doctor said, “We need to do surgery.” I had four surgeries. I was still thinking of the Olympics after the first two surgeries. But the pain was overwhelming. I couldn’t stand it any longer. So I decided to meet with the surgeon again, and that’s when he said that working out was making my body worse. That’s when I knew, “Oh, my God, my career is over.”
When the doctor is telling you that what you love is making you worse, it’s hard to swallow. I couldn’t use my body to cope with the emotional pain anymore. That was when I hit rock bottom. Being an athlete was my whole life. Being in control of my body was vital to me.
So I had the other two surgeries. I can never run again, and I loved running. I still have trouble walking.
* * *
The Attacker
A Chorus
We’d kinda been friends my freshman year.
He was an acquaintance; we had the same friends.
I had met him in passing the year before. Seen him around campus. He was a visiting student.
He was a fellow athlete and was in one of my classes.
Met him at a frat party. He was not a frat member, just a guy who was there.
I was raped by a woman, an upperclassman.
This guy had dropped out and was no longer a student, although he was hanging around.
The cops knew all about this guy. He had already raped six people and attempted to rape three others.
He was someone I had considered one of my best friends.
* * *
AYSHA IVES
I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends at Rutgers. And then, when I was nineteen, I met this older guy; he was thirty-six or thirty-seven. I was still so green. At the time I was a virgin.
He put a lot of pressure on me to have sex. Finally I said okay. We were in my dorm room, at the beginning of sophomore year. I was twenty when I finally said, “Fine.”
There was not a lot of foreplay. It was sort of like a business transaction. When he actually entered me I started to bleed. It was really painful, so I said, “Stop!” He said, “No.” I said, “No, it really hurts, please stop.” He said no again.
Then I felt something tear and there was blood everywhere. I bled and bled and bled. He said, “Oh, you must be on your period.” It didn’t stop.
I went to the college clinic and they sent me to the emergency room. The clinic offered no resources, no literature. So I went to the emergency room and I remember sitting in a wheelchair waiting to be seen. I had put on a pad but it had soaked through. I remember sitting in the chair and my whole pants leg had blood on it. I sat there for at least an hour, and I remember there was a change of shift. I’m still in a wheelchair and when the new shift came on, one of the workers said, “Are there any emergencies?” And the outgoing staff said no, nothing serious. I was soaked in blood, and I remember making eye contact with this nurse and she said, “Oh”—pointing at me—“she’s bleeding,” and then lowered her voice so I couldn’t hear the rest of it.
I asked for a female doctor, because I didn’t want another man touching me. I lay back down and closed my eyes, and I heard a man on the hospital staff say, “Well, she wasn’t wanting a female a couple of hours ago.” I remember opening my eyes; I couldn’t believe what I had heard. And he didn’t mean for me to hear; it was a joke amongst them. As for all the bleeding, it wasn’t from my hymen; it turned out that he had ripped my cervix. The female doctor who stitched me up, the first thing she asked me was “Were you on drugs?” I was indignant: “No!” She was critical, in a “How did you get yourself in this position?” kind of way. I had thought a woman would be kinder, gentler, but a male doctor might have been better.
That hospital was awful. And I don’t think the bad way I was treated was because of racism, I think it was because of victim-blaming.
As for the guy who hurt me, I would see him periodically, out and about. Afterward, he called me, and I told him what happened, and he didn’t really care.
A couple of years ago he saw me on Facebook, and he messaged me. I brought that up—that what he did was a part of my life from which I’m still trying to heal. And his response was “You need to let it go.”
Assault, rape, I didn’t say those words to him. I struggled for a long time with what to call it.
I forgive him, but I struggle with the fact he doesn’t take any responsibility. He doesn’t own up that he hurt me. I’ve had to struggle with releasing the trauma.
Several months later, I met another man in town. I was twenty-one. He was about twenty-six. He was a socially awkward man. He didn’t get along with his family; they weren’t allowing him to stay with them anymore. We dated for a little bit and he wanted to have sex, but I made it very clear that because of my first experience I wasn’t having sex.
One night we got a room at a hotel near the school. We got alcohol, and we were gonna drink a little bit and watch TV. I didn’t drink that much, enough to loosen motor control but my mind was still alert. Things started to get hot and heavy between us and I said, “No, I don’t want to have sex.” I was very verbal. I said, “Stop, I’m scared. I don’t want to.” He kept saying, “You’re such a tease.” I remember getting really frightened because his whole demeanor changed. The look on his face was frightening.
I remember trying to push him off me, but I was having a hard time. I was fighting him enough that he couldn’t do what he wanted, so he started choking me. I had on a nightshirt, and I remember he’s choking me and I’m uncoordinated but fully aware and I remember him removing my undergarments and then I remember him entering me and then my whole world just stopped. I stopped fighting, I stopped yelling, stopped struggling. I just went limp and waited him out.
Several minutes later, he stopped. When I stopped struggling, he continued for several minutes more, and then he just stopped. I don’t remember him ejaculating.
When he rolled off me, I asked him for my keys. He had hidden the keys to my car, and also my cell phone. So when he stopped I asked him for my keys back and he said no. I ended up staying that night. I was afraid. So I stayed.
The next morning I woke up and he woke up and he asked me if I remembered what had happened last night. I said yes. And he said, “I’m sorry.” I didn’t say anything. He gave me back my keys and cell phone. There was blood on the sheets and he went outside to throw them in the Dumpster, and while he was outside I collected my things and fled.
ANONYMOUS V
The assault happened my junior year, in the fall. November. I don’t like to talk about it a lot, because it feels like I’m trying to convince people that it happened. The first sentence told you I was assaulted; you can either believe me, or you can choose to not believe me. There was a point in time when I was dependent on validation. I needed to hear that my friends believed me and I wanted to hear my school believed me. I don’t need that anymore. Now, recounting details makes me feel like my rape is a spectacle or something being consumed. I don’t want my trauma treated like a car crash—people say it’s awful and sad, but they read all the gory details and thank god it wasn’t them.
I will say this: I was twenty when it happened. I had rules that semester about hooking up. I wouldn’t go home alone with a guy the first night I met him; I clarified what I wanted to do sexually before we entered the room; I didn’t hook up when I was very drunk. Aside from the last rule, I don’t have those anymore. Rules might make you feel safe, but they don’t keep you safe. The only thing that keeps you safe is someone else respecting you and your wants. That’s on them and their rules.
That night, I’d known the person for over a month. As we were walking back, I said, “I don’t know what I want to do. I’m not sure if I want to have sex.” I didn’t think I was in a bad situation.
He raped me.
When it happened, within twenty-four hours I reached out to our health educator, who is also the point person for sexual assault. She let the dean of students know confidentially that something had happened. But I didn’t want to file a report then because it was so close to final exams and I didn’t think I could handle the pressure. The health educator and the dean told me I had plenty of time to file a report.
FABIANA DIAZ
When I first moved to Ann Arbor in June, I was in a bridge program at the University of Michigan that was mostly for minorities. There were about five hundred students and it really felt like it was just us on campus.
The assault happened on my second night at the university, June 25. It was a Tuesday. It happened at midnight; actually it started at eleven and ended around one a.m. I had moved all my stuff into the dorm room the day before.
I had met him on the day I moved in, Monday. A bunch of us started talking at the cafeteria table, all getting to know each other. That night the guy I was dating at the time drove up to visit me. He was a little older, and was going to Michigan State, so he drove up to see me. We went out and had ice cream. They were very strict about curfew, so I said, “I have to get back.” He walked with me and met some of the students, actually met the guy who would be my assailant, before he left.
The next day, all of us students went downtown to get some food. My feet were starting to hurt and I didn’t want to be out any longer, so I said, “Let’s walk back.” So four of us, two girls, two guys, walked back. We went to the dorms, were walking around. We’d had our first day of classes that day. We were all just talking and talking.
Three of us went back to my room, a guy and one of my girlfriends, and my roommate hadn’t shown up. Then my girlfriend left and I assumed the guy was leaving, too. I got up to go get my phone in the next room to text my boyfriend, and instead of leaving, the guy walked to the door, stopped, locked the door, and told me to be quiet.
I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been in that situation. I had seen it on TV and always thought I would scream and fight. But once it happens to you, you freeze.
I started crying as he pulled my clothes off, and he said, “Shut up.” He kept telling me to shut up. I was crying the whole time. He kept repeating, “It’s just sex, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Afterward he got up and left. I found my phone and keys and locked myself in the bathroom. Then I called my boyfriend, and I was crying and crying. He couldn’t understand what I was saying. I couldn’t talk. It was two in the morning. I was just crying. He thought I was homesick and he said, “Do you want me to come pick you up?” My parents had left for a business trip to Chicago that day and I didn’t want to tell them. I didn’t know how to talk to them about it. I said, “No, no, no, don’t come.”
Then this girl walked in and said, “Do you want me to go get somebody?” She got one of my friends and they took me to their room and said, “What’s wrong?” I was frozen. I just couldn’t talk. I finally told someone, “I think I was hurt.” And then two guys came in and I completely stopped talking. It was three in the morning and we had class at eight. The girls made the guys leave.
I told the girls what happened and they said, “We need to go confront him right now, what the hell was he thinking!” I said, “I’m not leaving this room, I’m staying locked in this room.” I didn’t feel safe.
The next morning, my friends walked with me to class to make sure he wasn’t around. They walked me up to within thirty feet of my math class and left. Then I turned around and saw him. I started to panic. I ran and found the girls’ bathroom and hid for fifteen minutes.
My boyfriend said he was coming to get me, so I told myself to just get through this class. I was scared the whole time. This girl came up and said, “Are you okay?” I said, “No, can you walk me out?”
We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out Page 4
