Still Room for Hope

by Alisa Kaplan

  Are these easy talks to have? They certainly aren’t. Most of us would rather sweep these issues under the rug and pretend that rape happens to other people in other places. But education and prevention do work. We need to stand together now and shine a light. Together, I believe that we can transform the road.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Speaking Out

  In 2011, God gave me a great way to do my part in transforming the road. It would take another year before I could find the courage to take Him up on it, though.

  Right after the retreat with my aunt Kathy’s church in the mountains, Susan Schroeder, chief of staff at the DA’s office, called me. We’d stayed in touch and had become close. I’d never forgotten how fierce an advocate she’d been on my behalf.

  “Alisa, there’s a big victims’ rights rally downtown every year. Would you like to be one of our speakers this year?”

  My heart beat so hard, I thought it might thump its way right out of my chest. The rights of the victim—this was a cause that was close to me. But to speak publicly would require a degree of exposure I’d never considered.

  I’d never said my name out loud before in connection with the trial. Most of my community, even quite a few close friends, didn’t know what had happened to me. I hesitated to tell people I met until I’d become close to them, and sometimes I didn’t share at all. The rape was no longer the single defining incident of my life, so why bring it up?

  When people found out, it often changed the way they were with me. Out came the kid gloves: Suddenly, friends would be falling all over themselves to turn off Law and Order: SVU or to apologize for a completely harmless joke.

  I could usually get them to forget again—to see me again for loveable old smart-mouthed, sarcastic me—but it still irritated me to be pitied when I’d worked so hard to get to a more empowered place.

  So when Susan called, I had to ask myself: Was I ready to come out?

  The more I thought about it, the more terrified I became. I was worried that if I spoke out about what I’d gone through, the guys would try to retaliate. But I was more afraid of feeling the way I’d felt at the trials. For weeks, I had dreams where I’d see myself standing up in front of a podium, while people in the audience, their faces contorted with hate and contempt, pointed fingers at me and screamed: “Liar!” “Slut!”

  I would wake from those dreams shaking—dry-mouthed, my sheets heavy with my sweat. It was true that I’d come a long way since people had screamed those things at me on my way into the courthouse for the trials. But had I come far enough? How would I feel if nobody believed me? If someone called me a whore or a gold digger? Or told me I’d asked for it, that they hoped I’d learned my lesson, that I’d deserved what happened to me?

  I couldn’t see what the payoff would be. I’d be putting myself in the line of fire—and for what? I panicked and told Susan I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to get the day off from work. That was probably true, but I hadn’t asked. I wasn’t ready, at that time, to speak.

  In the year that followed, though, I daydreamed about what I would say if I ever did have the courage to come forward. I didn’t want to dwell on the past or on the gory details of what had happened to me. I am a naturally positive, upbeat kind of person. I have a lot of energy, a sarcastic sense of humor, and an ability to find the silver lining in pretty much any cloud. I imagined my speech being positive, inspirational—maybe even funny at times.

  When I pictured giving it, I didn’t imagine the audience. Instead, I imagined myself talking to one girl. I couldn’t see her face, or anything else about her, but I felt that she was in her late teens and a survivor herself. I kept thinking, “If I can make that one survivor’s day a little better, her life a little lighter, with my words, then it’s worth it.” Daydreaming, I found myself returning over and over to the idea that I could say something to let that girl know that there was an “after,” that she wouldn’t always feel the way she was feeling.

  The next year, in 2012, Susan gave me lots of lead time. “I’d like you to be the main speaker this year,” she told me. By then, I was a little more confident in my sobriety and in my faith. Plus, over the course of that year, I’d begun to get more serious about the idea of how I could make my life as meaningful as it could possibly be. When Susan called me again to ask if I would speak, the first thing I thought was: I’ve been looking for a way to serve. Could this be it?

  My parents were slightly apprehensive but greatly supportive—​if I felt I could do it, they had my back, as always. Shirley thought it was a great idea. “You’re ready,” she told me. “You have no idea how many people you’re going to help.” I confessed how much shame I still felt, and she still pushed for me to speak. “Telling your story will help with that, too. You’re using what happened to you to do good, and that’s going to help you turn this whole nightmare into something you can be proud of.”

  I prayed on it. I knew that God knew what was best for me, and I tried to open myself up to what He wanted me to do. I asked Him to help me make the decision. I prayed for a long time, sat with the idea that this was a way for me to serve, to use my story and my experiences to help others.

  While I was praying, I had a strange thought. How powerful would it have been, during some of my darkest moments, if I could have received a letter from my future self? What would I write if I knew my younger self could read some inspirational words as I lay shaking on the cold examining table at the hospital, while Tiare held my hand, for instance? Or the day before the second trial, when I was so frightened I thought I was going crazy? What would I say if I could reach back through time and speak to the strung-out self who’d picked the skin on my face to shreds? What would have comforted me on the terrifying nights I spent on that filthy couch behind the McDonald’s? How much of a difference would it have made if I had known that it would get better?

  The answer: a lot. It would have meant the world to me. And I realized that I now had the power to do that for someone else. I came away from my prayers believing that speaking out was a way to help, a way for me to explore the calling God had for me.

  But I wasn’t done praying, not by a long shot. I still had to ask God for the moral courage to stand up in front of hundreds and speak. I opened right up and engaged with Him. I told Him how frightened I was, not only of repercussions from the guys and their families, but also that someone in the audience would accuse me of lying or of having asked for it in some way. I told Him how ashamed I still felt of what happened. I told Him how humiliated I felt by how I’d handled the aftermath, how embarrassed I was to be associated with all the terrible things I’d done. I told Him how naked I would feel, standing up in front of a group of complete strangers and identifying myself as someone who had been raped. I told Him how fragile I felt, how vulnerable and exposed, and I asked Him to be with me.

  As I was asking, I realized that I had my answer. God was with me always. He would always know the truth of what had happened to me and the effects it had. And He would give me all the courage I needed, as long as I could ask.

  The next day, I called Susan back and said I would do it. I would speak.

  There was just one problem: I didn’t have any public speaking experience. There’s no question that I have what my dad calls the gift of the gab, but with the exception of my experience in rehab, I’d never told my story to more than one or two people at a time. Susan pointed out that they expected hundreds of people at the victims’ rights rally. She thought I’d be more comfortable in front of such a huge crowd if I had a little practice.

  Susan told me to call Tiare. The rape crisis center that Tiare worked for hosted occasional victim panels, to which they invited people to talk about their experiences in front of the volunteer advocate trainees. Hearing stories from survivors helps brand-new advocates understand the kinds of stories they’ll soon be hearing in the field. It teaches them to listen neutrally, without reacting in horror or bursting into tears. It also allows survivors to te
ll their stories in a completely safe and loving environment, if that’s what they need.

  Tiare thought it was a terrific idea for me to appear on a victim’s panel. I thought it was a terrific idea, too—that is, until the day arrived for me to go there and actually speak. Though I knew it was a smaller group (and one predisposed to be sympathetic), when I was driving over there, I was freaking out. I had never been so nervous in my life. Thank God I was wearing a jacket, because I’d sweat all the way through my blouse by the time I got there.

  It was a full house, standing room only. I found out later that a lot of the people in the audience were advocates who had followed my trial closely while it was happening. Of course, nobody had ever heard me say a word, except for my testimony, and they wanted to hear my side of the story.

  Another victim spoke first. She’d been abused over a long period by a family member and had very recently come forward. It was hard to listen to; the material was very painful, and she was intensely emotional. It was a good experience for the advocates in training, though, because it was a preview of the kinds of stories they would be hearing when they volunteered. She broke down a few times, unable to go on, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when she was done.

  She was a hard act to follow. But as soon as I started to speak, the nervousness disappeared. As I spoke, I found myself trying to make the tone a little more lighthearted, positive, and inspirational than the previous speaker’s tone had been. She was still in it, living through the feelings. By contrast, I’d gained the perspective that comes with time. I went into enough detail to get my point across, but I didn’t dwell there. As I was speaking, I realized that the most interesting part about my own story—to me, anyway—was the story of my recovery.

  I wanted the advocates to understand how dark and scared and hopeless their clients were feeling, of course. But I also wanted them to feel excited and inspired about their clients’ ability to heal and to overcome. It was important to me to tell these helpers that there was hope. I wanted my own sense of optimism and excitement about the future to infect them so that they could bring it to the survivors.

  The community at the rape crisis center was, as Susan had predicted, the perfect audience. The other speaker and I got a standing ovation. Everyone was incredibly supportive; I must have hugged seventy strangers that night. The director of the organization at the time gave me a beautiful gift basket she’d put together, and she fastened a handmade bracelet with a teal ribbon and lime-green beads around my wrist. “How did you know that teal is one of my favorite colors?” I asked her. She laughed and told me that teal is the color of National Sexual Assault Awareness month.

  “I guess it’s meant to be, then,” I said.

  I felt so elated by how good it had felt to speak that I called my parents on my drive home. It was such a powerful feeling, to see the huge impact I could make simply by telling my story. “I can do this,” I told them. “And I think I want to.” Any nervousness I might have felt about speaking or about coming out and shedding my Jane Doe status had dissipated completely. Shirley had been right: Coming forward publicly to talk about what had happened to me allowed me to transform a negative, horrible event into something positive.

  Rape is about control. The more I talked about what happened to me and determined what the story was, the more control I felt. That night, I was beginning to feel that speaking—as hard as it was for me—was one of the best ways to exercise the calling God had for me. I couldn’t wait to do it again.

  Still, as the rally approached, I got more and more nervous. There would be hundreds of people there. I’d sweat through my shirt before standing up in front of the most sympathetic audience on earth, the women at Tiare’s rape crisis center. How would I feel in front of a giant crowd, when there was no way to guarantee that the audience would be on my side in the same way?

  A week before the rally, I had a new, more terrible thought. The rally wasn’t specifically for survivors of sexual assault; it was a victims’ rights rally. Who knew what horrors the people attending might have lived through? Who knew what tragedies those audience members would be grieving? I knew from Susan that some of the people who’d be in the crowd had lost loved ones to murder or to death by suicide. My own story, as monumentally huge as it loomed in my own life, suddenly seemed piddly and small by comparison. Would those survivors be offended by me thinking that I had anything to offer them? Did I have anything to offer them?

  I’d pick up the phone to cancel, and then put it down again.

  What does a chronic overachiever do when she’s nervous? Practice, practice, practice. I must have run through my speech a hundred times. Katie and my poor parents had heard it so often that they knew the darn thing by heart.

  Susan warned me that there would be lots of media attention. “There’s going to be a ton of press.” I thought she was overreacting; after all, it had been ten years. She shook her head. “As soon as you reveal your name, they’re going to be coming out of the woodwork. It’s going to be a big deal.” The first indication that she was right came when she set up some interviews. Journalists swarmed; we accepted only three out of all the requests.

  Security was a real concern, so the journalists we did speak to had to agree that they wouldn’t publish anything until the day of the rally. Susan went so far as to delay the press release she usually sends out. I’d be accompanied by a team of bodyguards. Still, I could barely hold my head up due to nerves and fear.

  The day of the rally, I woke up at the crack of dawn. I dressed carefully, making sure to wear the teal-and-lime-green bracelet that Brenda had given me. Then I prayed.

  I prayed all morning. I asked God for courage, for the strength to keep it together. I told God that I didn’t care about embarrassing myself, but that I realized I’d been given an opportunity to make a real difference in people’s lives, and I didn’t want to blow it.

  “Please, God, help me to be good enough,” I prayed. “Just be with me today.”

  Susan had been right. It was nuts! There were hundreds of people there, and teams of reporters falling all over themselves to get a picture of me. But the security guys they had there for me were incredibly professional—not to mention gigantic. I let them take care of me, kept my head down, and kept praying until it was my turn to speak.

  Just as I had been at the rape crisis center, I was sick with nerves until the moment I stood up to walk over to the podium. As soon as I looked out into the buzzing crowd, all the butterflies in my stomach evaporated, replaced by excitement and a sense of gratitude for the opportunity.

  I began to speak, and the words flowed smoothly and freely out of me. I felt invigorated and energized. I felt so strongly about what I was saying that I banged my hand against the podium. (I laughed to see those pictures later.)

  One thing that’s great about speaking in front of a live audience is the immediate feedback. My parents were there, beaming with pride, as were my grandmother and my aunt. Shirley and Tiare were there, and everyone from the DA’s office, and I could see my own triumph on their faces. But strangers were reacting, too. I could see a woman crying in the front row, the faces around her raised expectantly to mine. A guy in the middle pumped his fist when I talked about overcoming. On a couple of occasions, I had to stop to wait for the applause to die down. Another time, I felt a ripple of laughter spread through the crowd because of something I’d said.

  There was very little sadness in my speech that day. As far as I was concerned, there’d been enough sadness! It was my goal to stay totally positive and inspiring. I’d always known that I had very specific messages for women who had been raped, as well as for addicts in recovery, but I had tried to make sure that my speech at the rally had more of a general appeal. I wanted to address anybody and everybody going through something they thought they could not survive. I wanted to tell those sufferers that I had myself been to the very depths of hell, but that I had emerged, stronger for the experience. I had wanted to tell every
single suffering person who could hear me that they could overcome, and that they would.

  At the rally that day, I realized just how far I had come—far enough that I believed I could bring other people along.

  I spoke for nine minutes, and for every second of them, I felt I was in exactly the right place at the right time. I had wanted to serve because I believed it would bring me closer to God, and it had: I could feel Him more than ever, right there with me.

  …[L]et your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16, NIV)

  When I wrapped up my speech, the people in the audience jumped out of their seats, cheering and applauding. It was the most amazing feeling I’d ever had in my life. Nobody in that audience was accusing me of being a liar or a slut—they were screaming and waving in support.

  I spent the rest of the day surrounded by my wonderful security team while people in the audience came up to thank me for my courage and tell me how much my words had helped them. Many of the stories they told me were truly terrible; I went through a whole packet of tissues and borrowed some more from my mom before we were done. But even the people in the very worst part of their experience had taken some positive inspiration from what I had said. I had done it. I had helped.

  I believe that in order to rape someone, you have to turn that other person into something less than a person. You have to strip them of their humanity. You have to tell yourself that a drunk, slutty teenager is worth less than your mother or your sister, that she isn’t worth anything at all. It’s the same mechanism that lets people commit war crimes or traffic in slavery. In order to do these things to another human being, you have to convince yourself that the person you’re doing it to isn’t human at all.

  It’s exactly the opposite of the way God sees us, isn’t it?