EDITOR’S NOTE: WARNING – Sexual Assault description. This has been a difficult week for anyone that’s been a victim of sexual assault or sexual violence. The reality is that again when a violent rape makes headlines – millions – that’s right MILLIONS of women (and men) experience PTSD, and again, re-live what happened to them. And we buried those memories, re-arrange them in our mind as protection from the feeling of helplessness when someone twice your size forces themselves on you. I couldn’t help myself – I’m a journalist – so I looked at the numbers – only 20% of rapes and sexual assaults are reported, over 800 people EVERY DAY experience a sexual assault. It’s staggering! What can we do?? TALK ABOUT IT! Scream about it – fight for changes in our justice system to truly hold the rapists accountable. AND – give grace and empathy to survivors. We are all Jane Doe. If you or someone you know has experienced a sexual assault, reach out to Tides of Change – www.tidesofchangenw.org See below for the statistics*
By Denise Donahue, M-Ed
When the #MeToo movement came around, I didn’t participate.
I supported the posts. I shared the hashtag. I believed the women who came forward. But I never shared my story.
Ask yourself why.
It wasn’t because I didn’t believe in the movement.
It was because I was part of the movement, and I didn’t want anyone to know.
How about that?
When I was raped, I carried the shame for what another man did to me.
I thought about all the things I could have done differently so I wouldn’t have put myself in that situation in the first place. I blamed myself.
I also blamed myself for complying.
In fact, for a long time, because I complied, I didn’t believe what happened to me could really be called rape. Somehow, I had convinced myself that because I eventually stopped fighting him, I had participated in it. I had put myself in that position in the first place by innocently kissing a man goodnight on a first date, so in my mind, it wasn’t rape. It was my fault. And because I already believed I was responsible for getting myself into that situation, compliance became one more piece of evidence I used against myself.
So let’s talk about consent versus compliance, and what that really means.
Let me explain.
When you are trapped, you can’t leave, and a man tells you that you are not leaving until he “gets some,” you become powerless.
With his hands already struggling to remove my pants, I knew what was going to happen.
I had told him no. More than enough for him to understand that I did not want this.
He did not care.
He was over six feet tall, and there was a sadistic look in his eyes. I knew I wasn’t going to overpower him. I knew saying no again wasn’t going to suddenly make him stop. And I knew the only way I was getting out of that situation was to survive what he had already decided he was going to do.
So I stopped fighting.
I lay there and let him do what he had set out to do.
For years, I mistook that moment for consent.
It wasn’t.
It was compliance.
And there is a difference.
Fast forward to today. The algorithm on my TikTok feed has certainly brought up a lot of memories from my past. If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m talking about the Cornell 57. Or, as I think they should be called, the Cornell rapists.
Scrolling through the comments, I saw many men and even a handful of women picking apart Jane Doe’s original statement. One woman wrote, “I find it funny how she’s changing her story now.”
That comment enraged me.
It has plagued my mind for what feels like years. Maybe because I know exactly what it feels like to question your own story. To admit that you placed yourself in a vulnerable position to begin with. To wonder whether complying somehow meant consenting. To carry the blame for what someone else did to you.
I had to respond.
My response went something like this:
“Consent given because you believe you are about to be raped is not consent. It is survival.
Compliance isnt saying yes, it’s staying alive. Sometimes saying yes is the only control a woman feels she has left in a situation where control has already been taken from her. It can be the way she survives the moment, shuts her mind off, and gets through what she knows is about to happen to her anyway. Compliance is not the same thing as consent.
And all I can vision is the viral video footage of her on that stairway, being dragged up the stairs by a man while others held the door open, belligerently screaming for help.
That is not consent.”
So to the women defending this and using what happened afterward to somehow rewrite what happened before it: grow the fuck up. We should know better than to demand that a woman fight, scream, run, or resist every second of an assault before we are willing to believe her.”
She has yet to respond.
But I don’t blame her. How can I? I questioned my own victimization for years.
We are conditioned to believe that we can’t wear our clothes too tight, that we shouldn’t get drunk, that we shouldn’t go to parties at frat houses. We are handed an endless list of things women should do differently to keep men from sexually assaulting us.
And that is the biggest piece of bullshit.
Because every one of those warnings puts the responsibility on women to prevent sexual assault instead of putting the responsibility where it belongs: on the person committing it.
God forbid these men be held responsible for their own behavior.
So when I hear people judging Jane Doe, or whispering, “These young men have bright futures. Why ruin their lives?” I have to wonder: what about hers?
Her assault lasted seven hours. Mine lasted five minutes.
Her life has been forever changed. She will never forget. She will carry pieces of what happened to her long after everyone else has stopped talking about it. I know this because more than thirty years later, I still think about what happened to me.
Five minutes.
More than thirty years later.
But these boys, they had to write an essay, so apparently they’re scarred for life.
We are all Jane Doe until we are not Jane Doe.
By the numbers:
*According to data from the National Crime Victimization Survey via RAINN, an estimated 301,580 people ages 12 and older are harmed by sexual violence every year in the United States, though overall annual occurrences of rapes and sexual assaults are estimated at around 443,634. [1]
Key Reporting Statistics
- Underreporting: A significant majority of sexual assaults are never reported to law enforcement. According to the Sexual Assault Response Center (SARC), less than half of cases are reported, with approximately 23.6% reported in recent federal data tracking. [1]
- Daily Frequency: This translates to about 826 people experiencing sexual violence every day in the United States. [1]
- Lifetime Prevalence: Nearly half (47.6%) of women and over a quarter (23.3%) of men in the U.S. experience unwanted sexual contact during their lifetime. [1]
