Behind closed doors

Kasandra Perkins, who was murdered by her baby’s father on Saturday, wrote on her Instagram page: “September 11, 2012. Best day of my life.” It was the day her three-month-old daughter Zoey was born. Yet you would think from the coverage in the New York Times (and elsewhere) about her murderer, who also happened to be a star NFL player, that he was the doting parent — and she, a forgotten side note.

The coverage about Jovan Belcher couldn’t be more fawning, despite the fact that he pulled out a gun and shot the mother of his child nine times — while his child and his mother were in the next room. He then drove to the Kansas City Chiefs’ training facility where he shot himself in front of his coach and team manager.

One particular New York Times article is dominated by descriptions of Belcher as an upstanding young man who was polite and worked hard. The article ends with a quote describing him as “a good man. A good, loving father, a family man.”  On the other hand, the article’s only description of Kasandra includes her name, age and relationship to him.

After reading this and other articles in the Times, one is only left to wonder — what on earth did this woman do to make such an exemplary, hardworking role model shoot her? It’s easy to blame this sort of coverage on the media, until we remember that the media is in fact a reflection of our larger society. Still, one would expect more from The Grey Lady.

I remember my small subsection of society’s reaction to my revelations about my abuse. “Jason? (not his real name) Really? Not him. He’s always so charming and good-natured. I can’t imagine him doing something like that.” My own family exchanged pleasantries with him at my college graduation and went so far as to give him my address so that he could write me. To their credit, they didn’t yet know many of the details of his abuse — but they couldn’t help but notice that when I saw him approach us, I turned and told them I was leaving before walking off. No one wanted to believe that he could appear one way and act another.

As Jovan Belcher proves, domestic violence is still a crime that is regarded as a private family matter, with cause and blame equally distributed between both parties. Domestic violence perpetrators know their audience. They understand that if they appear one way, many will question if it’s really possible for them to act another way.  And until we acknowledge our society’s complicity and continued insistence on blaming the victims, domestic violence will continue to be a crime that is kept behind closed doors.

One woman takes on Amherst College

The Amherst Student newspaper recently published an op-ed from a former student who was raped on campus. This student, Angie Epifano, details in painfully personal terms, how everyone from the school’s sexual assault counselor to a dean she was forced to meet with on a regular basis dismissed her account and blamed her for her ensuing psychological turmoil. The resulting Internet firestorm shows that Angie is far from alone. 

Seventeen years ago, I futilely tried to tell one administrator on my college campus about my rape and abuse. My abuser and I were living together in an off-campus apartment that was owned by our small liberal arts college in southern California. One rainy afternoon, accompanied by my abuser, I paid a visit to the dean of housing and asked him, my eyes red from crying, my voice low and soft, if I could move into an on-campus dorm. I need to live somewhere else, I remember saying. I vividly remember using the word “need.”

“You signed a contract,” he told me in an annoyed tone. That was it. There were no questions about why I needed to move. It was all a matter of the school protecting its assets.

Looking back, I can’t really fault him for his response. I never uttered the word rape or abuse. At that time, administrators in his position had no training on the issue. The only time it was acknowledged that sexual assault actually happened on our campus was when a fellow victim anonymously painted a mural on a campus walkway late one night, only to have it painted over with black paint by some likely perpetrators. A rally resulted, followed by a college-sanctioned meeting, and for a week I felt like I might not be alone, even as I saw my rapist holding a candle at the rally and standing near the door at the meeting — with his eyes focused intently on me as if to say, don’t you dare.

That spate of awareness didn’t last long, and even on my excessively liberal, open-minded college campus, the realities of sexual assault were swept back into the closet. I’m glad to see that through the courageous actions of women like Angie, now, 17 years later, those realities are being swept back into the sunlight. 

A key provision in the Violence Against Women Act, still languishing in Congress, would force colleges to do more to address an issue that impacts one out of every five college women. The SaVE Act, as this provision is called, requires schools to implement a recording process for dating violence, and most importantly, to report the findings. In addition, schools would be required to create plans to prevent this violence to begin with, and educate victims on their rights and the resources available. I for one, believe, that if I had known that there was help and resources available, that maybe, just maybe, I would have done something to secure some semblance of justice. 

However, the SaVE Act, is one of the provisions that House Republicans stripped out of their version VAWA — giving us one more reason why this critical piece of legislation, as approved by the Senate, must pass. It’s been 672 days since the last version of VAWA expired, so there is no time to waste. 

Meanwhile, women on college campuses across the country — and those of us who have been off those campuses for quite some time — must take power from Angie’s courage, come together and raise our voices to demand that no woman be forced to suffer in silence. 

The look

It had been a while since I’d seen the look.

He sat next to me on the Metro. I noticed that he reeked of alcohol. Other than that I didn’t pay him any attention, I was lost in my own world of thought. He was looking at my hands.

“Are you married?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, calmly turning to look straight into his eyes. I assumed that he was going to hit on me and I knew that the best way to deflect the coming onslaught was by facing him straight-on.

“Do you have kids?”

“Yes,” I continued. I noticed that he was missing several of his back teeth as he talked. He was large, soft and pale, his head was shaven. He was not an attractive man, his blue eyes glassy, his face puffy.

“Do you?” I asked, suddenly curious about where this was going.

“I have two kids,” he told me. “5 and 4. And I’ve been married for six years. My wife has wanted a divorce since a month and a half after we were married. I’m texting with her right now.” I looked down at his hands and noticed that his nails were stubbed from persistent chewing.

I looked back at his face. That’s when I saw the look. As soon as he started talking about his wife, his face shifted. It was the – I’ll do anything to control her, why won’t she do what I want, I can’t deal with this anger – kind of look. It happens when the mind decides that object of its derision is no longer human but becomes prey. It’s hard to describe exactly what it looks like. The face turns hard, the mouth set and the jaw determined. It made my blood run cold.

“I’m very angry,” he continued. “I’ve been drinking, if you can’t tell. I need to talk to a female. I need the advice of a female. You can tell me to go to hell,” he paused, looking away. “I’m asking a strange female for advice,” he said softly to himself.

“I’ve got to get off at the next stop,” I told him. I really did.

“Oh,” he said, deflated and disappointed, as if I was the only thing in the world that could save him – and her. As if I had sage, magical words that could save them both from his anger.

“Sorry,” I added. “Good luck,” I said on my way out of the train.

“I’m going to need it,” he said, the look still there, taunting me, reminding me of days long ago when that same look bore down at me from a different set of eyes.

I knew that he was going to go home and let his fists do the talking. I wondered if she would survive this bout. I pictured two young children, hiding in the other room, holding each other for comfort, wondering if they would be next, steeling themselves – not knowing enough to wonder what it feels like to be safe.

I tried to shake him and his look. But I left wondering if there really was something I could have said or done – knowing full-well that there was not. I tried not to picture the scene that I knew was unfolding as he got home.  Maybe she’d make it out alive. And maybe, she and the children would find a way to escape his anger. That was the best I could hope for – the three of them nameless and faceless in my mind.

As for him, I wondered what I would have said if I hadn’t gotten off the train when I did. What would my female words of advice have been? Chances are he was looking for empathy, sympathy or affirmation that he was in the right and she was in the wrong. He wanted me to assure him that he was the victim. Because once the anger took over, his belief in his own suffering was the fuel he needed to do what the anger wanted him to do.

Time is running out – Reauthorize VAWA now!

It’s August and in Washington that means the city is empty. Congress is on vacation so the rest of us get to enjoy a reprieve from traffic, crowded restaurants and throngs of un-caffeinated staffers emerging from the Metro.

For domestic violence service providers and shelters in Washington and across the country, August has offered no reprieve and only an increased sense of worry. Because when Congress left town, they left without passing what used to be a no-brainer, non-contentious reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides crucial funding for many of the services that millions of battered women depend on to make it out alive.

Why? Because the Republican leadership has decided that nothing is more important that election-year politics, not even women’s lives. As Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization of Women, aptly explained: “GOP leaders are determined to replace VAWA with a bill that excludes certain types of people.”

Since 1994, VAWA has acted as the funding and policy backbone for the fight against domestic violence in our country. Each time VAWA has been reauthorized, new services have been added and new populations of victims identified. This time around, service providers and law enforcement agencies across the country cited the need to expand VAWA’s protections to include LGBT and immigrant victims, as well as victims of these violent crimes on tribal lands and college campuses. 

“So that’s what we asked Congress to do. Serve the most vulnerable populations,” O’Neill explains. “Don’t say that one victim is more deserving than another. Let’s make sure VAWA serves them all.”

The Republican leadership in Congress seized on this initiative as a way to attack Democrats in a presidential election year. I spoke more about this opposition in an earlier post, so I won’t go into it again here, except to say that not all Republicans are painted with the same brush — 23 Republican members in the House and all five female Republican senators had the courage to buck their party leadership and vote for the inclusive version of VAWA (and six Democratic members of the House voted against it). 

Congress only has a few more working days left before adjourning to devote their attention full-time to electioneering. We can’t let them get away with leaving millions of women’s lives on the line. This month, as your local member of Congress makes the rounds in your town (unless of course you live as I do in Washington and have taxation without representation), please tell them to reauthorize VAWA before it’s too late.

The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women has a great guide that outlines just how you can get the word out this August. Check it out here and spread the word far and wide – It is time to stop playing political games with women’s lives!

I’ll end with the words of Michael Bolton. Yes, that Michael Bolton. The one with the hair and the cheesy music. He also has daughters and for that reason, has become an outspoken advocate against domestic violence:

“Since when did we stop prosecuting men for committing crimes?” he said of the ability of some men to escape prosecution on Indian reservations. “We’re past this already and there’s a danger that we’re going to go backwards with the VAWA act, and I don’t want to see that happen.”

The cold calculated words of a rapist

“The great nights were the ones who squirmed, ones who didn’t want to give in. I’d have to shush them down, and try to work on them slowly enough so they didn’t know what was going on until it was pretty much already happening. I’m a muscular guy, over 6′ around 200 lbs. and most of these girls may have been 125-130, really tiny and easy to pin down. To be honest, even remembering it now, the squirming always made it better, they didn’t want it to happen, but they couldn’t do anything about it. Most girls don’t say no either. They think you’re a good guy, and should pick up on the hints, they don’t want to have to say “no” and admit to themselves what’s happening.”

These are the frighteningly honest words of a “reformed” serial rapist. The writer, who posted these words anonymously on reddit.com, claims that he raped women while he was in college for a period of three years.  He details how he would seek these women out and set them up to be raped – everything from purposely approaching “attractive girls that were self-conscious about their looks,” to luring them back to his place, making sure the room was cold, and prying them with alcohol.

He has now, in his words, emerged from this dark period in his life and is married, a successful member of society, and “reformed.”

As someone who was raped in college by a man who bears a striking resemblance to this anonymous writer, my blood ran cold when I read his words. I’m not alone. The comments that follow his post are filled by woman after woman raped in much the same way by much the same man. My first reaction was to post my own comment condemning him with rage-filled words that would only bounce off him – just as the furtive struggles of the women he raped did.

As his words sank in, rage suddenly gave way to relief. Even though this man showed only cursory signs of remorse – a conjured up reaction that was obviously part of his so-called, narcissistic makeover from monster to just-your-average neighbor – he did something for me that my rapist never did. He acknowledged that he raped. And it wasn’t something that just happened. He raped with purpose, planning and intent.

For so many years, I’ve gone through life wondering if what happened was something I did. If I put myself in that position, if it was my fault, if I asked for it. My rapist was my boyfriend, which means that he was entitled to my body any time and any way, right? My rapist apologized the morning after the first time he raped me, which means that he didn’t have malicious intent, right?  My rapist told me he loved me, he would never have intentionally done anything to ruin my life like this, right?

Wrong. My rapist, like the man who wrote the cold calculated words above, knew exactly what he was doing. Every moment of his two-and-a-half year campaign of emotional, physical and sexual abuse was carried out with purpose, planning and intent. He wanted to control me, to own me because there is something wrong with him – not the other way around.

After relief came sadness, heaviness. I have a daughter. Someday, I will send her off to college and release her into the clutches of the monsters-in-waiting who, like the monsters-of-today, will prey on women just because they can.

Consider these words: “I’m somewhat remorseful for what I did to those girls, but I don’t think I could ever face them to apologize. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I had this certain insatiable thirst that brought me to do what I did. I didn’t know how to stop, and just when I thought maybe I could, I’d find myself back in my pattern, back on the hunt.”

These are the words of a coward. These are the words of a monster who has no idea what he has done and who doesn’t really care. There are so many out there like him out there and so many more to come. And, even today, 16 years away from my rape, I have no idea how to keep my daughter safe.

VAWA and domestic violence on college campuses

Believe it or not, Congress is still fighting over the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), a ground-breaking piece of legislation that, even for our current do-nothing Congress stuck in partisan gridlock, should be a no-brainer. Yet, here we are, with less than two weeks to go before the August recess, and battered women’s shelters and other crucial service providers for victims of domestic violence around the country continue to wait for Congress to act. If only the violence would wait too.

One provision that must be included in the 2012 VAWA re-authorization would provide for and promote awareness of victims of domestic violence on college campuses. VAWA was first enacted by Congress in 1994 – the year that I was raped in my off-campus apartment by my college boyfriend. I was 20 years old and a college junior. We had been together for more than a year at that point and the abuse had been going on for almost as long. What happened that night in the off-campus apartment we shared with his best friend was the first time the abuse escalated to where I can now say definitively in hindsight, that I was raped.

A few days after that incident I went to my college’s dean of housing and asked to be transferred to a dorm on campus. My boyfriend rarely let me go anywhere by myself anymore so he was with me when I paid that visit to the dean. I couldn’t explain why I so desperately needed to move. I remember holding back tears as I tried to plead with the dean with my eyes. He never even looked at my face as he told me in a harried, condescending tone that I had signed a contract to live in an off-campus apartment that was owned by the college, and he as my landlord wasn’t about to let me off the hook. I could feel my boyfriend smirking behind me. I turned and walked out of that office and never again tried to get help from anyone else on campus. I’d like to believe that if that dean had the training and awareness that has been brought to college campuses today by VAWA, he would have acted differently.

I can only hope that the next 20-year-old college student – who tries tentatively, furtively and yes, in her own way, desperately, to get help – is not turned away. The only way to be sure what happened to me never happens again is for Congress to include protections for the millions of women on campuses across the United States who are victims or at risk of becoming victims of domestic violence or sexual assault in its final re-authorization of VAWA.

Lives lost and found by abuse

Most everyone in Washington knows him by the signs he holds every afternoon and evening at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Reno Road. The words vary but the theme is the same: MY LIFE WAS RUINED BY A CATHOLIC PEDOPHILE PRIEST or CATHOLICS COWARDS or VATICAN HIDES PEDOPHILES. Few actually know his name or the story that has compelled him to stand in front of the Vatican Embassy for the past 14 years, silently bearing witness. This month, Ariel Sabar wrote a compelling profile of John Wojnowski in the Washingtonian that shows in meticulous detail, how one life can be shattered by abuse.

Wojnowski was a child when he was molested by a priest in a small Italian village. He never saw that priest again  and never even knew his name. But the boy he had been, and the potential his life had, was taken by the man who had promised to help him with his studies on that warm summer afternoon.

Wojnowski and I couldn’t be more different. Yet when I read his story I was struck by the commonalities that abuse at the hand of a trusted intimate creates. While I like to think that my abuser didn’t succeed in arresting my life’s potential – I am now, by all accounts, a happy wife, mother and writer – it’s been a long hard fight to ensure that he didn’t succeed. It’s been 16 years since I last saw my abuser, yet the fear still takes over when I see something or someone that reminds me of him. After a suicide attempt, another sexual assault, a PTSD and major depression diagnosis and countless other ways I almost allowed him to win, I have learned to accept that even though what he did to me will always be a part of me, it doesn’t have to control who I am.

Wojnowski and many others haven’t been so lucky. My heart aches for the boy who was taken by his abuser. I can only hope that Wojonowski, who is a father and grandfather, is learning bit by bit to take back what still can be his. For me, it’s taken a mix of anger, pure stubbornness, and the support of family and friends to fight to take back my life. I’ll never know who I would be if my abuse had never happened. All I can know is that even though it did, it doesn’t have to own me. My journey is far from perfect but I can triumphantly say that my life is mine. I can only hope that Wojnowski and the countless other lost souls like him will one day say the same.

One survivor’s reaction to 12 magazine’s “Victim of Beauty” photographs

The latest controversy in the world of beauty magazines involves a Bulgarian publication called 12. Their recent issue features a photo spread  entitled “Victim of Beauty” that depicts models with severe cuts and bruises who are wearing H&M skirts and clothes by label Capasca. As the online uproar grows, the magazine’s editors stand by their work with this explanation, according to Joann Pan’s blog on Mashable: “Quite frankly, we do not think that there is a person, who will see the photographs and automatically assume that violence is okay…Yes, if someone is hyper-sensitive to trauma, we agree that this shoot may provoke their inner demons, invoke unpleasant memories, and we apologize to anyone who feels offended by it, this was not our intent,” they wrote.

As someone who is, as they say “hyper-sensitive to trauma,” I wish I had the luxury of the reaction that so many have had – ie. “this is an example of beautiful fine art photography” or “the makeup job is really impressive” or even “this spurs an important conversation.”

True, my face never looked like any of the models in 12 magazine’s photo spread. But what those photos don’t convey is the pain that persists inside long after the outside has healed.

True, no one forced me to look at those photos. As a journalist, I thought I could go there and see them as a trained practitioner of objectivity. Sometimes I forget that even more than 15 years after my abuse, it still holds me tight in its grasp. Or sometimes I like to push myself to see if I can will it away, to see if I can control it instead of it controlling me. Every time it proves me wrong.

There are many intellectual ways to interpret this photo spread, and I will leave the question of whether what they did is wrong or right to the various voices who have opined – for a few varying views go here, here and here.  For me, as a survivor, I look at those pictures and all I can do is succumb to the visceral response that comes, often when I least expect it.

That response goes something like this: It starts with what can only be compared to being kicked in the stomach, then sweat rolls down my back, my throat begins to close, my mind races and I go back to the girl who was trapped. My muscles contract as my body tries to create a protective cocoon, and my mind feels heavy as I will away the tears. Even as I fight it, the pain shoots down through my throat, my stomach, my groin, my legs, my toes. It stays there, growing stronger, pulsating, spreading, my body shakes as I fight it.

It’s never a convenient time to cry, to give into the pain, to let my body follow the course that was set long ago. I’ve become very good at tamping it down if I have to go to a meeting or feed my children or take a phone call. As I go about the daily doings of my life, it lives on inside until I have a private moment. Then I can look out the window or hold my head in my hands and let the tears fall. Yet, even as I allow the tears to come, the pain lives on – I long ago learned that once it’s started, it has to run its course before it will go away again. I have only learned how to live with it, like another being, coexisting, feeding, growing.

So here I sit, hyper-sensitive to trauma, and think about how 12 magazine’s editors wash their hands of my pain with their apology to me. And all I can say is I only wish it was that easy to will my pain away.

Playing games with women’s lives

As the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) languishes in legislative conference, two of the nation’s leading newspapers and many others are speaking out about the sheer lunacy of the Republicans’ continued push to keep some victims of domestic violence from getting the help they desperately need.

Not all Republicans are engaged in this partisan charade. Some – such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) – have called on members of their own party to back protections for such domestic abuse victims as gay and transgender people, students, illegal immigrants and Native Americans. These protections are included in the Senate version of the VAWA re-authorization bill but kept out of the House version. Sen. Murkowski signed a letter, along with 12 Democratic Senators, that reads: “We should not let politics pick and choose which victims of abuse to help and which to ignore.”

As a Washington Post’s May 20 editorial points out: “the Senate bill was the result of a careful effort beginning in 2009 in which law enforcement officers, judges, health-care professionals and service providers for the victims were consulted to identify gaps in the current law. Every time VAWA has been reauthorized, and this would be the third, it has been expanded to address unmet needs; the provisions deemed so controversial by House Republicans are seen by professionals who deal with domestic violence as logical next steps. Fifteen Republican senators joined with the Democratic majority to support the bill.”

What’s more, 300 organizations stand behind these provisions, with groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops noting that the House bill would make “non-citizen women less safe and could result in thousands of women remaining enslaved,” Rep. John Conyers’ (D-MI) wrote recently in The Hill. 

In fact, the only groups that support the House version include anti-immigrant groups and Encounters International, an international marriage brokerage company that matches American men with Russian and Ukrainian women. As Michelle Goldberg points out in the Daily Beast, one of the most vocal proponents of the House bill is Encounters International owner Natasha Spivack, who was sued successfully by a Ukrainian woman who claimed that Spivack never told her that the law, as established by VAWA, would allow her to escape the marriage without facing deportation. Ever since, Spivack has been dead set on changing the law.

“Spivack, meanwhile, continues to promise her American clients docile, submissive partners. ‘As wives,’ the Encounters International website promises, ‘they desire to build a loving home, follow their husband’s lead, and stick with the marriage, even when times get tough and things stop being fun.’ That’s an easier promise to keep if they have no choice,” Goldberg writes.

The New York Times opined on the rollback of VAWA as just one of several recent examples of the Republicans’ “war on women” that has been focused largely in four areas — abortion, access to health care, equal pay and domestic violence.

As The New York Times editorial board wisely wrote on Sunday: “Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.”

I can’t help falling in love with you

I heard our song yesterday. It’s been a long time, and as the words washed over me I felt a deep sense of sadness. I was sitting in my daughter’s room, rocking her to sleep when it came on the radio. I listened closely to the words and thought about how much they actually foretold the future, or as it would be now, the past. I don’t remember how it became our song but hearing the refrain now nearly 16 years later, made me remember the lack of control I felt, the sense of destiny that my life would be defined by his kind of love. As I became that 19-year-old listening to the words again – “I can’t help falling in love with you, give me your hand, your whole life too” – I wanted to reach out and hug the girl I had been and tell her that what she felt wasn’t love, that it would get so much better than this. That girl, that me, really did believe that what I felt then, what we had together, was love. I knew I wasn’t happy – no one who felt as scared and unsure and alone as I did would be happy – but I believed that was just the way love was, at least for me. I truly believed that I didn’t deserve better.

As I sat there yesterday, rocking my daughter, her beautiful fringed eyelids succumbing to sleep, her plump little hands holding onto me with complete trust in the love that envelopes her, I wondered how I could stop her from becoming that same 19-year-old that believed that love was defined by fear. I felt a new kind of fear and sadness as I held her tighter and realized that one day I would have to let her go. I kissed her perfect forehead and promised her that I would make sure that for her, love would never have to hurt. I only hope that I can keep that promise.

I looked out the window of my daughter’s room and tried to banish the sadness by remembering how my life now is so filled with love – the kind that sustains and nourishes and let’s go. Somehow the 19-year-old girl I had been grew up to learn that love is a beautiful part of life. That song, the one that told me I didn’t have a choice but to accept the “love” that I was given, isn’t mine anymore.