Support, The Aftermath of Rape, and the E-Guide Part 1

The first time I was raped, I was completely alone. I was nineteen years old in a new city, where they mostly spoke another language. I didn't know where to go, much less where the hospital was. I certainly wasn't about to report it to the police, who whistled at me on the way to work every morning.

I was on an internship, as part of my college program, in a place other students before me had gone before. In fact, a science teacher had told before I left that another student had been raped there before. Yet when I called the school nurse, she had no idea what I could do or where I could go to get treatment. 

And I was alone still. In the meantime, my rapist would call me at work, telling the receptionist he was my boyfriend. The first time I picked up the phone and realized it was him, I pretended the phone

connection was bad and hung up. After that, whenever a call came from outside of the office, I would hide behind the cabinets in the lab, in case someone saw me through the open doors and asked me why I wasn't picking up the phone. He called up to four times a day. (The receptionist always told me when he called.) Until one day she came into the lab and found me crouched down behind the counters on the floor, hiding and asked what was going on. Suddenly I wasn't alone anymore.

And here's the thing, we all need support and help after we're raped or sexually assaulted. And we get some basic information from the internet or the rape crisis center maybe. But they mostly cover surface information. I've found a severe lack of information and presenting choices and what they really mean in the real world. Some of this is life-changing or life-saving information. 

And then you may have to talk to a person. And you might not be ready to. And some people are

Healing From Sexual Assault is Finding Hope in A Hopeless Place
Photo by Cameron Russell (Lomo-Cam)
Creative Commons

supportive and others are judgmental. 

So we need an e-guide to the aftermath of rape. Something that presented real-world options and doesn't sugar-coat things. I'm writing one with the intention of distributing it free of charge to as many survivors as possible.

But I need your help. I need some funding and some volunteers.

http://igg.me/at/rapeguide

Please check out our campaign and help us in whatever way you can. Every little bit counts.

http://igg.me/at/rapeguide

Thanks!

And look for the next parts to this series.

Read More

Why We Need Compassionate Care (and Services) After Rape (or Sexual Assault) Part 1

Sparrow was just 16 when she was raped. Scared and confused, she wound up at a local Emergency Department to make sure everything was OK and to get a rape kit done for evidence against her attacker. But when the nurses and doctors came in, they just started doing procedures to her without telling her what they were doing or why, in sensitive private places where she had just been attacked. They never introduced themselves or presented themselves as humans. She was scared and she was not treated as the human she was.

A couple weeks later Sparrow had a fever and pain in her stomach. She knew these were symptoms of a Sexually-Transmitted Infection, but she would not go back to the hospital. She did not want to be

What happens in the aftermath of sexual assault can
impact what the survivor thinks of her or himself.
Picture: Pink Sherbet Photography, cc

treated in the same cold and insensitive way she was before. Sparrow told me, “For five months I was in so much pain, I felt like I could fall over and die at any moment, but there was no way I was going to go back to that doctor and be touched and treated like that.”

And she didn't until she collapsed at a Thanksgiving dinner and was rushed to the Emergency Department. When I interviewed her eight years later for a documentary, she still had health problems from the massive scar tissue that the Pelvic Inflammatory Disease had left behind. Among the long list she gave me were fertility problems in her early twenties and ending up in Emergency Department three or four times a year.

Doctors, nurses, police, teachers, and other service providers are often among the first people survivors tell their stories to. When we tell our stories to others after such a traumatic event, what happens next shapes us. We are in a place of intense vulnerability. It can affect how we think of ourselves and the meaning of what happened for us. For many survivors the fear of what they say or how they react prevents them from reporting it or seeking the help they need. For some people this fear becomes a reality when they actually do what they need to take care of themselves. A nurse told me I was "acting like you enjoyed it" when I sought medical help after a rape. It was the last straw for me.

Service providers are acting as authority figure, denying or confirming the shame, the blame, the aloneness, or emotions a survivor might be toying with. They have the power to drive home empowerment, choices, and  a sense of control in the survivor's life. Or they can tell them why they are unworthy and why it's their fault. That kind of power is not to be taken lightly. We shouldn't be trusting our survivors with just anyone. And sometimes we don't.

To Be Continued...


What are your experiences good and bad with service providers following sexual assault? What did doctors, nurses, police, college officials, teachers, rape crisis hotline operators do (or not do) that worked well for you? What did they do (or not do) that did not work? What were the consequences? Send your stories to swimmingupstreamblogging@gmail.com. Please indicate if you give me permission to publish some or all of it. If so, would your name included and do you want to remain anonymous?

Read More