The loud silence of rape survivors

2nd March 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Jazelle Hunt
NNPA Washington Correspondent

Part IV

WASHINGTON (NNPA) — An online survey of sexual assault survivors conduced as part of this series vividly captures the fear and reluctance Black women rape survivors exhibit about sharing their ordeal with others:

From a young woman, drugged and raped by a man she met at a party at age 21:

“I told someone, but I never gave specifics because I felt like they would think it was my fault.”

From a middle-aged woman, repeatedly raped by a classmate’s father at age six:

“When it first happened, we told our teacher and the [school] nurse. We were told that we were making it up. He told me that if I told anyone, he’d kill my whole family. I was scared for weeks after telling my family.”

From a young woman, raped by her then-boyfriend’s older brother at age 15:

“I never told anyone, not even my boyfriend, until I started talking to a therapist on campus during my sophomore year of college…to this day he doesn’t know.”

From a mature woman, raped at ages 12 and 13 and fondled by a pastor at age 15:

“I never said a word. Because in the end, I blamed myself. How do you know to blame yourself at 12 years old?”

Data from the Department of Justice shows that Black women are less likely than other women to report rape and assaults to police or tell anyone what happened.

Why?

About 80 percent of rapes happen between people of the same race. For Black women survivors whose assailants are also Black, cultural codes can make it difficult to speak out.

Black men vs. Black women

“We in Black communities don’t talk about [sexual assault] because of this pressure to protect the race,” says Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a survivor, educator, activist, and director of “NO! The Rape Documentary,” an international award-winning film that explores sexual violence within in the Black community.

The Philadelphia native explained, “[Black women] are valuable when we’re concerned about protecting our men and our children and our communities, but when it comes to talking about the violence that we’ve experienced at the hands of the men in our communities, then we’re traitors.”

On top of the expectation to be supportive of Black men, beliefs about what constitutes ideal Black womanhood, including inexhaustible emotional strength and perfect sexual respectability, can add to the trauma for Black women.

After Sharita Lee was raped at age 20 by a childhood friend, she didn’t know what to do. He had attacked her after hours of reminiscing and catching up, and immediately after a sudden phone call that brought news of her grandfather’s death. He was so abrupt that he had interrupted his own condolences when he pinned her to the couch.

“A reason in why I never told was because — in his particular case — as he began to rape me, I felt pleasure. And I knew I was not supposed to be feeling pleasure because I was being raped,” she says nervously. “In the moment, I felt confused, I felt stupid, because – you know? It’s almost like, do I just say ‘forget it’ that he’s raping me, to enjoy it, or not? So for me, I couldn’t even admit it. This is probably the first time I’m admitting it out loud, ever.”

Distrust of mainstream systems

There are other reasons Black women are less likely to vocalize their pain, including a deep distrust of both the criminal justice system and the medical community.

For Tiffany Perry, it was more personal than a philosophical distrust of the criminal justice system. At 21 years old, she was the victim of an attempted rape by a police officer. The married policeman was also her co-worker, and her usual ride home after work. One evening, he cornered her in a secluded makeshift office and pinned on a couch where officers slept between shifts.

“I’m saying, ‘Stop! Stop, get off of me what are you doing? I’m going to scream!’ And he says, ‘Go ahead, who’s going to save you, you’re in a police station.’ When he said that to me I just froze. I was like, ‘Wow, I am. Nobody’s going to do anything,’” she remembered.

After groping her for a few more minutes, her assailant suddenly changed his mind, releasing her.

“The thing is – when we left there, I got in the car with him. And I tried to explain this…I was so afraid of him that I got in the car with him,” Perry says. “To people, that doesn’t make any sense…but when he said, ‘Nobody’s going to hear you, and nobody’s going to believe you,’ I convinced myself that he was right. I felt like I should’ve known better.”

She never reported the incident. Two years later, she was able to tell her mother, who had been raped and had become pregnant with her at age 15.

“I didn’t want to be scrutinized, I didn’t want to be under the limelight. I didn’t want to relive it. I didn’t want to talk about it,” Perry said. “Even now I have feelings of guilt…what if, because I didn’t say nothing, this guy went further with some other young lady? Or, maybe I wasn’t the first…maybe the person before me, she didn’t seem mad either, so that’s what made him think it was okay to do that to me.

“You say to yourself, you don’t know what’s right or wrong. You just do what you can, or know how to do in that moment.”

This article originally published in the March 2, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.