Why Women Wait to Talk About Rape: We Should Have Higher Standards for a Supreme Court Appointment

My friends list is shrinking today.  One of the first casualties was someone I became friends with in the work I do in the addiction awareness community.  He posted that "all of these women coming out of the woodwork 30 years down the road to ruin a man's career is bullshit!"  I have to say, many of the women we both know who have have addiction issues jumped right on him.  Some told him their rape or sexual harassment was what directly led to their addiction issues and dealing with it is part of their recovery.  Some stated they did tell, and the way they were treated by family, friends, and law enforcement afterwards was a factor in their substance abuse.

30 years ago the world was a different environment.  I can remember at 18 having a man rub up against me in the crowded subway car when I was going to training for my new job and being frozen in fear.  I said something to one of the women at the training and she brushed it off with "that stuff happens all the time, learn to deal with it."  Now I'd deck him.

My rape happened in 1988.  I blamed myself.  I was usually careful about getting in a car with a guy on a first date or before I felt comfortable.  I let my guard down.  I'd had a few drinks.  I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER.  That was what I told myself for years when it would cross my mind.  It wasn't really rape.  I should have known better.  I must have sent him the wrong signals.  It was my fault.

I didn't talk about it to ANYONE until 2012.  Not my parents, not my Pastor, not my best friend, not my husband, no one.  It only came up then because someone who knows me pretty well saw me react to an incident with a guest at work in a way that didn't seem normal.  He pressed me until I reluctantly talked about it, and even then I was downplaying what happened and talking about how it was all my fault.  It took a lot of long talks before I was finally convinced that it wasn't my fault; that having a few drinks and getting in a car with a guy doesn't mean I deserved to be force to have sex when I didn't want to.  That it was rape.

At this point in life, even if I knew how to find him, I wouldn't want to prosecute.  However, if I saw him being nominated to serve as a Supreme Court Judge, or any type of Judge for that matter, I might come forward.  There's a difference between a preponderance of evidence to convict someone and a statement about someone's character who's about to take on a position of such responsibility.  I think the threshold for their character should be a little more than "we can't charge him with it because it happened so long ago."  And yes, that would be destroying my life, destroying my family, and many other consequences I wouldn't want. Some people believe that some things are bigger than just them.  They didn't go into this lightly.  They knew what it was going to cost them, and they did it anyway.

I don't doubt these women at all.  I know what it was like to be a woman who was raped at that time.  The misogyny that exists in our world is horrible.  A vehemently right-to-life Republican who was in a group of hotel workers once talked about how he and his friends (all male) would host rape mysteries because "no one got killed so they were better than murder mysteries."  I have all of that discussion saved as screen-shots and if I ever hear of him going for any kind of public office you better believe they will make their way to whatever media I need to send it to.  These are the men that think they have the right to sit on a court and decide what women can do with their own bodies; that somehow rape isn't "all that bad."  It's something "all boys in high school do."

No, it isn't.

And we should have a higher standard of character for someone who is about to be a Supreme Court Judge.

If you don't think so, I honestly think less of you as a person.

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