Recently, a friend of mine told me the awful account of her
two college-aged friends who were drugged and raped on campus last
month. They were of age and at a bar with a crowd that moved to a house where
someone handed them drinks (future note to daughters: don’t ever accept drinks late at night at parties in homes of people you don’t know). The next thing they knew
they were half-aware in a bedroom with three men; details were foggy but they
could hear each other’s objections. The rape kits at the emergency room filled
in more of the story.
I know it happens—that women are raped. And yet every time I
hear a story like this, my mind is blown. That someone, that two or three
someones, could pre-meditatively plot this sort of evil and execute it so well
here in my community sickens me. And it’s quiet. I’ve heard no newspaper
stories. These women pressed charges but the perpetrators are still walking
around. They run into them on the street. What else is quiet, I wonder? How
many women walking the sidewalks on campus with the same story?
My husband says he gets alerts from the University whenever
a sexual assault is reported. Last month he said it was like he was getting a new alert or two every week. Often the rough details are followed by the
explanation that the victim has “chosen not to press charges.”
Rape at home leads me to think of the Nigerian girls, still missing. Brave girls--willing to
risk their lives for an education--awakened in the middle of the night. The
adrenaline surges they must have felt, the shaking, the sweating, the grabbing
for a pair of shoes or an extra garment before they were caught in the fire. The confusion,
then the clarity, then the fear. Then
the demand of “conversion.” Then, the demand of “marriage” (read: sex slavery)
to members of the Boko Haram. Then, what we would have to assume: rape.
Rape as power. Rape as punishment. Rape as anger. Rape as
weaponry. Rape as sport. Rape as entertainment. Rape as retaliation. Rape as
war.
*****
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