A Story of Rape, Race, and Healing

Yesterday I joked about blog-writing as therapy. Today, though, I want to share a very serious -- and moving -- essay about one rape survivor's journey toward healing and understanding by writing publicly about an assault she had kept secret for decades.

Joanna Connors, a writer for the Cleveland-based Plain Dealer newspaper, was raped in the summer of 1984. Though she told her family and friends about the attack and immediately reported it to the authorities, in the years that followed she discussed her ordeal less and less until it became a secret she harbored from everyone who knew her. Recently, though, she came to realize that true healing only could be achieved by writing about and sharing her experiences with others.

The six-part story that ran in a special section of last Sunday's Plain Dealer offers an emotional, honest, and extremely powerful analysis of many of the issues we deal with as criminologists: violent crime, sexual assault, victimization, and career criminality. It also offers a sociological analysis as well. Connors is a white woman who was raped by a Black man; accordingly, her essay addresses issues of race, class and gender; of privilege and power, poverty and disadvantage. Perhaps most movingly, it chronicles the restorative power of the relationships Connors forged with her attacker's relatives all these years later, and of the understanding that resulted from learning about his life and deciphering how and why their lives collided in such a brutal way more than two decades ago.

I hope that folks will take time to read this essay and share their comments about it here. It is extremely well-written and could be useful for facilitating in-class discussions, especially surrounding issues of race, class, power, and privilege as they relate to violent crime. One important warning, though: the description of the attack is graphic and could potentially serve as a trigger for sexual assault survivors.

• Introduction & Editor's Note
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six: Epilogue
  

"Not The Enemy"

The current (April 14th) issue of Newsweek features a really fascinating "My Turn" essay. For those who aren't regular readers, each issue of Newsweek contains a first-person essay intended to share one person's experiences with a particular topic, ranging from the universal (aging, caring for an ill or dying loved one, parenthood, etc.) to the unusual (being a passionate penny collector, for example). The "My Turn" essays are one of my favorite parts of the magazine because you never know what subject the author will address. (Yes, I am a huge dork.)

Anyway, this week's essay is called, "I Am Not the Enemy" by Felicia J. Nu'Man, who is a Black woman and a prosecutor in Louisville, KY and who writes in the teaser to her essay that she "put[s] people in jail because they break the law, not because I'm a puppet of a racist judicial system."

This essay caught my attention for obvious reasons, and I thought it was worth sharing. I especially like what she had to say about the duty she feels to stand up for the rights of Black crime victims, even when that means prosecuting Black offenders:

My question to these black people who believe me to be a traitor is, when will you connect the dots?...There is a disconnect in the minds of many black people. My great-grandfather was murdered in Kentucky back in the 1940s. There was no investigation. There was no prosecution of the people involved. There was only a funeral, a widow and fatherless children. This would never happen today...We have the most perfect imperfect system on earth."

Spring Break and Risky Decision-Making

I just came across an article on MSNBC.COM about how students on spring break in Texas are avoiding Mexican border towns in light of increased drug-related violence.

So here's a question: how many times in your life have you looked back on past events and thought, "what in the HELL was I thinking?" (And then later, my mother would probably still kill me if she knew I ever did that....)

Anyway, when I was a sophomore at the University of Texas in1988, my roommate and I agreed to go to South Padre Island for spring break with a group of her friends that I barely knew. They seemed OK and were in the marching band, so how much trouble could we get in to? (Come on, I was in the marching band in high school, I know the score.)

At the last minute, she dropped out of the trip and I was left to travel 6.5 hours by car to SPI with a group of near strangers (Thanks a lot, Jill!!). Her friends turned out to be fine, but unfortunately the weather was not--the cold, gray skies lasted all week and nixed our beach plans. The first night, the gang wanted to go to Matamoros, across the border in Mexico. We were early arrivals and the towns were still quiet--not yet flooded with UT and A&M students on break.

So, we crossed the Rio Grande and entered the first bar we found. It was like a scene from a movie--we walk in, the music stops, and everyone turns to stare at us. We're all dressed in our 80's pastels and big hair and the room is full of local Mexican workers, probably enjoying their last night in town until it's taken over by obnoxious American students. There was even a guy in the corner--I kid you not--playing a game which entails holding on to electrodes for as long as you can. I was freaked out--my New Jersey upbringing had not prepared me for this. We ordered some Dos Equis, drank our beer quickly and crossed back immediately thereafter.

Two days later, the town was COMPLETELY different--it was a tourist trap, with loud music, cheap goods for sale, and alcohol everywhere. The gang decided they wanted to go deep, deep, DEEP into Matamoros since the beach was not going to happen, so we hailed a taxi and told him to take us into the town to a decent restaurant. We ate lunch in a place with dirt floors and live chickens running around--it was a hoot. However, 20 years later I look at the satellite picture of Matamoros above, and think--MY GOD, that city is SO BIG--who knows where we were or what might have happened. And of course, we didn't have cell phones back then--no one knew I was there (they knew I was in South Padre, but none of my family members knew I would visit Mexico on the trip).

Anyway, we ended up having a fun time and the friends-of-Jill were pretty cool. We came back to Austin and got back to our studies.

The following year (1989), I stayed in Austin for spring break and slept late every day. Watching the news one night, I caught a story about Mark Kilroy, a UT student who was reported missing in Matamoros. He was a junior, as was I, and he had wandered away from his friends to take a leak in an adjacent alley. A few minutes later, he was gone.

They searched for him and questioned over 100 known criminals for weeks, until finally, someone picked up on a routine drug sting provided evidence to the police that led to Mark. He had been abducted and murdered in a satanic worship ceremony on a ranch outside Matamoros. The description of what they did to him is not for the faint of heart.

Perhaps the saddest part of this story is that many Mexicans were also killed by this Satanic group, few of which received any attention from the Mexican government until Mark. It took the murder of a U.S. citizen for them to recognize the dozens of murders that had already taken place and seek out the offenders. The "mastermind" of the group eventually committed suicide just as he was about to be arrested.

I didn't know Mark, but I've been thinking about how to tie his story to our field's study of risk and victimization. He placed himself at risk by visiting a border town, likely drinking too much, wandering away from his friends, and pissing in an alley. Natalee Holloway similarly took risks, purportedly leaving a bar with a man she had just met. How many hundreds (or thousands) of stupid, drunk college students make similar risky decisions and are luckily to survive to the next day? How many of those students are raped or assaulted as a result of their risky behavior? How many stupid risks have I personally taken in my life, and somehow have emerged unscathed?

Food for thought. Perhaps the ShockSpouse will share his thoughts on the Kilroy incident as well.

Detroit Apartments Agree Not To Evict DV/Stalking Victims

So, a woman in Detroit was evicted from her apartment after her boyfriend kicked her door in and smashed her windows. The apartment company managing her unit stated that she was evicted due to her inability to supervise her guests.

As Kyle's mom would say, "Wha-Wha-WHAT"???

The victim had to live in a shelter (which are anything BUT plentiful in Detroit) and subsequently move to a more expensive apartment farther away from her work.

Thankfully, the apartment company agreed not to continue this practice in the future after being sued in federal court by the victim and the ACLU. The victim received an undisclosed settlement.

Every now & then I fool myself that the general public is aware of problems suffered by victims and sympathetic toward their plight. Turns out, nope. Victims can be thrown out of their own homes because of the behavior of others.

As Dr. HnK knows very well, there are many reasons why victims do not contact authorities after abuse. Here's an example of one woman who DOES contact the authorities, notifies her apartment manager, and then gets evicted.

According to the attorney for the ACLU, this practice is quite common. Boy howdy...