Current Events
A Silent April No More:
Fighting Domestic Rape
MALLIKA KAUR
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.” [T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land]
Thirty-year-old Amy (all names have been changed to protect identities), a successful entrepreneur in the Bay Area of California, USA, had a perpetual scowl and finally voiced that she is sick of it: missing important meetings and social events, employing her kids as an excuse, when in fact she hasn’t slept the night before because her husband kept alternating between threatening sex and yelling at her for not knowing her worthlessness.
While each April marks tulips, spring showers, blossoms, perhaps a re-reading of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, it also marks events by anti-violence advocates across the United States. These events remind us that sexual violence, far from being extraordinary, is sadly folded into the ordinary course of life for many like Amy.
April is sexual assault awareness month.
The nation has come to understand “acquaintance rape” somewhat more in recent times, especially with publicized cases like the repeated gang rape of the 16-year-old Stubenville (Ohio, USA) teen for which two high school football players were recently convicted.
But these conversations are often reserved for our teens and college students, entering the world of parties, newly unsupervised, experimenting with new relationships. The conversation often stops at the threshold of more formalized relationships, especially marriage.
In fact, one out of every 10 heterosexual women in the United States have been raped by an intimate partner in their lifetime, as per 2010 findings in a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The silence of complicity around such violence in relationships reinforces two related myths: that rape is somehow equivalent to sex and that sex is somehow a right in a relationship. Thus, the partner who discloses rape in their relationship is often left shamed and blamed, rather than supported. The Amys around us continue to seethe and suffer in silence, knowing that a black eye might yield some sympathy but the soreness between her legs is still taboo.
“Partner rape” is neither surprising nor uncommon to those of us who work with domestic violence survivors. Sexual violence is often the least reported aspect of domestic violence, whether to the police or even to confidential advocates or lawyers. While the usual myths (“she must have done something”; “he just has an anger problem;” “she’s a drama queen”) make the reporting of domestic violence extremely difficult, the rape within a relationship is particularly difficult because it is particularly intimate.
Take 50-year-old Kalinda, whose ex-boyfriend doesn’t even have to be in the home to keep her up at nights. Since he complies with his restraining order only selectively, Kalinda lies awake listening to each sound, expecting yet another break-in. When she called the police two years ago, the first and last time she ever reported sexual abuse, a young officer asked her, with empathy, but also incredulation, “Why do you let him in when you hear him?”
“I don’t let him do anything,” she later told me. “He doesn’t even let me close the bathroom door when he is around ... I have little control once he has made up his mind. And ... with this … well, I don’t want to wake up the neighbors ... with his banging at the door.”
Kalinda is no weak woman. She has fought for the protection of herself and her children long and hard. She reports violations of the domestic violence restraining order, and uses the proper channels as far as possible. But when it comes to the rape, she can’t bring herself to speak about it to the police officers or even confiding in her friends.
Forcing Kalinda to report that which she finds unspeakable is re-traumatizing. But we speak openly, without shame, about the rape as a tool of power and control. We break the silence, even if behind a closed door, within the security of four walls. That’s a start.
This April, as we remind our boys and girls about true consent, about avenues of support and about breaking the silence, let’s not stop at the precipice of adult relationships. April is a reminder of how much more un-silencing we can and must support.
“I need this to stop. I need to know and model a healthy relationship for my daughters,” said Amy, who usually has to choose more mundane work-life balance conversations over lattes with friends, and has struggled to speak out about her ordeals.
The good news for Amy is that, hard as it still is, there are resources to help her navigate toward safety. She is certainly not alone.
[The author focuses on gender and minority issues in the United States and South Asia. She has a juris doctorate from the UC Berkeley School of Law and a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School. She is a staff attorney at CORA, the domestic violence agency for San Mateo County.]
Courtesy: The Daily Journal
April 21, 2013