Why I Didn’t Report… and What That Means in this Moment

Content warning: sexual assault, brief mention of incarceration

Roughly two and a half years ago, I shared that I, too, am a survivor of sexual assault. I have not written in any public manner about it since that initial post. While I try to be fairly open about it, because it is not something I should be ashamed of, it is not a topic I enjoy discussing. I do appreciate that when I first wrote about it, other women began telling me their stories – I know there is a power in owning being a survivor.

 

However, this summer, I have also realized that my experience as a survivor, why I never reported, and the larger #MeToo movement hold powerful parallels to the current Black Lives Matter movement and its calls to defund the police and beyond.

 

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My assault happened in the fall semester of 2016. At that time, things were different than now: both in the world and in my understanding of it. Personally, I had never had any form of comprehensive sex education and did not have an understanding of what sexual assault was, unless perhaps it was a brutal rape by a stranger in a dark alley. In the world, the Me Too Movement was at a much different stage. While Tarana Burke had started the Me Too Movement in 2006, in the fall of 2016, the Movement had yet to be as universally recognized as it is today, thanks to #MeToo on Twitter.

 

It was about ten months after my assault before I could put into words that what had happened to me was “sexual assault.” Don’t get me wrong, the day that it happened, I felt intuitively wrong. That day on my way home, I pulled my car to the side of the road and cried for hours. But at the time, I didn’t understand that it doesn’t have to be some stranger in an alley for it to not be okay. (He had taken me to his church that morning and I had known him for years – it was difficult for me to find the vocabulary to understand that what happened to me was not okay, especially since I knew I hadn’t been “raped.”) The next ten months, I struggled to understand why I was so jumpy around men, had consistent panic attacks, developed an unhealthy relationship with my body, and isolated myself from many of my loved ones. The moment I finally understood is clear in my memory. In the early fall of 2017, I was in a criminal justice class, and we were going over state statutes and definitions of sexual assault charges. When one of the charges described exactly what had happened to me, I realized: I was a survivor of sexual assault. A few weeks later, Alyssa Milano tweeted #MeToo, and the movement took off at a pace it hadn’t before. I was reading story after story of other women describing similar experiences to mine, and I realized I needed to take what happened to me, a sexual assault, seriously.

 

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So why didn’t I report? And how in the word does it have anything to do with the momentum of Black Lives Matter this summer?

 

Usually, the decision not to report is a complex one. For me, this was no different. One of the reasons I didn’t report is fairly obvious – I didn’t think what happened to me was something I even could report until 10 months after it happened. At that point, as a criminal justice major especially, I knew I had no physical evidence that could possibly have led to charges. I also had a good understanding of how unlikely it was for any sexual assault case, especially if you knew the person beforehand, to be prosecuted. One of my friends at the time had been raped by a stranger that previous spring, had gotten a rape kit done even, and her case was dropped. So I knew legally, there wasn’t much of a chance it would even be taken seriously.

 

Another reason I didn’t report was because of who the person was. I’ve still never named him; while I am fairly open about the fact that this happened to me, very few people in my life know who. Honestly, when I talk about what happened to me, it matters very little that the person I am talking to know who did it to me most of the time; it matters much more that they can have an understanding of how it impacts my life. However, this person is fairly well-known by many of the people in my life, and this was especially the case back when I needed to decide whether or not to report. Our families knew each other. He was well-liked by many of the people I spent time with at that point. I didn’t want people to feel like they needed to choose whether or not to believe me or “pick a side” or something. I didn’t want to, in the “best-case scenario” have to testify against him, either. I just wanted to deal with it and learn how to move forward.

 

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However, honestly, the biggest reason I chose not to report directly ties into why defunding the police and prison abolition is important, especially to me.

 

I deeply considered why I wanted to possibly report. Like many other survivors of sexual assault, my biggest motivator was not wanting him to do it to someone else. This was a huge motivator for me after I finally wrote that initial post about it. Despite there being no qualifiers in the post – I had made the timeline murky, I did not mention where he had lived, or included any other identifying features about him, I had someone message me and ask if it was him. They could tell because he had done the same thing to them in the past. That weighed heavily on me.

 

I had to focus deeply on what I would want out of reporting. While I admit there were times I was angry, hurt, and wanted him to feel the same pain I was feeling, what I really wanted out of possibly reporting came down to a couple of things. 1) I wanted to feel like he understood the pain he had caused me and recognize what that meant so he would not make someone else go through that pain. 2) I wanted to find some healing. While I considered reporting, those were my two main focuses.

 

Now, at the time, I was a criminal justice major, which meant that I had visited many of the correctional facilities around the state. I knew that if I reported and things went “the way they were supposed to go,” with the case actually being prosecuted and him being given a maximum sentence, he could have ended up in one of those correctional facilities for a long stretch of time. While I realized that the case even being prosecuted was highly unlikely, I knew that was a potential outcome, the outcome I was “supposed to” want out of reporting.

 

So, I considered what that would mean, had he truly been convicted and sentenced to a correctional facility, even if only for say, thirty days. Would that accomplish what I wanted out of reporting?

 

Would it make him understand my pain and not have him repeat the behavior?

 

No, probably not. If he had been sentenced to a sexual assault charge, his time in any correctional facility would not be good. One of the biggest things I had learned from the people who were incarcerated and spoke to us during those tours was that people with sexual assault charges were not safe in jails and prisons. He probably would not have had any programming that addressed the issue. And he definitely would not have heard from me specifically about how what happened affected my life. Upon release from the correctional facility, he would really struggle. He would have to put a sexual assault charge on any job or housing application. He would have to be on the sex offender registry. His life would have been markedly worse, which would not have provided an environment for him to NOT repeat the behavior. I think that scenario would have made it much more likely for him to put someone else through the pain I felt.

 

Would that help me find some healing?

 

Absolutely not. While it is true that he put me through a lot of pain, pain he didn’t even know he was putting me through, putting him through a correctional facility, or even an arrest, or trial, would not have helped me. It would have been all about him. This system is not set up to support victims/survivors. In no way does vengeance for the community help me feel any better. The case would have been labeled something like “The State of Nebraska v. ---” and it would not have mentioned me. I would have likely had to testify at some point, or at least in reporting, tell one of my most painful memories to a set of cops that would have to scrutinize every detail of my story. I believe that process would have put me in a worse place, not better, especially if I knew I was causing pain. While I believe he should be held accountable, for me, I don’t think accountability comes out of our jail cells (and our state and country’s recidivism rates back me up on that belief).

 

No, I never did report. I am happy I didn’t, because it would not have accomplished anything productive for me, even had it been prosecuted. And it happened to me.

 

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What does this have to do with Black Lives Matter, defunding the police, and prison abolition?

 

For one thing, I know that the “justice” system is different for different people: specifically poor vs. wealthy people, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color vs. white people. I know that if the man who had assaulted me been Black, he could have been prosecuted much more easily than the white man who actually did. The Black-man-is-a-threat-to-white-women narrative is deeply ingrained into this country. Look at Emmett Till, the Scottsboro Boys, the Central Park Five, and more cases – and those boys were all innocent. It’s the same narrative that Amy Cooper was trying to pull in Central Park earlier this summer.

 

I am a survivor of what is considered a violent crime. And I don’t think police or prison would have solved the issue. I think it would have made it worse. There are lots of statistics and data I could add here to prove that this is a trend. I could add recidivism rates or the statistics on how many people who commit violent, especially sex, crimes have been victims at one point themselves. For this post, I am trying to keep this more centered on my own experiences, but my one experience is not anecdotal or by any means drawing conclusions from one account; there is plenty of data that supports what I have grown to believe.

 

This system does not place an emphasis on victims. By doing this, we have created a cycle of victims not receiving the care they need, and many times, repeating what was done to them. If people are not helped, working towards healing, and truly receiving justice, then we are bound to continue the cycle of these problems. And what really is justice? In America, we have grown to believe that justice is throwing someone in jail and trying to throw away the key, or even killing them. However, this is not justice. That’s avoiding problems – and as the country with the highest prison population in the world (by a landslide), it is clearly not a true solution, especially when most people are not sentenced to prison for life and will eventually rejoin our society. I think America needs to reevaluate what justice truly means.

 

Restorative justice would have been a potentially helpful process for me. It’s actually what I ended up basically doing on my own. About two years after the assault, I met with him, and discussed some of the pain the assault had caused me, and if he would consider evaluating his relationship practices. While that actually went decently well for me – it definitely was not a perfect process as there was no mediator or support given to me, I did it alone – I wish someone trained in this sort of thing would have come with me, and I wish I would have been provided counseling. I also wish he would have been provided counseling. However, we don’t have money in our budgets going to this sort of process and focus on actual healing.

 

This is why defunding the police is a necessary first step. The police budgets are ridiculously high, when police do not prevent crimes. Police are there to respond to crimes – but as you can tell, with crimes like sexual assault, a lot falls through the cracks, even with their massive budgets. With the amount of money they get, we really should have lower crime rates – but that’s not how that actually works! I’d rather tax money go towards actually preventing some of these issues than just responding to them by, for the most part, locking people up or fining them.

 

I have been reading a book this summer that has really helped me connect and understand police and prison abolition in a way that I support (yes, me, your local former criminal justice major who won national trophies for policing-focused competitions). It is called Until We Reckon by Danielle Sered. I recommend it to anyone interested in understanding what a world without police (as we know them) truly looks like and how it could be beneficial. (I will note: I haven’t finished it yet, as it makes me think about this process and my sexual assault, so that makes it a bit difficult to read at a decent pace.)

 

Of course, the way victims are treated in the system is by and large not the biggest issue. Police brutality against and the mass incarceration of Black people in this country is nothing short of an emergency. It is becoming more and more clear to many people that the way things are right now are not acceptable. This is, of course, not a new problem (see: Bloody Sunday, Rodney King case, the history of the “justice” system in general). It is however, being filmed and watched more often by more people. While I know there are many people who are still not understanding, more people are beginning to see that things are not right. Even Trump’s initial reaction to George Floyd’s death was that it was awful, despite later changing his message.

 

I am encouraged, however, that things have the potential to change relatively quickly. Four years ago, when I was assaulted, the Me Too Movement was not a large-reaching movement. There hadn’t been much change. Just a few years later, while there is still a long way to go, there have been deep impacts and changes that the Movement brought. This summer, Black Lives Matter protests have been far-reaching, farther than I’ve ever seen before. From my small town of Fremont having BLM protests, to Amish people attending BLM protests, George Floyd’s name reached around the globe this summer, and even over in England they were chanting “Black Lives Matt-uh!” (You know, the accent.)  

 

There are big, systemic problems that need to be addressed. Changes need to happen. We need to think more deeply about the meaning of justice and what it truly means to be a part of a society. We need to reimagine how our society runs. This is going to be uncomfortable and difficult. We have a lot of issues to overcome in this country, as they have been building for 400 years. It is not going to be a light-hearted process – but neither was #MeToo. Of course, all of the #MeToo problems have not been solved, but it goes hand in hand with Black Lives Matter in reimagining our "justice" system.

 

So that's why I didn't report - and how it applies to the Movement. Yes, people need to be held accountable. While we have the current system, yes these police officers that have killed people need to be prosecuted. But I believe that in the future, there's a better way, if we work towards it.

 

- Han

PS please go to forbreonna.com and do something to demand justice for Breonna Taylor. It's been over 150 days and she was just sleeping in her house. 

also: since this was a heavy topic, here's a picture of me and pups to remind you that survivors can still have lots of joy, because I've been laughing at my dog's face in this for two days now: