This rape survivor convened her own grand jury

Prosecutors refused to file rape charges against her attacker.   Here’s what happened next ...

Transcript

00:00I don't need anybody else's affirmation that, yes, I was raped. I know I was.

00:11We started to have sex, which was consensual up until the point he started strangling me

00:17and slapping me. And I had tried to take his hands off of my throat, off my neck.

00:25And each time his grip got tighter. So at that point, I just did what I had to do

00:30to survive and make sure I was walking out of that room instead of being rolled out in a body bag.

00:44He had just right off the bat told me that he wasn't going to file charges because this was

00:50a case of immature sex because I didn't verbally say no while I was being strangled.

01:03It definitely felt very minimized and very unheard and unbelieved. And I was crushed.

01:10But I wasn't going to let one person, regardless of

01:14how high he stands on the legal totem pole, tell me that my rape wasn't rape.

01:20So

01:39we set up this petition drive in the parking lot of a hair salon in Lindsburg. It was really

01:47difficult having to tell my story over and over and over again to strangers. But I mean, that's

01:53that's how you're going to make a difference. A lot of people you would just kind of start to

01:57say the story just like, Hi, my name is Madison Smith. I was raped on the Bethany College campus.

02:04And by the time I'd say that our county attorney wasn't going to file charges,

02:08they would stop me and be like, I'll sign your petition. Don't worry about it. You

02:11don't have to go on any further.

02:13The end goal here is

02:38to make a change with the way that rape itself is seen and just because the whole rape culture

02:46that needs to completely dissipate. I think we've started to make a change and we're not

02:51done making that change yet. I've developed actually a lot of confidence that we can do that

02:56through all of the support and everything that everybody has reached out and just

03:01all the words of encouragement have have meant a lot.

03:08you