Impact
[TW: sexual assault.] I wrote this because I want other survivors to know: If you decide to report that you were sexually assaulted, these are the people you will meet and the things they will probably say.
The kind woman on the advice hotline will urge you to go to the hospital to get checked out, but with the warning that if you tell them what happened, they’ll need to report it to the police.
The nurse in the emergency room will give you a look of heavy pity and put you in a room where you will wait to give your statement to the police.
The police will ask you a long, long list of questions, and you will second-guess every other answer, because it’s cold in your hospital gown, and your hands are shaking, and your head is swimming. They might also insinuate that you brought this on yourself by not being careful.
The man with the rape kit will repeatedly apologize about your discomfort as he takes samples from the most private parts of your body, and he’ll assure you that it’s almost over. You won’t get to go home for several hours.
The handsome young investigator wearing shiny, fancy shoes will say that you’ve done the right thing, and that they’re “going to help you get this guy.” You’ll need to meet with him a few times. The first time, you will rehash everything you already told the police. The second time, you will need to identify your assailant in a row of photos. If there’s a third time, he might ask you to make a recorded phone call to your assailant, to trick him into confessing. If the call goes well, the investigator will say you did an amazing job, and that you couldn’t have gotten better evidence. You will feel a surge of hope.
The gentle victim’s advocate assigned to you will ask many, many times how you are feeling and if you need anything. You will have no idea how to answer and probably just lie and tell her you’re fine. You will tell a lot of people that you’re fine.
If the DA feels especially passionate about your case, she might make wild promises about winning — about how it’ll likely all be over in a year, and you’ll be able to get a sense of closure and move on with your life. It will not be over in a year.
If your case is anything like mine, you will be transferred to a new DA three times over the course of three years. You will relive your assault several times each year — not just at the pre-trial hearing or whenever you re-tell the story to your new DA, but also every time you get an email with an update about the next hearing, which will be postponed over and over and over again. I cannot stress enough how often court dates are delayed. After the first two years, you will start to believe that you’ll be living the rest of your life in judicial purgatory.
Finally, finally, you’ll go to trial — or your assailant will plead guilty. Mine did. Your victim’s advocate will give you instructions for writing a Victim Impact Statement, which you can read in front of the judge before the sentencing. This is the Holy Grail of Closure everyone has been promising you. If you’re a writer, you will obsess over that statement for weeks. It will feel more important than anything you’ve ever written. You’ll want to give it some sort of structure — a narrative scaffolding to make sense of it all. At the last minute, in a fit of desperation, you will drink four glasses of whiskey and finally get it all out through a fit of tears. It won’t feel good. Nothing about this experience will feel good, but it will feel important and necessary and hopeful for the first time since you spoke with the investigator.
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I was supposed to read my Victim Impact Statement today. The DA told me to arrive at 2 PM for the sentencing. I arrived at 1:45 with my heart in my throat. There was a lot of awkward shuffling as my victim’s advocate moved me from room to room, until the DA arrived to apologize: There had been some sort of miscommunication, and the sentencing had already happened without me earlier that morning. Over three years of misery had essentially culminated in a clerical error. For the last time, I lied and told them that it was okay — that I was “fine.” I am not.
I don’t say all of this to discourage people from reporting. According to RAINN, only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police, and only 28 of those 310 lead to a felony conviction. We need to talk about this. We need to tell people what happened to us. But no one in the assembly line of health care and legal authorities will properly warn you about what comes next — the years you will sacrifice to correct the damage someone inflicted on you in a matter of minutes or hours. So if you choose not to report, I understand. And if you want to report, but you’re scared, I want to make myself available as someone you can talk to.
Also, I have a favor to ask: Since I didn’t get to read my Impact Statement, would you read it for me? I’ve included it below. If this is helpful to anyone — even just one person — then maybe the last three years will have been worth something. Right now, life — and all the pain that comes with it — is feeling pretty meaningless.
***
IMPACT STATEMENT
The guidelines for this document state that I should list all of the significant ways this crime has affected me — psychological, social, emotional, or otherwise. I don’t think I can write that way. I can’t relay such an intimate form of damage in the clear language of the judicial system, but here’s what I can tell you.
Before May 19, 2019, I was a different person — friendlier, more outgoing, more confident, more alive. But then a Lyft driver I didn’t know handed me a bottle of vodka while I was lost in a haze of drunken tears, and I woke up in an unfamiliar place, without my pants, confused and terrified about what had happened to my body while my mind had been absent.
Since then, neither my body nor my mind function the same way they once did. I used to be a morning person. I liked getting up at 6:30 to see the sun and to exercise. Now, every morning comes with a familiar jolt of panic and the inescapable feeling of dread I experienced in Jose’s bedroom. I can barely get up for work on time, and I’ve gained thirty pounds from the inertia. I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and occasional bouts of depression — but then again, who doesn’t these days?
I didn’t want to report this crime. I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened and move on with my life as swiftly as possible. Honestly, over three years later, I know that would have been the easier path. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how Jose didn’t seem to understand the gravity of his actions or the damage that he had done. And I worried, given that lack of understanding, about whether this could happen to another passenger who got into his car.
So that’s why we’re here. I am generally not an angry person, and from the beginning, my goal has never been punishment. It’s prevention — and perhaps, selfishly, closure. The word victim feels strange in my mouth. It comes with all sorts of connotations like innocence and helplessness, and doesn’t feel fully human. But I recognize Jose’s humanity, and we’re here because I want him to get the treatment he needs so that he never does anything like this again — and because I need to believe that someday, I’ll be able to wake up and not think of him or be fearful that he will somehow reenter my life. My deepest wish is for all of this to simply be over.
I’d like to close with something I wrote back in 2019, a few months after the incident:
We are all
Beautiful and ugly,
Kind and cruel.
We are the damages we carry
And the damages we do.
I thank this court for all of the time and hard work that goes into mitigating those damages.
