All Time Low

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment

I bought tickets to see All Time Low play So Wrong, It’s Right from beginning to end at Radio City Music Hall in February.

And I am having a completely normal and proportionate emotional response to this.

Ok, that’s a lie. When Ticketmaster showed the confirmation screen I cried a little bit.

Which was perhaps partially because it took three tries to get tickets.

10AM Artist Presale for the Friday show: 5,692 in the queue. By the time the page refreshed, tickets were gone. I told myself maybe I wasn’t meant to go.

That night, however, All Time Low announced a second show on Saturday.

10AM Artist Presale for the Saturday show: 3,216 in the queue. Twenty minutes later, I finally got in. Everything was gone again.

Then I noticed there was a Chase Preferred Cardholder presale a couple hours later. I checked my Chase app to make sure I qualified and set an alarm.

12PM Chase Preferred Cardholder Presale for the Saturday show: it didn’t assign me a spot in the queue. There was infinitely less site traffic for that particular presale and it took me directly to the ticket page, where I was able to grab a pair in the back orchestra.

So when that confirmation screen popped up, yeah, I cried a little bit. It was a mix of relief, shock, and excitement.

It wasn’t until after I’d secured the tickets that I even thought about the logistics.

The concert is in New York City. I live in Buffalo. It’s a quick one-hour flight, but it’s certainly not “convenient.” And with the concert being mid-February, I will very likely spend the entire week leading up to it panic-refreshing my weather app to see if a snowstorm is expected. I’ll also need to book a hotel room in the City or couch surf.

And yet… none of that has made me question whether I should go.

Even with all the presale madness, at no point did I consider giving up. Or wonder if the expense and hassle were “worth it.”

Which got me thinking about why.

I’ve seen All Time Low before. Hell, I saw them less than a year ago. And I will presumably have opportunities to see them on tour again.

But this feels different.

This isn’t just an All Time Low concert. This is the anniversary show celebrating 20 years of So Wrong, It’s Right.

And apparently that distinction is enough to turn me into an emotional puddle.

My Brain has a Soundtrack

Music has always been the connective tissue of my memories.

Play me a random song from twenty years ago and there is a high likelihood that my brain will immediately associate it with a year, a place, a person, and an oddly specific anecdote that you didn’t ask to hear. But you’re about to!

“Wannabe” by Spice Girls? Third grade. Emily’s birthday party. 10+ girls climbing the swingset in the dark and shouting the lyrics in unison.

“Move Along” by All-American Rejects? Sophomore year. SJCI dance. Singing and dancing with Patrick.

“Viva La Vida” by Coldplay? Summer before college. Cue memories of graduation parties and car rides with Christopher.

Perhaps it’s the ADHD. Perhaps my brain just came with an unusually detailed soundtrack. Either way, music is one of the ways I organize my life. Songs create timestamps. They connect me to versions of myself I haven’t thought about in years.

But there are a few artists that work differently.

They don’t take me back to one memory.

They take me back to a feeling.

All Time Low is one of them.

Thank you, random MySpace stranger

I first heard All Time Low in late 2006. I was on a random stranger’s MySpace page and “Coffee Shop Soundtrack” started autoplaying.

I despised autoplay. Normally I couldn’t pause or silence that shit fast enough.

But this time I let it play.

Then I went looking for more.

My friends weren’t listening to All Time Low. They weren’t listening to emo or pop punk at all. Since ATL was relatively unknown within my circle, I listened by myself.

On my blue iPod Mini during my morning bus ride.

On the ancient Windows ‘98-powered computer in my bedroom.

On mixed CDs in my 2006 Ford Taurus. CDs that I painstakingly burned, but then couldn’t be bothered to write any identifying information on. Every CD was a mystery, but stumbling across an All Time Low song was always a welcome surprise.

“Coffee Shop Soundtrack” opened the door. “Jasey Rae” and “The Party Scene” quickly followed on repeat.

And then So Wrong, It’s Right came out.

But this time I wasn’t finding the music after it got popular and playing catch up.

I was counting down until it was released.

2007 was less than ideal

So Wrong, It’s Right came out at the start of my senior year of high school.

I was juggling a lot my senior year. I was taking the SATs, applying to colleges, and struggling to select a major. I was navigating my first relationship and my first breakup. I was trying to get comfortable with moving away from my family and the safety of my childhood home. I was worrying about what my high school and hometown friendships would look like once college started.

Normal teenage growing-up shit.

Then there was the less normal.

I was battling anxiety and depression and resorting to self-injury as my sole source of comfort. I was (reluctantly) starting therapy, while simultaneously trying to hide it from my friends and classmates, since discussing mental health was still considered taboo and therapy was for “crazy” people. Most notably, I was desperately trying to find the right words to explain the trauma I’d experienced that summer.

I knew what had happened, the sequence of events, and I knew something about it felt very wrong. But my sixteen-year-old brain didn’t yet realize it was rape.

So I was trying to do all of the normal senior-year things while my brain quietly short-circuited in the background.

And then there was this album.

So Wrong, It’s Right wasn’t written about assault or therapy or teenage depression. But trauma doesn’t particularly give a shit what a songwriter intended. It takes whatever words fit.

So when I heard “You took what you wanted. You got it, you know it. I’m haunted by everything” (Holly), it felt like it was written for me; the 17-year-old girl who was suddenly scared to sleep and having trust issues she couldn’t yet trace back to her assault.

The Beach, “cave in and believe me, open up and scream it”, and Shameless, “like a weightless currency, your words don’t mean shit to me”, tapped into the resentment and anger I was carrying.

Stay Awake, “get a grip and get out, you’re safe, from the weight of the world. Just take, a second to set things straight”, spoke to my anxiety, reminding me to slow down when the world around me was getting too loud and I was feeling trapped.

I heard Come One, Come All, “you’re just in time to witness my first breakdown”, at a time when my first breakdown felt perpetually right around the corner.

Finally, I heard Poppin’ Champagne, “they can take all of me, but they won’t ever take what I still believe”, and it ignited a spark in me. A glimmer of hope.

Somewhere, in all of it, I felt understood.

I didn’t consciously think, “This music is helping me process my trauma.” I didn’t even understand that I had trauma.

I just knew the music made something inside me quieter.

Emo was never a phase, Mom

All Time Low opened a door. And I happily walked through.

They were my gateway into pop punk and emo music and, as it turns out, that genre was exactly what teenage me needed.

Because I was fucking angry. And sad. And confused. And scared.

And I didn’t know how to say most of that out loud.

But I could put on headphones. I could turn up the volume in my car. I could scream lyrics written about something completely different and somehow make them mine.

There was something incredibly freeing about lyrics that didn’t ask me to cheer up or smile. Music that wasn’t fixated solely on romance or sex. It was honest and messy and loud.

And sometimes I desperately needed loud.

My car became one of my safe places.

That continued after high school. During my first couple years of college, when I was overwhelmed or anxious or avoiding homework or an uncomfortable conversation, I would get in my car and drive the few-mile loop around campus. On repeat.

I’d blast whatever emo song had my brain in a chokehold that week and just drive until things felt a little less impossible.

Then I went to college

A few weeks before moving into my freshman dorm in the fall of 2008, I finally understood that what happened the previous summer had been rape.

Excellent timing.

So I moved away from home for the first time while simultaneously beginning to process something that fundamentally changed the way I understood the previous year of my life.

I was confused, lonely, homesick, traumatized, and trying very hard to appear like a normal college freshman.

A few weeks into the semester, I heard a familiar song coming from down the hall.

Dear Maria, Count Me In.

I immediately went looking for the source.

A guy named Tom had his door open.

I popped my head in and asked him to turn it up. He cranked it and we started loudly serenading each other in the dorm hallway and playing air guitar.

Then the door to the corner suite opened and Ashlie emerged.

She didn’t hesitate to join in.

Another fan!

Suddenly the band I had mostly listened to alone wasn’t something that made me different from everyone around me.

It was the reason I was talking to them.

And then there was Ashlie

A little over a year later, in December 2009, All Time Low was playing a small club in Buffalo.

Ashlie came with me.

By this point we were sophomores. We didn’t live on the same floor anymore. We didn’t have classes together. She had never been to my house. She had barely met my parents, except in passing.

None of that mattered. It was All Time Low!

We left campus after we both finished our afternoon classes and drove the hour and a half to Buffalo. We went to the concert and then crashed in my childhood bedroom. We got up obscenely early the next morning and drove the hour and a half back to campus before heading immediately to class.

On that drive back, we talked. Not small talk. Real talk. I told her about my rapes and she listened. Not an occasional nod or feigned interest. She really listened.

She believed me without hesitation, never making me feel like I was too much. She didn’t make me edit the story into something more comfortable for her to hear.

Ashlie became one of the few people in my life at that time that I didn’t feel like I needed to censor myself around.

I don’t know if she knows how much that mattered. But it did.

And the whole thing traces back to her walking out of her dorm room because she heard Tom and me screaming All Time Low lyrics in the hallway.

Music does that. It creates weird little threads between people. You don’t realize they’re important until years later when you follow one backward and realize it changed something.

Sixteen years later

After the show in 2009, I didn’t see All Time Low live again until almost sixteen years later, in November 2025.

I wasn’t prepared for how emotional I would be hearing “Missing You” live.

I stood there tearing up because I kept thinking about how desperately I needed that song when I was 19 and suicidal.

There’s a particular kind of grief in finding something meaningful years after the version of you who needed it most.

But there’s something beautiful about it too. Because I had survived and I was there to hear it.

So why am I flying to New York?

That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer.

When you lay out the logistics, it sounds ridiculous to fly to NYC to hear an album I’ve been able to listen to whenever I want for twenty years. Except that’s not really what I’m going there to hear.

I’m going to hear twenty years of becoming the person I am now.

And maybe that’s why this concert feels different.

All Time Low has been part of my life for twenty years. Other albums came later and found me during other chapters. Other songs (e.g. Weightless, Too Much, Painting Flowers, Nightmares, etc.) became important for entirely different reasons.

But So Wrong, It’s Right was there at the beginning.

It was the first full-length ATL album that became mine. It arrived during this bizarre dividing line in my life when I was still doing all the things a normal 17-year-old does while unknowingly beginning to carry something that would shape huge pieces of my adulthood.

I didn’t know I had PTSD. I didn’t know why certain lyrics made my chest hurt. I didn’t know why I needed to drive around with the music so loud.

I just knew it helped.

And twenty years later, I get to hear that album from beginning to end.

The same songs.

In the same order.

But I’m not the same person.

Twenty years later

The 17-year-old girl who first heard this album had absolutely no fucking idea what was coming.

She didn’t know how bad things were going to get before they got better.

She didn’t know there would be another assault. Or suicidal thoughts and a three-day emergency psych hold. She didn’t know she would take a leave from college. She didn’t know PTSD would follow her into adulthood. That it would change how she let herself show up in the world.

But she also didn’t know about the incredible friends she would make. The vacations she’d go on. The career she’d have. The college boyfriend she’d marry. The dog they’d get. The house they’d buy. And she especially didn’t know how much healing she would do.

She didn’t know she would eventually have words for what happened to her. And that she would build an entire blog around refusing to stay quiet about it.

In all honesty, she didn’t know that twenty years later, she would be here.

Alive.

And still listening to All Time Low.

Maybe that’s why getting those tickets made me cry.

Because in February, All Time Low is going to walk onto the stage at Radio City Music Hall and play So Wrong, It’s Right from beginning to end.

For a couple of hours, the music is going to sound like 2007.

My brain, with its bizarre little musical filing system, will undoubtedly do what it always does. It will fill in the rest.

The places. The people. The memories. The feelings.

Except this time, I won’t be listening from a school bus or my childhood bedroom or behind the wheel of my old Ford Taurus.

I’ll be 36 years old, sitting inside Radio City Music Hall with twenty years of evidence that I survived everything that girl didn’t know was coming.

Music usually takes me back to a moment.

All Time Low takes me back to myself.

And in February, for one night, every version gets to be there.

When the Trauma Gets Loud Again

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment

This blog is my outlet. My way to document and process my emotions and trauma.

I go through waves where my trauma takes a back seat to my everyday anxiety and depression and those steer the ship for a bit. Sometimes it is a few weeks. Sometimes a few months. This time, it was three and a half years.

That doesn’t mean I spent three and a half years flashback-free and trigger-free. It means that on the days the trauma was loud, something else was always louder. I was well enough in other aspects of my life that I could handle the added noise. I didn’t need to write to quiet it.

This week, however, the scales tipped.

The volume turned way the hell up.

I already had some stress and uncertainty in my personal life and at work that had me on edge. Then my Instagram feed became overrun with content about the Cornell lawsuit. News stories. Commentary. Other survivors sharing their stories. People dissecting every new piece of information.

And suddenly the trauma wasn’t background noise anymore. It was fucking screaming.

I couldn’t drown it out.

The only reliable and healthy way I know how to turn down the volume is to write about it.

So here we are. My first post in three and a half years.

Why this case?

I’ve spent a lot of time this week trying to figure out what exactly it is about this case that is bringing up so many strong emotions.

Why now? Why this case?

It’s not because of the horrendous extent of the alleged crime. It’s not because of the survivor’s age. It’s not because her story closely mirrors mine. None of the publicly identified men bear any resemblance to either of my rapists. Neither of my assaults happened on a college campus.

So why is this breaking through defenses I’ve spent years building?

I think part of the answer is that there is something incredibly painful about watching the world care.

And I don’t mean that sarcastically.

I am genuinely glad that Jane Doe is living in a version of our world where social media can be used for good. Where celebrities aren’t afraid to speak up and speak out. Where thousands of complete strangers can rally around a survivor, tell her they believe her, express their outrage and disgust, and share their own stories in solidarity.

I am glad she has that.

And I am sad that I didn’t.

I was assaulted during a time when social media as we know it didn’t exist. There was no forum where I could share my story, my grief, my anger, or all of the complicated feelings I couldn’t even name yet. There was no groundswell of strangers saying, “This happened to me too.” There was no external validation from thousands of people telling me that what happened was wrong.

There was just me.

And there is something deeply painful about being 36 years old and watching another survivor receive something that 16-year-old me desperately needed.

I’m glad she has it.

I wish I had too.

Of course, I also have to imagine that the groundswell comes with its own kind of hell.

Her story is everywhere.

I’m sure she can’t open Instagram without seeing people talk about what happened to her. She can’t control which details become public, which screenshots get passed around, which pieces of evidence get analyzed by strangers, or which version of her worst night becomes the one the internet decides is true.

And while there are thousands of people loudly supporting her, the people who don’t believe her seem determined to shout just as loudly.

With every new piece of information that is leaked or released, people who already decided they don’t believe her pick apart the narrative and twist every detail to support the conclusion they already reached.

They throw her own words back at her.

Words written just days after an alleged violent assault, mind you.

They use them as evidence that she consented. That she was “okay” afterward. That she was having fun. That she willingly consumed alcohol and drugs, and therefore whatever happened afterward was simply the consequence of her own poor decisions.

And that last part is where my anger starts shifting away from this specific case and toward something much bigger.

Because, unbelievably, New York law makes that distinction matter.

Maybe the law is part of the problem

Under current New York law, there is a distinction between someone who becomes incapacitated because an intoxicating substance was administered without their consent and someone who voluntarily consumed that substance.

And I cannot stop thinking about how absurd that is.

Let’s play this out for a minute.

Your friend invites you to a party.

You don’t know many people there, but you know him. He knows everyone else. You trust him enough to go.

Once you’re there, you have a few drinks. You’re much friendlier when you’re tipsy anyway.

Then someone offers you a pill.

People around you are taking them. They’ve been drinking too. Nobody appears concerned. You don’t typically do drugs, but you’ve already been drinking, your judgment is clouded, and peer pressure wins.

So you take it.

Soon your words start slurring.

Your limbs feel heavy.

You’re dizzy. Confused.

And then…

Darkness.

The rest of the night exists only in flashes.

A heavy weight on top of you.

Trying to move out from underneath it.

Trying to get up.

Trying to leave a bed you don’t remember getting into.

Then morning.

You’re naked in a stranger’s bed. You never made it home from the party. You don’t fully understand what happened yet. You just know something feels wrong.

You gather your clothes and leave.

Over the next few days, you desperately try to reconstruct a night your brain didn’t record properly. You text the friend you trusted because maybe he can fill in the blanks.

And he tells you what you “said.”

What you “agreed to.”

How much fun you were supposedly having.

How all of it was your idea.

And now what?

Maybe he’s telling the truth about something you said while profoundly intoxicated.

Maybe he’s lying.

Maybe you said words you don’t remember saying because you were so impaired that you barely understood what was happening around you.

How the fuck are you supposed to prove which one it was?

Under current New York law, voluntarily consuming the alcohol or drugs does not, by itself, fit the statutory definition of being “mentally incapacitated.” The law instead leaves other avenues, including whether someone was “physically helpless”, subjected to “forcible compulsion”, or otherwise did not consent under the applicable offense.

And suddenly the fact that you chose to take the pill becomes part of the conversation about whether someone else was allowed to have sex with you afterward.

Why?

Why should it matter how you became incapacitated?

If a person reaches a point where they are incapable of knowingly participating in sexual activity, why should the path they took to get there determine how much protection the law gives them?

Taking a drug is consent to taking a drug.

Drinking alcohol is consent to drinking alcohol.

Neither is consent to sex.

And this isn’t some theoretical flaw no one has noticed. New York lawmakers are actively trying to change this part of the law.

Which means we know there is a problem.

So why the hell is it still a problem?

And maybe the law isn’t even the biggest problem

The longer I sit with this, the more I realize changing one statute isn’t going to fix what I’m actually angry about.

The whole fucking system is broken.

How do we successfully prosecute sexual assault when so many assaults happen without witnesses?

How do we create an environment where victims actually feel safe reporting?

How do we train officers to set aside their preconceived notions of what rape looks like and fucking listen?

How do we ensure that every officer taking one of these reports understands trauma-informed questioning?

Reporting an assault should not become an additional traumatic experience.

But so often, it does.

Suddenly there are questions about the victim’s intent. Her integrity. Her clothes. How much she drank. Whether she took drugs. Her sexual history. Why she went upstairs. Why she stayed. Why she didn’t fight harder. Why she didn’t leave sooner. Why she texted him afterward. Why she sounded normal. Why she didn’t report immediately.

Why.

Why.

Why.

And somehow the person who says they were raped ends up having to explain every decision they made before, during, and after the assault.

Then, if the case actually makes it to trial, they have to do it all over again while someone whose literal job is to create reasonable doubt looks for every inconsistency, imperfect memory, confusing text message, or “wrong” reaction they can find.

And we wonder why survivors don’t report.

We wonder why they don’t want to testify.

We wonder why they wait years to tell anyone.

No fucking wonder.

Sexual assault is uniquely difficult because so much of it happens in private. There often isn’t a video. There aren’t eyewitnesses. There may not be significant physical injuries. There isn’t always a stranger jumping out of an alley with a weapon.

Sometimes there are two people in a room.

One says it was consensual.

One says it wasn’t.

Then what?

I understand why our criminal justice system requires guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I understand why someone accused of a crime is presumed innocent. I understand the danger of a system where an accusation alone is enough to convict someone.

I don’t have a better solution.

But I’m also unwilling to accept that there isn’t one.

Because this one isn’t fucking working.

There has to be a way to investigate these crimes that doesn’t begin by treating a survivor’s behavior like a puzzle that needs to be solved.

There has to be a way to ask questions without turning normal trauma responses into evidence of dishonesty.

There has to be a way to acknowledge that memory after trauma can be fragmented and messy without automatically deciding that inconsistency equals fabrication.

There has to be a way to recognize that someone can make a bad decision without that decision becoming permission for someone else to violate them.

And there has to be a way to make survivors feel like coming forward might actually accomplish something.

We’ve done this before

This case created a groundswell that I haven’t seen since the #MeToo era. It sparked outrage and disgust. Thousands of women started sharing their stories. People are talking about consent. They’re talking about rape culture. They’re talking about victim blaming. They’re asking how this keeps happening.

And that is good.

It matters.

But I’ve watched this cycle before.

A horrific story breaks.

We are outraged.

Survivors speak.

People listen.

For a little while, it feels like maybe this is it. Maybe enough people finally understand. Maybe we’re finally angry enough. Maybe this time something will actually change.

Then another story takes over the news cycle.

The outrage fades.

Everyone goes back to their lives.

And there are still so damn many of us with stories.

That’s what is breaking me.

I’m losing faith by the second that we’re actually capable of shrinking the statistic.

I don’t want another viral survivor story.

I don’t want another hashtag.

I don’t want another few weeks where everyone collectively agrees that rape is terrible before we quietly move on.

I want fewer fucking rapists.

And I don’t know how we get there.

How do we take this moment, while people are paying attention, and make it mean something after they stop?

How do we turn a groundswell into change?

How do we make sure that five years from now we aren’t doing this all over again?

I don’t know.

I just know that “back to normal” isn’t good enough.

Because normal is how we got here.

Rape Culture

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment

Disclaimer: This post is from the perspective of a female with male attackers. It is important to acknowledge that men can also be the victims of sexual assault and women can be the aggressors.

We expel so much energy into telling people how to protect themselves from sexual assault or how to prevent it, but spend much less time telling people not to assault others. Why is the onus on us to constantly be on the defensive?  Why can’t the standard just be that no one assaults anyone?

We are built to believe that rape is a misunderstanding. Or that consent was given through body language. We question the victim and try to tear down their story, but don’t place the same burden on the offender. All they have to prove is that there was confusion surrounding the issue of consent and the victim loses. 

Rape is horribly unique because it takes sex, which is meant to be an enjoyable, intimate act, and flips the notion on its head. Most criminal trials are focused on proving whether the defendant is the one who committed the crime (murder, theft, etc.). With rape, juries first have to determine if a crime even occurred. That creates this feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness inside of a victim. Juries don’t question whether an individual wanted to be robbed or beaten, yet we are built to question whether a woman wanted to have sex and whether she made it clear if she didn’t. There is a constant cloud of doubt and judgement surrounding rape because the act of penetrating someone isn’t illegal – it is only illegal when there is no consent, no “permission”. With breaking & entering, there is a clear line — you can’t walk into a stranger’s house without an invitation or permission. Why should that be any different with sex? Why do we default to assuming the offender had permission?

Victim Blaming

Very few crimes rely as heavily on a confession as rape. It is also one of the few crimes in which people tend to question the integrity, credibility, and behavior of the victim, rather than focusing on the behavior of the offender and the offender’s intentions. When you’re the victim of a burglary, nobody says, “well your curtains were open and everyone can see your stuff, what did you expect? You left your door unlocked, so you were asking to be robbed”, but when you are raped, society asks, “what were you wearing? Did you flirt with him and lead him on? You must have indicated you were interested.” When I came forward (on the cruise), I found the need to defend myself, despite being the victim.

The Absence of Violence

There is this notion that rape is always violent or the victim kicked and screamed or repeatedly said “no”. That isn’t always the case. And the media’s sensationalized portrayal of only the most violent of cases can cause other victims to feel invalidated or to trivialize what happened to them. It can prevent people from coming forward for fear of not being believed or being called “dramatic”. Statistically, the vast majority of sexual assaults do NOT include a weapon.

My Experiences with Harassment

I don’t think men truly grasp what we go through as women. I’m not talking politically or professionally. I am speaking in terms of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and microaggressions that we are programmed to accept as just a standard part of life.

At age fourteen, a boy on my bus started texting me and asking for topless pics.

At fifteen, an older guy connected with me on MySpace and started grooming me (asking me how my day at school was and saying I could tell him anything, while simultaneously asking for pictures and offering to buy me a plane/train ticket to Boston to visit him).

At sixteen, I was digitally raped by a stranger on a flight overseas.

At eighteen, I was drugged and raped by a stranger on a cruise, just narrowly avoiding a gang rape. The following day, I was called a “slut” and a “dirty whore” (by his friends) for reporting the assault.

At nineteen, I started receiving unsolicited dick pics and dirty Facebook messages from strangers.

At twenty, I was riding a bus and a man stuck his hand up my dress. I was dancing in a club and a man grabbed my breast. My roommates and I were leaving dinner and a man started following us home. I was dancing at a bar and a man grabbed my crotch, then tried following me into the bathroom when I fled. These were all in a two-month span while studying abroad.

At twenty-three, I was working in the city and started encountering hecklers on the streets and on public transportation. There’d be an occasional whistle in my direction or a “hey baby” as I walked past. Sometimes a repeated “hey beautiful, how are you? Hey, hey I’m talking to you. I know you hear me, bitch”. One man flat out told me that if we were in a dark alley instead of on the subway, he’d attack me then leave me for dead.

At twenty-eight, I was assaulted on the train to work.

I know countless other women who have endured similar experiences. At a certain point, you start to normalize the harassment and assaults. Suddenly, being groped in a bar or club doesn’t even seem that bad. It is a sad testament to the society we live in.

What Needs to Change?

Bringing awareness to these issues is only step one. We need to create a society that allows women to tell their stories without fear of judgement, retaliation, or invalidation. No one’s experience should be trivialized. When we are silenced, we are left feeling ashamed of what has happened. We treat assault like a secret – a scarlet letter. No one should have to carry the burden of their past alone.

Football

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment

I’ve been a Buffalo Bills fan since birth. I was born into the Mafia in the peak of our Super Bowl glory. Growing up, my dad always had the game on and I’d watch it with him, though I never really followed what was happening. As I got older, I got busier and didn’t carve out time to watch the games on Sundays. It’s usually when I was cramming in all my homework that was due the next day that I’d avoided all weekend. Once I moved away from WNY, however, I started watching the games more. It helped fill the void and cure some of the homesickness.

Once COVID hit and my choice of social activities was even more limited, I threw myself into the sport. My passion for it has only been growing season by season. Slowly, but surely, I started learning the rules, the players, the stats, etc.

Football became my escape. It was my safe space. When I was watching a game, I didn’t think about the work I was behind on or having to clean the apartment or the twelve hundred other worries that were always floating around in my head. It was all about the game and the pride I felt in my hometown.

Late last week, however, my safe space was invaded. The team’s rookie punter (the “punt god”) was accused of participating in the gang rape of a 17-year-old at a Halloween party last October. The young woman was handed a drink that she thinks was spiked and then she was led, by the punter, to a room where he and two other teammates of his raped her for over an hour.

If you’ve read “The Second Trauma”, you’ll understand why this story hit so close to home. I was 18 when my drink was spiked and I was led to a stateroom on a cruise ship and raped by one man, while another was waiting for his turn. The magnitude of the assaults is obviously different, but it doesn’t change the impact.

The way the Bills handled the allegations was less than ideal, which only exasperated the situation. The victim’s lawyer alerted the Bills’ legal team to his client’s accusations at the end of July. Management either did their own investigation into the claims and didn’t find enough evidence to act or willfully ignored the issue.

On Monday, August 22nd, they chose to release our veteran punter, which secured the “punt god” a spot on our roster this season.

On Thursday, August 25th, the victim’s lawyer filed her civil suit against the “punt god”. The suit made national news and the Bills were forced to comment on the claims. They said they had done a thorough investigation and had no further comments. That didn’t go over well with fans.

By Friday evening, public pressure to act had become so intense that the Bills opted to keep the punter out of the final preseason game. The press conference after the game was rough. Reporters kept pushing the issue and our coach was running out of responses. He was visibly shaken by the whole ordeal.

When the team didn’t immediately release the punter on Friday, fans were shocked. We have a strong team this year and we can’t afford for the players to be distracted by the allegations. The “punt god” became a distraction to his teammates and marred the team’s public image.

Finally, on Saturday evening after practice, the Bills held a press conference where the coach and GM announced they had released the punter. This was their only option. The media and the public forced their hand. It was the right move, though it would have been more impactful if they had done it before the public outcry. Now, instead, the client’s lawyer is dragging our team through the mud for not acting sooner (perhaps a month ago when they were first alerted to the assault). The lawyer has also pointed out that the team’s “thorough investigation” didn’t include talking to him or his client.

There are a few emotions/thoughts I’m filtering between right now:

  • My “safe space” no longer feels safe. At the moment, football makes me think of sexual assault. And I’m not sure how long it will take for my brain to stop associating the two.
  • My PTSD is in overdrive. This whole ordeal has been very triggering. And it’s more than just the similarities I mentioned previously. The biggest thing that is triggering me is the notion of entitlement. Similar to veterans/active military, athletes have an air about them. They tend to think they’re untouchable or above the law. That is what is sticking with me. And because I’ve been so triggered, I’ve been afraid to sleep. I’m scared that I’ll have more night terrors.
  • I’m proud (and relieved) that the vast majority of the comments in the Bills Mafia groups I follow were in support of releasing the “punt god” from the roster. I’m glad people are starting to put the culture and public image of the team over the desire to win games.
  • I’m frustrated that they didn’t release him from the team back in July when they were first informed about the allegations. Actions speak louder than words. They must have known this would be distracting for the other players when it surfaced. And they let it get too close to kickoff.
  • I’m disgusted that the punter’s parents released a statement defending their son and saying he lost his job and is receiving death threats and their whole family has been “cancelled”. You are not the victim here.

Thoughts on Roe v Wade

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment

I have always tried to keep my thoughts on “controversial” or divisive topics to myself, but the overturning of Roe v Wade was my tipping point. This isn’t about politics. It isn’t about religion or morality. It is about our basic rights as women.

When the government retains control over our bodies and our reproductive rights, we are seen as nothing more than baby-making machines. We are forced to populate the world at whatever cost.

The government is endowing unborn babies with more rights than the women bringing them into existence. The impregnators can just walk away. They have none of the same restrictions on how they spend the next 9 months of their lives. They’re not being held responsible or accountable for anything.

Think of all the babies that will be born into poverty or into broken homes. The infants that will be abandoned, neglected, unwanted, resented, or unloved. Babies who will be born into a country divided. A country with a formula shortage, no universal healthcare, and racism on the rise. A country that insisted the baby be here, but is unwilling to provide for it.

Think of the women that cannot afford proper healthcare. The women who will give birth in unclean or unsafe conditions. The women who risk bleeding out. Who will have to risk their own health and safety to deliver an unwanted baby.

Think of the women whose birth control failed them. The pills didn’t work. The condom broke. The women and teens who were being careful and are now being punished. Who now have to put their futures on hold. Whose lives will never be the same. How many dreams will they be forced to give up on?

Think of the women who have wanted so desperately to be mothers, only to find out their fetus is unviable. They will have to carry it to term. They will have to be constantly reminded of how close they were to what they’d always wanted. They will have to delay moving on. Grieving.

Think of the women who are told their pregnancy is destroying them and they may not survive. They cannot terminate the pregnancy to save their own life.

Think of the doctors and nurses who have to watch their patients suffer, who are forced to choose between saving their patients’ lives or saving their career.

Think of all the women who will be the victims of rape, incest, stealthing (removing the condom without consent), etc. They’ve already been victimized. And now the government is telling them they have to spend the next nine months being revictimized as they carry around their perpetrator’s child.

And the states that so graciously allow exceptions for rape — I’d love to know how that works. What is the process for requesting an exemption under these conditions? What burden of proof is required? If a conviction is required for the clause to take effect, it won’t even be relevant. The wheels of justice are too slow. You shouldn’t have to win a case against your attacker to abort the baby he put in you.

Beyond that, what if the father then has rights to the child you were forced to carry? He will forever be a presence in his victim’s life. This ruling turns men into weapons and women into passive victims.

Why do fetuses have rights and the women carrying them are treated merely as “vessels”? We are not here to populate your world at the cost of our own sanity, financial stability, health, or life.

Unprompted Trauma Confessions

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment

In the last year, I have started speaking more about my assaults, which has been cathartic and freeing, but also extremely emotional and draining. I had this notion that finally sharing my story would be a magical fix – the clouds would part and the guilt, shame, and trauma would wash away. I thought my flashbacks would cease, my triggers would no longer set off a fire inside me, & I would gain back the self-confidence and trust I lost long ago. 

As you can imagine, that wasn’t the case. Speaking up did give me a quick adrenaline boost and a feeling of pride and closure. It was short lived, though. It was followed by disappointment – disappointment in not feeling “healed”, in not speaking up sooner, in opening a door I could no longer shut. Exposing yourself and your deepest, most vulnerable experiences is truly terrifying, especially on the internet. 

I spent so many years avoiding posting about my assaults because I didn’t want to make OTHER people uncomfortable. I didn’t want them to look at me with pity at events or family gatherings. I didn’t want them talking about me when I wasn’t around. Or telling me how they would have “handled the situation”. Or telling me about a similar situation they’d been in with no lead up. I am all for supporting other survivors and am more than happy to listen if you want to confide in me, but it can’t be unprompted. That is very triggering. 

I have this debilitating and seemingly unavoidable habit of immediately trivializing my own assaults after hearing about someone else’s. Being reminded how common sexual assault is makes me feel less alone, but it also makes me increasingly disgusted with humanity, and, most importantly, it makes me question why I can’t seem to process it and work through it as fast as other people. If these assaults are why I don’t have my shit together, but other people with similar stories do have theirs together, then there must be something wrong with me. That’s how my brain thinks about it. Hearing about a person who has a similar story and is now thriving should, logically, give me hope. But instead it makes me feel inadequate. And then it’s just one more thing I’m “bad” at – healing. 

I need to be in the right head space or it can set me back. It may sound selfish, but is a boundary I feel strongly about. In order to be the best support system I can for someone, I need to have the mental capacity to commit to helping. 

Independence Day

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment 
July 4th is a holiday 
That Americans adore 
A celebration of freedom
With red, white, & blue galore

Barbecues and country music,
Burgers, hot dogs, apple pie
The constant boom of fireworks 
Sparkling colors in the sky

Block parties and family picnics
Are traditions every year
Floating & swimming in the lake
Playing lawn games, drinking beer

An afternoon spent on the beach 
And enjoying the outdoors
Evenings around the campfire
Telling jokes and making S’mores

What should normally be a fun day
Is instead one that I dread
Forever tainted by my past
And the flashbacks in my head

July third, two thousand seven
At an innocent sixteen 
I flew from O’Hare to Frankfurt
Unprepared for the next scene 

I was sexually assaulted
By the soldier on my right
Somewhere over the Atlantic 
In the middle of the night

It’s hard to give an exact date
Switching time zones in the sky 
But by the time the plane landed
It was the Fourth of July 

The holiday and tragedy
Fused together in my brain
Patriotic celebrations
Have come to signify pain

It gets harder each year to smile
And pretend that I am fine
I’ve spent far too long suppressing
All the demons in my mind

Written July 3, 2021

Flashbacks

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment 
The memories resurface
Bad thoughts flutter through my mind
I feel I’m in the moment
Every noise reminds

Every movement I felt
I can feel over again
And every push I gave to him
Begins to wear me thin

The loud unspoken refusals
Sear into my brain
As I hear every utterance
The dirty words remain

I’ve lost control completely
He’s gotten in my head
I cannot tell if it’s a dream
Til I wake up in bed

I realize that I’m safe now
But it hasn’t yet sunk in
I feel that he can see me
That every stranger’s him

I can’t rest til he’s sorry
Til he admits to me it’s true
But right now I feel so helpless
Unsure of what to do

I want for him to suffer
Like he has done to me
For all his loved ones to know
What only I can see

I hate that he can go on
Like there was no assault
And I’m feeling so shameful
Believing it’s my fault

A piece of me left with him
There’s no way to be whole
Cause he can never give back
My virginity he stole

Written December 2009

Missing Piece

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment 
I shatter the image, the pieces are scattered
Ripped into the smallest of shreds
But I’m feeling empty missing what mattered
And knowing it’s still in my head

Walking quickly, picking up step
Leaving the past behind
Not looking back to even check
I just want it out of my mind

Like an afternoon shadow, it looms and haunts
Beating down on my guilty soul
I try to escape it, but it forever taunts
And I can’t get out of this hole

An abandoned house, empty and cold
Floorboards creaking in the night
And all you can feel is the past you sold
To win temptation’s fight

Lightning flashes and thunder resounds
To mimic the pounding in your head
Your past is winning; you’re losing ground
And there’s nothing that can be said

You attempt to piece the image back together
To shake the guilt from your mind
But it can’t be reversed – not ever
For there’s one piece that you won’t find

He took a piece when he disappeared
And buried it in the deepest of holes
This defines all that you feared – 
You’ll never get the piece he stole

Always wishing to be guiltless, complete
But the loss is there to remind
Of his thoughtless act and ultimate deceit
And the peace you’ll never find

Written October 2008

Reactions to the Brock Turner Case

Sara RutherfordLeave a comment

This is a dual (two-part) poem. This first part outlines my feelings and reactions to the Brock Turner case.

Part I

Too naive to think the worst
She struggles with self-blaming
Fears no one will understand
The guilt and the slut-shaming

But the problem lies with him
And his complete denial
That anything that he did
Will ever go to trial

To rape is a conscious choice
You cant blame it on the booze
Or try to play the victim
When your story hits the news

Actions have consequences
Rape isn't victimless crime
No one cares that your life changed
They just care that you do time

There's no free pass for assault
No exemption or clean slate
No wealth, privilege, or power
Can make up for all that hate

How do you face yourself
Or justify your sins?
Even if you go to jail
Nobody really wins

Her life has changed forever
Her confidence is shattered
Meanwhile you are adamant
That she should just feel flattered

This continuation is a reflection on my own assault in the wake of the Brock Turner ruling. The light sentencing the defendant received, despite the guilty verdict, caused feelings I had long-buried, to reemerge.

Part II

There was no justice for me
No apology, no guilt
I'll never have peace of mind
With this resentment that I've built

But why does he get to walk
When I feel so paralyzed
He kept his wife and children
But if only they realized

The monster that they live with
And all the hurt he caused
A man who keeps advancing
While my future still feels paused

But that's merely a pipe dream
They will never know the truth
Much like I will never have
A chance to live my youth

Written in June 2016