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.
