Category: Uncategorized

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.

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.

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.