and the jury is in

I’ve started and stopped this post probably five or ten times the past few days and in all honesty I still don’t know exactly what to say.

There was a highly publicized rape case at my university. Four men have been charged with raping a student and the jury just came back for two of them: guilty. Many people believe the case only made it to court because there was so much video support, both university surveillance and cell phone video the perpetrators took, and I tend to agree.

This is where I have to come clean: I was raped on two separate occasions, once when I was 12 and again when I was 15, and this inherently colors any opinions I have about the case. I also was the sorority sister of someone who was raped while attending Vanderbilt and I saw how terribly the university handled her case. Many of the prejudicial procedures that use to govern the judicial system in charge of such cases have changed, but it doesn’t change the fact that what they did to her and what they put her through was wrong. Until the most recent Title IX complaint against Vanderbilt and this case in particular came to light, I don’t think the administration thought twice about how their procedures encouraged rapists to roam the campus and send victims home traumatized.

The high profile case has been dubbed “The Vanderbilt Rape Case” in the local news and national media and the title makes me so mad. It is not the Vanderbilt rape case; it is a Vanderbilt rape case. I am sad to say that sexual assault is part of campus life. I think what I have vacillated the most about in writing this is what to say about solving the problem because I don’t think there are clear answers. This is not just a problem with athletic teams or a problem with greek life. If it was, it would be an easy fix. Growing up I always imagined rapists as scary strangers who broke into your house or stalked you like they do on Criminal Minds, but neither of my rapists looked like that at all. They were my friends, my boyfriends, people who I liked hanging out with and who I trusted. Stranger danger may be a catchy tagline but it is the people closest to you that are most often the ones who cause you harm. This girl was drugged by her boyfriend, taken back to someone’s dorm room and then raped by people that she knew. If someone can explain to me how to stop a problem like that, where men attack women who they claim to love and who trust them, please let me know, but I’m at a complete loss.

A lot of national attention is being paid to sexual assault on college campuses and I think that is great, but it makes it sound like it is a problem that starts in college. I am here to tell everyone that it is not, or at least it wasn’t for me. Boys still in high school thought it was okay to have sex with me without my permission, and it makes me think this is a problem that starts in middle and high school and then flourishes when you put a bunch of barely legal kids on a confined campus to live together. Yes, we have to change rape culture on college campuses, but we need to first make sexual education mandatory in middle and high school, and we need to make sure this education includes explicit information on what constitutes rape. I told a friend what happened to me after I was raped the second time and she told me that it couldn’t be rape because he was my boyfriend. There are a lot of myths out there and shaming of women for their perceived part in the act. Girls should have a safe place to go and let someone know what happened to them even if they were out drinking or somewhere they weren’t suppose to be, and often this is not their parents. And most importantly boys need to know this is wrong, that this is not just one of those boys will be boys things. I’m a huge believer that words matter, and a lot of changes need to be made in that department too. Rape needs to go the way of gay. It is no longer acceptable to say that something weird is gay and in that same light, it is not acceptable to say you were raped by a test. Rape is something specific and should not be trivialized by comparing it to something anything less traumatizing and earth shattering than it is.

Unless they successfully appeal their cases, these two men will spend a minimum of 15 years in prison without the possibility of parole. But I have been thinking of all of the cases without video proof and all of the other people who will not get this kind of justice. I remember how ashamed I felt both times when this happened to me, how I thought I must have done something to make them think I wanted it. This case helped me see that as much as we say it’s not your fault to people who have gone through this, the words feel hollow until you are able to say them to someone else. Justice looks so different to different people. I don’t know what justice would look like for me but I’m glad that we can all agree that justice was served in this case. That’s at least a good start.