Content warning: sexual assault
Dear Attorney H.,
First, I’d like to thank you for all that you put into your decision. I know it was not made easily and that it might be different if you weren’t working within a system that punishes victims more than it does offenders. I also know you were, at least in some respects, trying to protect me.
Still, your decision is as crushing as it is disempowering. You, and you alone had the power to take this case forward, name the crimes my rapist committed (I am assuming you feel crimes were committed from our conversations, but forgive me if I’m wrong), and call on him to clear his name. It was you who had the power to ensure he experienced consequences, and it was you who chose not to in the interest of avoiding a trial.
Criminal charges and a trial — whether ultimately dropped or lost — are, at the very least, inconveniences. In doing this, you effectively acted as the judge, jury, and defense in my case, and as a result of your decision, the only repercussion that he’s effectively experienced is a police interview. Small potatoes, given what I’ve experienced as a result of consenting to two sexual acts with a man I didn’t know—a mistake for which I pay every day, in ways that are physical, concrete, bodily, and quantifiable as much as they are intangible, unquantifiable, and even existential.
Since the night that I consented to vaginal and oral sex with J. (September 13, 2020), I experienced the following consequences, among others, and not necessarily in this order: a raw throat from oral sex turned violent; restrained, and thereby bruised, arms; two slaps to the face; strangulation, which I thought would turn into death; anal rape, with fingers and a penis — you said you forgot which act he stopped, when you said that doing so was enough for the jury to believe his account, it was the latter; being held down by the back of my neck face down into a bed; shock; a condom removed without my knowledge or ability to do anything about it; having lubricant applied to me without my consent; hearing a man brag about double penetrating me when he knew I didn’t like it; threats of future anal rape; muffled hearing for 3 days; bruising on my neck; the inability to wear hooded sweatshirts; the inability to tolerate scarves; anxiety when wearing a seatbelt; the loss of a pair of pants, my undergarments, my favorite tank top, and a sweatshirt; the inability to eat solid foods without pain for 5 days; fear whenever a man’s face flushes in anger; fear of people clapping their hands, or any other type of smacking; fear of being in the city of De Pere; fear of the word “sir” and an inability to utter it; an all-day hospital visit; an intolerance of license plate stickers from the car dealership at which he works; a CT scan of my neck; the humiliation of having to ask a nurse to wash semen off my face; having to take a morning-after pill and countless STD preventatives; having to receive shots in my thigh for STD prevention; repeated pregnancy tests; unnecessary fear of a colonoscopy; an abnormal pap; the inability to be examined by a doctor without crying; panic attacks nearly every day; fear of Nissan Sentras, specifically blue ones, or any blue sedan; night terrors; 48 therapy visits; 2 weeks of absence from work; disrupted relationships; having my sexuality called into question; fear of hospital gowns; insomnia; an HIV test since my “encounter” was high-risk, and having explain why it was thus to the men administering the test; being stuck in the room as a timer counted down from 20 minutes while the HIV test remained on the table; having to stand in the very exposed entranceway of the local police department for over an hour because it was shift change and my rape happened to occur during a pandemic; having to report my rape to a man in a mask due to the same pandemic; an irrational fear of songs by the Beatles and men who play guitar; a hatred of Tinder, Bumble, and Snapchat; a fear of men’s sweatpants and athletic t-shirts, along with tattoo cuffs and men with reddish hair; having to recount and listen to the experience every day as part of therapy and in the interest of healing; and most recently, abandonment by a system that at some point I had started to believe would help me rather than the perpetrator of violent crimes.
And that is just a start, so forgive me for thinking that providing a police statement that “he legally didn’t even have to give” and whatever modicum of fear he experienced as a result is not justice.
To be fair, I don’t know what justice looks like for my experience. But I do know what injustice looks like, and that is how this case was handled — and how the system works. The system failed me. And you, as someone who holds a significant amount of power within that system, however limited it is by hypothetical jury decisions, failed me.
Rather than assume your choice is out of career interest, I want to believe that you do, as you claim, want to avoid putting me through a trial. What I can’t figure out is why you don’t want to put him through a trial, given that, for the majority of what happened that night, there was no consent to withdraw, and you told me that you believe it shouldn’t have happened. In accusing him of a crime and advocating for you to take my case forward, I have been forced to defend my actions. The fact that the legal system will neither require him to defend his actions nor formally condemn them by filing criminal charges makes me see the “criminal justice system” for what it too often is: an ally to white men who level violence against women and vulnerable populations.
You don’t know my history, so before I close, I want to tell you this: I have previously been a victim of sexual violence, and at the time, I did not have the ability nor the courage to report. This time, although I reported with the knowledge that a conviction was unlikely, I had hope that the system had changed in a way that would help women like me, women who juries will never see as unblemished, despite whatever violence their perpetrator has carried out on their bodies, despite not knowing what it is to see the world going black while someone violates them in a way that is both intimate and dehumanizing.
I want to say I’m disappointed that I let that hope in, but the people with whom I’m truly disappointed are those who enable the system to function as it does. I tried to change how I responded to a crime, which means I can’t be disappointed with myself. You, and the system in which you work, did not, so I am laying my disappointment where it belongs: with you and the criminal justice system.
The night I was raped and almost killed during my experience, J. talked to me about trafficking marijuana from his uncle’s farm in the U.P. of Michigan into Wisconsin (which, to my knowledge, never was investigated, even though I also reported that). On the way back, he was running stoplights on purpose, for the thrill of it, and he’d posted the video to Snapchat. I chided him, told him he shouldn’t do that, he could get in trouble or in an accident. He said, “you know what? I’m going to do whatever I want, and no one is going to stop me.”
He was right.
