A note:
I wrote this during the confirmation hearings of Justice Kavanaugh in 2018. When the accusation of Christine Blasey Ford and other women came to light, many of my conservative friends quickly jumped to Kavanaugh’s defense citing lack of evidence and accusing the women of lying. There was lots of worry about men being falsely accused and suffering because of it. Because I was LDS still at the time, the majority of the responses I saw were in this vein of conservative talking point response.I have published this before, but only briefly before taking it down.
This week has been rough.
For lots and lots of reasons. Some of the suffering is mine, and some of it is the suffering of people of I love. And some of it is the suffering of strangers.
It is hard for me to talk about the stuff that is mine.
Facebook has been a brutal kind of torture this week. Women that I respect and love are scared and hurt and angry about the Kavanaugh hearings. Some are seeing political machinations and they fear for the integrity of our democracy. Some are afraid of potentially false accusations negatively affecting their lives in the future.
And some of us are being forced to confront our own traumas that we would much rather leave in the past and never think about again.
And in all the fear we are attacking each other.
My dear sisters, that I love so much, please know that the way you choose to talk about this is hurting people you love.
The issue of proof in a sexual assault case is always tricky. In most cases it can never be more than a he said she said. How could it be? What evidence could there be? Not that it means what she said is always true. But how can victims be believed in any way that matters? Usually they can’t.
My friends, please know that just because she can’t remember the exact address or date, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just because she didn’t report it for a long long time, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Some women are judging her story, and, unintentionally, by extension other victims stories, by their own experience. Just because you can remember every detail and reported right away, doesn’t mean that is the only way it could be true. We wouldn’t, I hope, judge any other trauma by the way we personally handled it. Her story could still very well be true.
How do I know?
I was sexually assaulted in high school. I cannot tell you an exact day or place, though there are certainly some details I remember very very clearly. And I never reported it. The only person who knows my story is my husband and my attacker. And my guess is, since it wasn’t traumatic for him, the guy doesn’t remember it.
In all of the #metoo movement where women bravely came out and shared their stories, all the courage I could ever muster was a hashtag. And I am still not willing to talk about it, for many many reasons. Please don’t ask me about it. But chances are I am not your only silently suffering friend.
I am saying this now because I felt like I needed to say, please be careful and compassionate about how you talk about this on social media, and to your friends. This is all complicated, I totally get that. But I totally believe complication still allows room for compassion.
No matter what investigations happen or don’t, no matter what is uncovered, there is a good chance no one but the people who lived it will ever be sure of the truth. As they remember it.
But maybe it doesn’t matter what the truth of their situation is for most of us. As I tell my kids, we can only control our own choices, not other peoples. I hope we can choose to be kind.
