I was the 'perfect' rape victim but still I didn't go to police - ABC... http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-06/speaking-out-about-sexua...

I was the 'perfect' rape

victim but still I didn't go to
police
If sexual assault was treated like any other crime, I might have gone to
police that night covered in bruises and DNA evidence. Instead my
silence has cost me dearly.

By Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Illustrations by Amani Haydar
Updated Fri 6 Jul 2018, 1:42pm

OPINION

Growing up, I was a gymnast. The serious, train-six-times-a-week-and-

never-do-anything-else kind.

By the time I was 10, I had represented NSW at national

championships, and won. By the time I was 12, I had represented

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Australia.

By 15, I was preparing for my second World Championships. I had

been training relentlessly, day in, day out. I visualised my routines
every night as I fell asleep, ensuring I had the mental strength to
withstand the impossible stunts I would be called on to perform the
following day.

Weakness was the one thing we were all taught to avoid, and I took
this lesson very seriously, downing raw eggs and doing weightlifting,
crunches, handstand push-ups and toe-pointing exercises every day.

Nothing could deter me; I would push my body to its limits and then
further. I felt invincible.

I had to be perfect, and make it seem effortless.

I had to be strong and powerful and graceful Sexual assault support
services:
and light, all at the same time. I had to smile.
1800 RESPECT: 1800 737 732
Lifeline: 131 114
To do all these things at once takes a kind of
Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636
mind-body alignment that I have been dreaming
of every since I stepped off the floor for the last
time. My body and my mind, it seemed, belonged wholly to me.

Until they didn't.

When I was 15 I was violently raped by a stranger on a night out with

friends. I was too young to understand the complexity of this kind of
violence but old enough to know I should be deeply ashamed of it —
and so I told no-one. The physical trauma I experienced has wreaked
havoc on my body and left me with two chronic illnesses that will stay
with me for life.

My silence has cost me dearly.

But in recent months, as I've watched the unfolding of the #MeToo

movement and the growing number of women speaking about their
experiences of sexual harassment, the acquittal of Sydney man Luke
Lazarus for sexual assault, and the tragic rape and murder of
Melbourne's Eurydice Dixon, I've realised my inability to speak about
the way male violence has affected me only contributes to the stigma
that enforced my silence.

So I have decided, after a decade of keeping quiet, to tell my story in

the hope that it will create space for others to do the same, and that we
might finally stop shaming and blaming women for the sexual crimes
perpetrated against them.

Fight, flight or freeze

It was 2007. I was out in the city on a Saturday night with three friends,
at a dingy karaoke bar that smelled of damp and cigarette smoke and,

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crucially, sold over-priced vodka cruisers to underage girls.

We didn't drink very much — we were too absorbed in the frivolity of

singing nasty songs about boys we liked who were playing hard-to-get.

I sang a truly awful rendition of Justin Timberlake's Cry Me a River,

inserting the name of the boy I was chasing into the end of every
chorus. My friends joined in.

It felt so good, as girls, to find a space where we could scream about

the boys who had wronged us with no-one watching.

We left the bar not long after the Justin Timberlake song, at about 9pm,
because we'd run out of money. Once out in the glow of Pitt Street, a
group of four men approached and started talking to us, purposefully, I
realised later, distracting my three friends as a fifth, out of nowhere,
appeared behind me and slipped his hand into mine.

Come with me, he whispered.

No-one noticed us leave. He was gripping my hand so tightly I thought

he might break my fingers. He marched me into the nearby McDonalds
and up several flights of stairs to a dusty, disused bathroom. It was
empty, and deathly quiet. I tried to fight him off and catch the eyes of
other people in the restaurant but to no avail.

He took me into a stall, locked the door and violently assaulted me. I
had never had sex consensually so I had no reference point for what
was happening to me apart from what I'd seen in movies, but it was the
most severe pain I had ever experienced.

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The human body's autonomic nervous system gives it three options in

traumatic situations: fight, flight, or freeze.

I lunged at the latch of the stall door but he shifted his weight in front of
it and didn't move from that position. Flight was apparently not an
option.

This man, I estimated, was about 35, and made almost entirely of
muscle. I, on the other hand, was little over 40 kilos and as thin and
spindly as a girl can possibly be while still being able to excel as an
athlete.

I tried to push myself away from him and reach for the door, but he
pulled out a Swiss army knife and held it against my throat. Fight, it
seemed, was also out of the question.

When fight and flight fail and danger is still present, the autonomic
nervous system sends a signal to the brain that death is imminent and
the body begins to prepare itself, releasing a powerful natural analgesic
and essentially cutting off signals from all major nerve endings (this is
why people who have experienced severe physical trauma often recall
not feeling any pain at the very worst moments).

This part of the process is called "freeze".

At the same time the body numbs, the brain sends itself into a state of
total dissociation, again to protect us from experiencing the pain and
horror of the moments right before we die.

This process makes us feel calm, allowing us to survey the situation

one final time for possible escape routes.

In this state, I noticed a glass bottle leaning against the door.

Instinctively I bent over, grabbed it, and smashed it over the porcelain
toilet bowl. This startled my attacker for only a few seconds, but it was
enough.

I reached for the door, unlocked it, and ran as fast as my tiny, teenaged
legs could carry me. I ran down the first flight of stairs, then the second,
then the third.

Out on the street, I found my friends looking desperate, wondering

where I could have gone. Together, the four of us ran around the corner
and I collapsed into a nook next to what was then a Hungry Jacks.

All I remember now is the sound of my gasping breath, the strength of

my hands as I clutched my stomach, and the only words I could
muster: It hurts.

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When I got home, I collapsed in the shower,

bleeding, thinking only of the piercing sound What happens when a sexual
assault complainant is strong and
that thick glass makes when it smashes. I got
angry?
up the next morning as usual. I washed the
stale cigarette smell out of my hair. I faked an
injury at training as a cover for the bright purple
bruises snaked across my stomach.

I went to school on the Monday and shared

stories about the cheesy pop songs we sang
about the crushes we couldn't let go of. I told
The author of new book Eggshell Skull,
no-one of the assault. Bri Lee, says survivors of sexual assault
can triumph simply by speaking their truth.
About 18 months later I was struck down
suddenly by unbearable abdominal pain. I threw
up from the sheer force of it. I started to bleed everywhere. I passed
out.

Over the next few years my body started to break down, physically, in a
way that I assumed to be entirely unconnected to the event I had tried
so hard to forget.

I started experiencing a litany of organic failures that grew, developed

and shape-shifted: first my bladder, then my appendix, then my uterus,
then my bowel.

Finally, after a frustrating process of trying to convince doctors that my

pain was real, I was diagnosed with endometriosis. My surgeon was
the first doctor who believed me, and it is no exaggeration to say his
understanding of the disease has changed my life.

Some years later I was also diagnosed with Crohn's disease. My body,
it seemed, was in full-scale revolt.

The body keeps the score

Earlier this year I read the influential book on the physiological impacts
of trauma called The Body Keeps The Score. The culmination of the
life's work of renowned psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, the 2014 book
explains the lasting impacts of traumatic events on the immune system,
nervous system, muscular system and brain.

The longer a physical assault or accident is held in these systems

without being treated, van der Kolk says, the more likely it will
eventually manifest as a physical dysfunction.

According to van der Kolk, the reason the body reacts so strongly to
trauma is that the fight, flight or freeze response — while extremely
useful in terms of survival — is very difficult for the body to cope with
long-term.

When traumatic events are not treated, the memory of the event

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remains in the state in which it was experienced: dissociated,

disjointed, fragmented.

It cannot be rearranged into a logical narrative, and instead remains

trapped in the brain as flashes of light, sound, smell — rogue
fragments of an unbearable memory that leak out in the mind's
weakest moments.

Each time one of the fragments leaks out —

when we smell a familiar smell, for example, or How the justice system lets down
victims of sexual assault
hear a sound that plays in the background of
the memory — our brain reacts not as though it
is something that has happened in our past, but
as though it is still happening; as though it is a
mortal threat we are still trying to escape.

Our brain and body dutifully re-enter fight, flight

or freeze, sometimes for long periods, despite
Being raped was the first of countless
there being nothing to run from.
challenges I faced as a victim of sexual
assault.
There is an authoritative body of research that
shows it is possible to heal almost all physical
symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, but the stigma surrounding
sexual assault leads many people to go years without seeking the help
they need.

Many medical professionals now believe that the digestive system's

dysfunctional response to untreated trauma is one of the causes of
abdominal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's
disease, and endometriosis. It is also believed to cause migraines,
fibromyalgia, and generalised chronic pain.

It never occurred to me that these physical ailments, all appearing in

the same part of me, could have a common cause.

And perhaps they don't; the thing I have learned about medicine, and
life, is that it is unable to hand us an exact formula for causation, no
matter how desperately we want it to. My illnesses could have been
triggered by any number of things, or simply bad luck. I will never know
for certain.

But there is one thing I do know to be true: the body keeps the score.

Escaping memories that are stuck like a

virus
I am 26 now, and have finally realised that strength does not always
mean feigning indifference, that the bravest thing to do was let my
attacker catch me. To realise I did not have to run from him anymore.
To recognise I had survived.

And so last year, almost a decade after the assault, I began the long

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process of healing.

I started working with a skilled women's health physiotherapist who is

trained in dealing with the persistent physical effects of severe sexual
trauma. She has taught me how to quieten my symptoms with
breathing exercises, stretching, mindfulness and massage, to retrain
my body not to freeze up every time it is touched.

I found a sex therapist who has dedicated herself to the psychiatric

elements of my care, and who has taught me everything I know about
the way traumatic memories can get stuck in the brain like a virus,
unprocessed and inescapable.

And I have a psychiatrist who has led me through sessions of an

intense therapy using rapid eye movements that forces the brain to
recall a traumatic memory in full — not in fragments, not in flashes —
in a safe environment after which the brain can file it away as
something I lived through but no longer need to live through.

Of course, not everything can be healed.

The physical disorders I have developed probably as a result of the

attack are life-long. They can be managed, but they cannot be cured.

I will never have the physical capacity I had as a teenager; my body will
never again be the driving force of my life. It will never be the driving

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force of anything, really.

This is a theft for which I will never be compensated. Bearing the

weight of that reality has been a difficult process, but I have finally
come to accept it. It is no longer a source of anger, or fear, or
resentment. It just is.

As one of my favourite authors Cheryl Strayed wisely wrote,

acceptance is a small, quiet room.

What I can choose, though, is how I respond to it. In one of her now-
famous Dear Sugar columns, Strayed told the following anecdote when
giving advice to a rape victim:

I have a friend who is 20 years older than me who was raped

three different times over the course of her life … I asked her
how she recovered from them, how she continued having
healthy sexual relationships with men. She told me that at a
certain point we get to decide who it is we allow to influence us.
She said "I could allow myself to be influenced by three men
who screwed me against my will or I could allow myself to be
influenced by Van Gogh. I chose Van Gogh."

When I read those words I thought of all of the writers who kept me
company during the darkest moments of the last 12 months. The
women whose strength convinced me there was a safe and kind world
waiting for me if I was brave enough to choose it.

I thought of my favourite author, Elena Ferrante, and the way her

exquisite story of female friendship showed me that women can be
both soft and powerful; that tenderness and strength are not antithetical
but equivalent.

That with vulnerability and resilience it is possible for women like her
protagonist, Elena Greco, to overcome unbearable pasts and take
charge of their own narratives in all of their complexity, as both author
and subject.

I can choose to be influenced by the violent man in the abandoned

bathroom or I can choose to be influenced by the strength and
vulnerability of Elena Greco.

I am choosing Elena Greco.

Stop blaming women for male violence

I am telling this story now because, unlike so many survivors, I am
fortunate enough to be able to access the medical care I need to
recover. I am telling this story because as a result of that care, I feel
strong enough to speak out.

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I am telling this story because three weeks ago 22-year-old Eurydice

Dixon was raped and murdered on her way home and the first instinct
of some was to caution women about keeping themselves safe.

I am telling this story because unlike Eurydice, I was lucky enough to

survive.

If we listen to the stories of survivors, we might gain insight into how

damaging it is for women to be exposed to public conversations in
which we are held responsible for our own safety.

Crucially, these conversations keep many of us quiet.

Every time we blame victims for the crimes of their perpetrators we

construct a world in which traumatised women feel too ashamed to
seek help. In which we are scared to admit what happened to us lest it
transpires that we did not follow the rules.

We also need to fundamentally change the way we think — and talk —

about sexual consent and embrace the idea that consent must be
enthusiastic, specific and explicit.

This needs to begin with law reform.

The law currently requires victims to prove they took active steps to
communicate their lack of consent. But that contradicts the idea that

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women are entitled to be in control of their actions.

If we see women as playing an autonomous and dignified role in their

sexual lives, however, we must require consent to be actively
communicated.

And while 10,944 sexual offence incidents were reported to police in

NSW in 2015, just 1,603 went to court, and less than 5 per cent of
offenders found guilty received a custodial sentence.

In the legal profession, we refer to this as a crime that is formally

illegal, but socially accepted. Making the law tougher on perpetrators is
the first step in changing that, and thanks to women like Saxon Mullins,
change is afoot.

We must also work harder to de-stigmatise

sexual assault. We must encourage women to 'I am that girl'
talk about it, openly, unashamedly, and let them
know that if they do come forward, we will
believe them.

That means challenging the attitudes that

contribute to a culture of disrespect for — and
ultimately violence towards — women.
Every time we excuse, justify, or simply ignore
acts of male violence, every time we dismiss it
as "boys will be boys", we reinforce the notion
Saxon Mullins was at the centre of one of
Australia's most controversial rape trials.
Her story raises troubling questions about
how the law interprets consent.

that the world is never truly safe for women.

If the world had not taught me that I was assaulted because I failed to
"take responsibility" for my safety, I might have gone to the police that
night, covered in scratches, bruises, DNA evidence.

Perhaps, eventually, I would have been compensated by my attacker

for the tens of thousands of dollars I've lost to medical bills, forgone
wages, therapy.

What happened to me was an anomaly — a random act of violence

committed by a stranger in the night.

Statistically, however, most acts of sexual violence are committed by

people who are known to the victim, in circumstances where the
boundaries of consent are far more nuanced.

We need to get to a point in this conversation where victims are sure of

their right to seek help, and justice. How can we possibly get there
when I am certain of my encounter's legal definition, but still ashamed
to speak its name?

If sexual assault was treated by the law and by our culture like any
other physical trauma or violent crime — a car accident, a severe
sports injury — it would not have taken me 10 years to ask for help.

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I would not have wasted years of my life running from its shadow,
hoping it might never catch me. I would not have been left breathless,
gasping for air, but never able to reach that distant street corner.

It would not have taken me 10 years to choose Elena Greco.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a journalist and writer and works as a

paralegal at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers. She tweets at
@LuciaOC_.

Topics: women, sexuality, sexual-offences, laws, womens-health,

australia

First posted Fri 6 Jul 2018, 6:30am

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