Sexual Assault Profile\

English 2010
Haslam

Experiencing sexual assault or harrassment of some kind in a very common experience

for many people, but it is the most common among women. For so many, this problem is
overlooked and discarded.
In my research, I interviewed a young woman around my age named Savannah Slagel
and asked her to recount her story to me. I used the emotions she was experiencing during and
after the incident, to create a painting. In my painting, it features a young woman in black and
white, with her eyes blocked out with red. There are words all around her, filling in the blank
spaces. During our interview, one of the questions I asked Savannah was, “What were some of
the most hurtful things said to you about your experience?” Savannah mentioned to me that she
had a great support system out of the people she told, but it was her own words that were the
most hurtful. “I felt so ashamed of what had happened to me…”, she kept telling herself that
what she went through was all her own doing. She had put herself in that situation. I used these
words that Savannah was telling herself as the words in the background of the painting. The
painting reads, “Your Fault”, again and again behind her. When Savannah had taken her case to
court, her rapist pleaded not guilty at first, he accused her of lying about what he had done.
Another word featured in my painting behind the subject is, “Liar”. Eventually he pleaded guilty
to the case and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Savannah didn’t tell anyone about the
incident right away. In fact, it took one of the man’s friends to come forward to her parents.
Savannah had said that while she felt guilt, she also felt shame and the rest of her was numb.
To portray this, I painted the woman in black and white. On the read that obscures the woman’s
eyes, it reads, “SHAME”.
I conducted quite a few surveys on my social media accounts on the subject of sexual
assault as well. The most commonly reported feeling among the women who answered my
questions was shame. Many of these girls said they felt like it was all their fault and they could
have prevented it somehow. They were ashamed that it happened to them, even though they
were not the one at fault. That is why I chose to put “SHAME” over the woman’s eyes.
I made many decisions in my art piece, but the canvas was the most memorable to me. I
decided to paint the portrait on glass. Glass is so common in everyday life, yet we all seem to
overlook it and ignore it. In the article, “Surviving organized tolerance of sexual harassment: and
exploration of relisience, vulnerability, and harassment fatigue”, the author Jessican L. Ford
states that in a survey conducted with 187 assault victims, the results indicate that,
“organizational tolerance of sexual harrassment is a significant predictor of victim
vulnerability…” (Ford). What Ford is saying in this article is that this problem is so overlooked,
that it is becoming more common and more of a problem for the victim when discovered. Like in
my surveys conducted, many women felt the shame themselves, even though they weren’t the
ones committing the crime. They were the victims. The transparency of the subject of sexual
assault and harrassment is why I chose to paint on glass. This issue is so common, with more
than 87% of women reporting that they had experienced some sort of sexual harrassment on
my online survey. For every five women, four would have experienced sexual assault in their
lifetime and this issue is still overlooked. Just like glass, this issue is everywhere and it is in
everyday life. Everyone knows about it, yet it is still looked over and ignored.
 WORKS CITED:

Ford, Jessica L. “Surviving Organizational Tolerance of Sexual Harassment: An Exploration of

Resilience, Vulnerability, and Harassment Fatigue.” Taylor & Francis,
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00909882.2020.1739317.