#MeToo I Believe Women!
Tara Reade is the latest woman to be attacked in the media for coming forward and sharing her experience of sexual assault by a man in a position of power. In this case the man is Joe Biden, the almost guaranteed democratic candidate for U.S. president in the 2020 election. The scenario is all-too familiar: a woman comes forward and shares her very personal account of sexual misconduct/ abuse, possibly as a warning to the public of the man’s character, possibly to prevent it from happening to other women, and/or possibly because she needs to do it for herself – to break the silence that society has placed on women in these circumstances. Before Reade we had an unknown number of women “grabbed by their pussies” by Donald Trump; before that Christine Blasey Ford, assaulted by now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; before and during that we had over 80 women harassed and/or assaulted by Harvey Weinstein; before and during that we had the numerous girls and young women sex trafficked to high profile men by Jeffrey Epstein; before that there were over 60 women assaulted by Bill Cosby; before that Monica Lewinsky was forced to come forward after she had been seduced by Bill Clinton; and before that we had Anita Hill sexually harassed by then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas and subsequently humiliated by then Senate Judiciary chair Joe Biden during the senate hearings, and so on, and so on, and so on.
In the cases of Weinstein, Epstein, Cosby, and Clinton the women were vindicated – each of the men were publicly found to be guilty. The operative word being ‘publicly’ after years of disbelief by many that these prominent men could possibly commit such abuse and rather that the women were liars. However, I believe all of the women noted above. I believe women. Is that to say that there haven’t been cases in which women have made up stories. No, there absolutely have been; and those cases are tragic, especially for the millions of women and girls who endure such abuse from perpetrators, as well as from those who challenge them when they/we finally do speak our truths. And I believe that the women who have fabricated such stories are far and few between, and they too are victims of our misogynist world. As are the women who stand by and defend men who commit these abuses.
The questions that so often come up when women and girls do speak out in cases of sexual harassment, rape, and domestic violence if any time has lapsed are: “Why didn’t you go to the police?” “Why did you wait so long to tell anyone or to speak publically?” “Why did you continue to have a relationship with him?” “Why did you stay in the relationship?”
These are not questions of substance – they are questions that are used to control, to silence, to devalue, to punish, to disempower. And even if women/girls do speak out right away, go to the police, leave the situation /relationship, more often than not they/we are not believed and put through hell. These are all symptoms our global culture of misogyny.
Yet, even with the bricks stacked so historically and strongly against us and with the statistics on the abuses against women and girls so staggering (and when I say abuses, I mean everything from unequal pay, unequal division of labor, lack of recognition for childcare/caregiving as labor - to physical, sexual, emotional mental assault / harrassment), I do still believe and have hope that things are changing and will continue to change. The convictions of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby are game changers, as is the #MeToo movement. However, as Arwa Mahdawi rightly points out in her The Week in Patriarchy column on May 2, 2020 in The Guardian:
I’m not sure that the allegations against Biden will end up doing any serious damage to his campaign. However, the way in which the Democratic party and liberals have rallied behind him is going to do a huge amount of damage to #MeToo. Alyssa Milano, the woman who helped mainstream #MeToo, choosing to believe Biden over Reade will be brought up every single time someone says “believe women”. The way in which liberals downplayed allegations against Biden will be used as ammunition every single time someone on the right is accused of sexual assault.
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I’ll tell you what’s an absolute disgrace to America: the fact that, in November, women will be forced to choose between two men credibly accused of sexual assault for president.
I couldn’t agree more. As a survivor a physical/sexual abuse I too have been very public in sharing my experiences over the past several years. While my ‘breaking the silence’ of these painful and personal experiences has coincided with the #MeToo movement that began to spread virally in 2017 as a hashtag following the allegations of sexual assault/rape and harassment against Harvey Weinstein, the real origins of my need and desire to share these abuses was the death of my mother in 2015 (the term ‘Me Too’ was originally used by sexual harassment survivor and activist Tarana Burke on social media in 2006).
For over 25 years I had mostly been silent and carrying the secret of the brutal assault I suffered at the hand’s of my mother’s married, alcoholic boyfriend, Robert E. Lee, or ‘Bob’ as he was known. I shared what had happened with only a few friends over the years, but didn’t go into a lot of detail or just how much it had impacted me because I felt so much shame around what had happened, most notably that my mother had lied to the police and defended her boyfriend over the wellbeing of her daughter. Years later she would continue to defend him, acknowledging to me that it had happened, but that it had been a good thing because it got me out of her house, on my own and I’d turned my life around. She never apologized.
Out “on my own” meant that I had to get a 30-hour/week job at Burger King while finishing high school, that I would become anorexic for several years, that I would be raped at 16 by the 32-year-old boyfriend of the woman whose house I moved into, that I would end up in a relationship with him for two years, that my alcoholism while it waned my senior year of high school, would continue full blown off and on for over 20 more years, and that the impact of the abuse I had been exposed to prior to moving out in combination with my alcoholism by 14, and the concussion from those blows to my head would leave me to struggle physically, mentally, and emotionally for the rest of my life. And finally, that I would have to live with the pain of my mother choosing her and my abuser over my wellbeing as her daughter and being told that it was the ‘best thing that could have happened to me’.
While I forgave my mother long ago, recognizing that her actions and reasoning were the result of the abuse that she herself was suffering and of the messages that women are constantly fed by our misogynist culture that values men over women and teaches women to devalue themselves and other women/girls, it doesn’t take away the damage that was done and continues, including being attacked for standing up for women and against practices that devalue women.
The following is the account of what happened to me on the day that would be my last living in my mother’s house. It followed on two suicide attempts in the months leading up to this fateful day. I also recount the rape that happened in the months following. I share these stories for me. This is my breaking the silence imposed on me by my mother, who was also a victim of abuse by the wretched man she stayed with until his death in 2015, her death would follow months later.
This is their legacy:
In the spring of my junior year of high school, at the age of 16, I returned home from a day of sunbathing with my friends. My mother was home and drinking with her married boyfriend in our kitchen. I said ‘hello’ and went to run a bath in our family bathroom down the hall. As I left the bathroom, the door was blown shut by the wind with the water running. I realized it was locked. Panicked, I approached my mother to ask for help
Angrily, she darted to our basement to shut the water off. Bob stomped down the hall to try to unlock the door. I headed to my bedroom, directly next to the bathroom; as I passed Bob he asked: “Why are you always causing your mother problems?” My response: “Why don’t you go home to your wife.” As I walked into my room and went to shut the door, I could feel his rage behind me. At roughly 6’2” and 250lbs. he stopped the door, grabbed me, picked me up, threw me against the wall and began banging my head as hard as he could for 10 - 15 seconds. The pain was dizzying. I could hear my mother in the background yelling “Stop, please stop.” He loosened his grip and I wriggled away from him, running into my tiny bathroom, he followed, grabbed me by the hair and began shoving my head down the toilet while flushing it. At this point my mother was crying and he stopped. I ran from the room, through our house to the back door and into our backyard. Crying hysterically, my head throbbing, I ran to a neighbor’s house. No one answered. Frantically, I ran to another house. Again, no answer. At a loss, I quietly reentered our house through the backyard into our TV room and up the stairs to my mother’s room to call my father. Thankfully he was home; however he lived an hour away. My head still pounding, I recounted what had happened. My father told me to stay where I was, that he was on his way and he’d call the police.
Ten minutes later, my mother called for me to “come here”. I was terrified – should I respond? Should I not? Scared that I’d be trapped in her room without an exit I followed her voice back to the kitchen. She was furious. She told me that the police were there and wanted to ask me some questions and that I had better keep my mouth shut. I could see Bob through the kitchen window standing on the porch talking with two officers. I followed my mother out to the porch. The officers asked if I could tell them what had happened. I began to tell them and Bob interjected that I was a “problem kid” and had been caught going out when I shouldn’t have been and I had called my dad and made the story up. He noted that both he and my father worked for the same law firm and that they’d work out how to handle this private family situation. My mother backed him up. I was stunned. The officers, who looked to be in their twenties gave each other side glances and said something like “We understand” and then made small talk with Bob. I stood there saying nothing. I couldn’t believe that my mother had just lied to the police and betrayed me. I was numb. When my father arrived, he told me to pack my bags.
I never returned to my mother’s home. I stayed with friends for a few weeks until my father was able to arrange for me to move in with a woman he knew from church. She had two young children and while she was very kind and welcoming it was a challenging situation. I lived in her unfinished basement, a large room that also served as the laundry room. I had an area rug approximately 10’x10’, a single bed, a dresser, and a standing closet made from raw wood. I got a job working at Burger King 30 hours/week to help support myself while finishing high school.
Several months after I moved in, the woman I lived with went on summer vacation with her kids for several weeks and asked her boyfriend to check in on me. He did. He’d offer me massages, which I awkwardly accepted. It felt good, though his fingers would migrate to areas of my body that felt invasive, yet I didn’t know how to react. He was grooming me.
One night he invited me to a party, I agreed to go. As a child who felt completely abandoned by my family, It felt good to have the attention from an adult, who was treating me as an adult. We went to the party, got drunk, it was fun. He took me back to his place, threw me on his couch and raped me. While he was doing this I said “no” a number of times, but I didn’t physically fight him. I was stunned. After, he invited me into his bedroom. I followed.
We ended up in a relationship for two years, sneaking around behind my landlady’s back. I was 16, he was 32.
For years, I knew what had happened with this man twice my age was wrong - that he was an adult and I was a kid, who was incredibly vulnerable; however, I believed that because I continued to stay in the relationship, that I was just as responsible - that’s what men who take advantage of girls want them/us and the world to believe. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties and watched an episode of Oprah in which she told her story of being sexually abused that I truly understood what had happened to me. It also became very clear that I was raised in a community that did not punish men for these acts and instead punished the girls and women. I had almost no chance to find support in that community.
In 2007, Stacey Rambold, a 47-year-old technology teacher at Billings Senior High School, the same high school that I had attended in the 80s, had a ‘consensual’ sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl. Rambold was charged with three felony counts; however, as the case progressed the girl committed suicide. The prosecutors moved forward with the case and asked that Rambold receive a 20-year sentence. The case was heard by State District Judge Todd Baugh of Billings, Montana. I had known Judge Baugh my entire life. While my parents were married they were good friends with the Baughs and we would often spend time with them, including family trips to their cabin in the mountains. I babysat regularly for the Baughs while I was in junior high. My mother continued to be close friends with Judge Baugh’s wife until my mother’s death. Judge Baugh ended up sentencing Rambold to 30 days in jail, with 15 years probation.
Judge Baugh’s rationale as reported by M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer for NBC News:
He didn't believe the violations were serious enough to warrant such a long term.
Baugh said he listened to recorded statements given by the girl and had concluded that, while she was troubled, she was "as much in control of the situation" as Rambold.
He added that she acted "older than her chronological age."
When my mother was dying in 2015, Judge Baugh’s wife Linda visited her at the hospital. I had a private moment with my mother’s friend and shared that after Bob’s death I had been enjoying getting to know a side of my mother that I had not experienced before and that I was heartbroken that I would never have the opportunity to talk with her more directly about how the brutal assault that I had experienced at the hands of Bob had impacted me and that I had hoped that she might have the opportunity to apologize. Linda appeared shocked and expressed that she had never known what had happened to me.