Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto

by Michelle Bowdler

“Try telling us. Tell us over time. We’re old. We’re

moms. Try telling us. We won’t break.”

That night I saw that we weren’t so different after all. We all needed something, and learning to trust again was a big part of that. And as much as I hated walking anywhere near ...

I told them how I felt, in pieces, over time. And they didn’t brea...

I found it baffling this police officer could see things so differently than I did. From his perspective, I could have been murdered but wasn’t. There was something fortunate about that, which we should celebrate.

For months after the attack, my body was wholly unaware that the danger had passed.

Small electric shocks on each of thousands of nerve endings went off in my body all day and all night long. There was not a thing I felt lucky about, having been humiliated and violently sexually violated as I begged for my life. It would never be over for me.

His message did not feel hopeful or optimistic, but deeply dismissive of the experience of sexual violence.

Both understand at the outset that the driver must be paid, but participate in tarof since it is integral to the cultural exchange. If the passenger had left the cab without paying, the driver would then have demanded his money. Tarof exists only if both parties understand what is supposed to happen up to the point when the exchange is properly concluded.

My mother, half Iranian and first-generation American born, knew almost nothing about her heritage,

“You know, I think that rape crisis person might have been wrong,” I finally said. “But so was I when I said don’t come.”

“I thought for years she didn’t care enough,” I said. “I assumed she’d felt relieved she didn’t have to come and take care of me. It helps a little to know she thought she was doing the right thing, that she was doing what she was told.”

“Mom, you married him when I was eleven; he raised me for over ten years and hasn’t

even called me. I almost died. He divorced you, not me,” I say in the car, easier words to utter with us both staring straight ahead.

“Don’t defend him.” I cradle my face with both hands. “Every single one of my roommates’ parents called me that

very week, and it wasn’t easy to find me. He’s my stepfather.”

“Well, that is better for you, but the jury is out on whether I think that was better for me.”

“What I’m saying is that you can’t always make lemonade out of lemons, Mom!” I’m yelling. I’ll know this fact later because my throat will hurt no matter how much water I drink leaning at her kitchen sink. “There is nothing to be grateful for when this shouldn’t have happened at all, and I am not okay just because I look like I am alive!”

Here’s what I need you to do—stop trying to find a way to make it not so bad. It was really bad, and it still is bad.

I am preoccupied and overwhelmed after the attack but worry about work piling up.

When I return to the office one week later, I can’t get anything done.

The inability to function at work is a common reaction among those who have experienced rape and sexual assault.

Afterwards, plans were out of the question. Believing your life may end at any moment makes envisioning a future practically impossible.

That’s one of the hardest things for me to come to terms with: the lost time, the lost life and career—my lost self.”1

The estimated lifetime cost of being raped is over $120,000 per victim, a cumulative economic burden of nearly $3.1 trillion in the United States.

consequences of rape for victims found that “sexual assault and the related trauma response can disrupt survivors’ employment in several ways, including time off, diminished performance, job loss, and inability to work.”

Requiring victims to report a crime in order to receive compensation is a serious barrier for those in need of funds to survive.

Until we make

training police to respond effectively to rape victims a national imperative, it is unjust to make crucial financial resources available only to victims who report crimes.

Those responsible for disbursing victim compensation funds should consider alternative ways to confirm the need, including a therapist’s note that the patient is in treatment, documentation of a rape exam done...

reasons they have not reported their assault to ...

I received one payment early on, a couple thousand dollars. It was invaluable. It helped me pay for some initial therapy and a security deposit on an apartment. It never occurred to me to reapply, nor would I have felt comfortable approaching the victim compensation fund a few years later, when I was suffering just as much and still underemployed as a direct result of the trauma that held me by the throat most days.

“We’re the police,” he said, ignoring my questions. “We know how to find people; that’s what we do. Didn’t I say I’d call you if we knew anything? And I haven’t, so that means I don’t have anything.”

I wondered if I might ever have some dreams again someday, but I’d lost all sense of optimism and possibility. Quite often, a sense of dread would overtake me and

I’d make up an excuse to leave work in the middle of the day.

No one explained to me, neither the people at Beth Israel or at BARCC, nor the multitude of therapists I saw, how common work disruption is after being the victim of a trauma.

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action,

engagement and remembering.

As Judith Herman writes, “Over time as most people fail the survivor’s

exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.”

I was not alone in this feeling. Almost half of sexual assaults occur in or near the survivor’s home, and following the assault many have no choice but to flee.

Behavior that many women considered normative and private, a terrible burden one must tolerate too often in the workplace, was

being seriously questioned in a national conversation.

Mary was right. The real issue being argued wasn’t, in

fact, whether Hill was telling the truth but whether sexual harassment was a matter of concern to the senators on the Judiciary Committee. Had any of them ever been held accountable for how they treated women in the workplace?

this hearing showed the world what I already knew: women’s experiences—particularly those of women of color—

are invisible, our words swatted aside like nothing more than a pesky fly at a picnic. I wanted my brain to stop these negative thoughts, stop before I’d hear the words spoken by the police in my rape case, words of erasure I’d counted on this new chapter of my life erasing.

if you challenge the status quo and question behaviors men in power enjoy and feel entitled to, they will try to squash you, unconcerned about lying or inflicting lasting damage on you.

Clearly, this body could not effectively represent all its constituents. I found it a particularly stunning indictment of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that when their colleague mentioned how common it was to talk about women’s breast size at work, not one of them felt the need to counter. Instead, they moved on with their own questioning, as if Anita Hill were the one on trial.

“I think it would be hard for senators to not consider who the judge is today. That’s the issue. Is this judge a really good man? And he is. And by any measure he is.”