Be Strong, Be Wise. Amy R. Carpenter

stories.

      At around that time, I started to get a familiar I’m going to have to write about this feeling. For as long as I could hold a pencil, writing has been a way to process life, and I had something in me I needed to say. The article I began working on was about sexual assault and its effect on the developing identity. Since most assaults happen in young adulthood, I had worked with countless people still haunted by the memories, triggers, and patterns in their life that they knew held them back.

      The title of the piece was, “The Invisible Master of Ceremonies: Sexual Assault and the Shaping of Identity.” The article felt powerful to me, and when I presented it to my writers’ group, they concluded it was good—well-written, well-researched, and impactful. But where would I submit it? To other therapists who could say the same thing based on their own observations in trauma treatment? To scientific journals where the medical and psychological community may or may not get a hold of it, reading it from the standpoint of science or practice methodology? All of that seemed empty to me, so I did what any well-meaning writer would do. I shelved the article until I could gain traction on some path that felt like I was helping people instead of adding more noise to an already well-populated space.

      Then something horrible happened. Someone close to me, who attends school with my daughter and who I’ll call Lily, was sexually assaulted while volunteering at a church soup kitchen with the National Honor Society. It was one of three known assaults that took place at the school over the span of a year.

      Lily is a go-getter, an A student, star athlete, and high-level performer on every front, yet she was harmed in the community she grew up in. On the day of the assault, she was with a group of twenty-six peers. Her teachers were nearby, as well as a supervising priest and nearly fifty soup kitchen attendees. Still, the perpetrator found a way to gain access to Lily and lure her into a private room where he touched her inappropriately and kissed her on the mouth. As a parent, I had always lived in fear that my daughter might one day be assaulted. Knowing too many horror stories from my professional life made me concerned for her well-being many of the times she wasn’t with me. After what Lily went through, I realized parents are never guaranteed their kids’ safety. We can do our best to protect them, but we also need to teach them how to best protect themselves.

      The police intervened in Lily’s behalf and the church and school were held accountable, but on multiple levels, Lily’s assault was preventable. I realized I’d been approaching the problem from only one angle. Psychotherapists and trauma experts have more information than ever before on how to respond to assault. What we don’t have is a book on prevention that provides explicit information about sexual safety. College campuses and police departments put out bullet-point safety tips, and there are a few articles online, but in my search thus far, nothing in the available literature is comprehensive. Nothing speaks to young people where they are at.

      With a small sense of horror, it dawned on me that part of the reason assaults are so common is because they’ve become, in some ways, normal. I even had a friend of mine say to me, after telling her that I was thinking about writing a book on sexual assault prevention, “But doesn’t that just happen at some point in college, no matter what you say or do to try to stop it?” The statement probably reflects how a lot of people feel.

      I had my work cut out for me, and at first, felt out of my depth. Who am I to talk about sexual assault prevention? I’m a clinician, not an activist or policymaker. How could I discuss with expertise, a topic as broad and impactful as this? Then I remembered my early days in child welfare, where I was first introduced to trauma and recovery, and how in graduate school I elected (among few others) to study sexual abuse treatment for my final clinical thesis. After getting my license and working as a school-based counselor, I helped organize groups for at-risk girls and gave lectures on female empowerment at several young adult conferences.

      Still, more than all the training, classes, and years spent working in clinical practice, I also had my own assault story. Maybe this story was the reason I spent twenty-five years treating trauma. Developing the pieces of this book helped me better formulate the pieces of my journey, and I could finally see how it all fit.

      I was eight years old, living in Trenton, New Jersey, when the attack took place in a field bordering my back yard. Ten neighborhood boys came onto the property when my parents weren’t home. They stripped me from the waist down and held me, screaming and frantically trying to free myself, as one of them took his penis out and the rest of them yelled for him to “Stick it in her!” The boy was my age, though most of the others were significantly older. Child testosterone levels prevented him from doing much more than stand there, perhaps nearly as frightened as I was, with pre-pubescent genitalia hanging uselessly above his folded-down pants. Fortunately, none of the others took his place. After a few horrible minutes, screaming louder than I’ve ever screamed, the boys all decided it “wasn’t worth it” and let me go. It turned out that gang of bullies had their limits, and one of them was rape. They were violent enough to terrorize me but didn’t violate me in a way that would be more physically and psychologically damaging. In some respects, I got lucky.

      Due to embarrassment, I never told anyone about that afternoon until I was in my mid-twenties. When I shared the story with my parents, they were horrified, blamed themselves, and tried to talk it through with me, but the emotional effects were a mystery. I had always been afraid when walking down a dark street alone, but wasn’t any woman? I knew that crowded buses and night clubs were places one might get grabbed or fondled, but didn’t everyone? The anxiety I experienced so often living in the city, even if it was just being alone at night in my apartment was, to me, normal and a necessary part of being female.

      Later, every therapist I worked with told me that what happened in the field was an act of sexual violence that had likely informed my way of handling myself in the world. All I knew was that I had never been so afraid in my life. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the low-grade panic I sometimes felt might not happen for everyone. Being more aware of where that feeling comes from, I’ve done enough healing work to gently talk myself through it. Even so, there’s one effect that my psyche will not relinquish. To this day, if anyone grabs my arm or wrist, even in play, I am once again pinned to the ground in that field, and all my body knows is terror. My autonomic nervous system, otherwise known as the trauma brain, doesn’t register the difference between an act of kindness or an act of violence when it comes to someone grabbing my wrist, and I can get downright vicious in defending myself.

      A high percentage of sexual assault victims feel uncomfortable sharing their story due to intense shame. Like myself, many people who endure sexual trauma don’t realize at first the impact it has on their lives. In the wake of #MeToo, we now have the opportunity to make space for these stories and the sharing of truth that allows for greater healing.

      In her famous TED talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” international speaker Brené Brown said that shame is the thing “no one wants to talk about… and the less you talk about it, the more you have it.” #MeToo invited victims of assault to step beyond their shame, the same way so many of my clients, like Rebecca, have done. When I told each of them I was writing a book on sexual assault prevention, they wanted to share their experiences so that young people could benefit. I owe these individuals a ton of gratitude for their bravery. We now know how big the problem is. This book offers a solution.