With each person who comes forward, the cycle of victim blaming, misogyny, and rape culture is broken
I sat aboard the 319 Scott Road Station bus on the side of the road for 10-15 minutes one evening before I asked my fellow passengers why we were at a standstill. One woman answered that we were “waiting for a new bus.” I asked another passenger, hoping to find more answers, and learned we were waiting for the police because a young woman had been sexually assaulted.
The woman was pale and continuously wiped tears from her face. All she seemed concerned with was how she started work at 6 p.m., and was now running late. She hadn’t even begun to process what had just happened to her.
What also concerned me was how loudly the second woman I spoke to was, broadcasting this girl’s assault across the bus. The victim was sitting only two seats behind us.
TransLink has a motto: “See something? Say something!” Unfortunately, it did little to save the young woman who was victimized aboard the bus. What shocked me was how inside a busy 319 bus — which is one of the most congested transit routes in Surrey — no one noticed she was being assaulted. Ignorance, complacency, sheer indifference…whatever you want to call it, it still leads to the same outcome.
People must speak out against these crimes. These people — women, men, children — have been violated, and their lives have been changed forever. Only through empathy and understanding can they begin the healing process.
A 2015 report from the Government of British Columbia stated in 2014 there were 2,959 reported cases of sexual assault offenses across the province. In 2015, the number of reported sexual assaults jumped 2.3 per cent to 3,028 cases.
A Global News report stated that “data from a 10-year period from 2005 to 2015 shows that while over 5,200 sexual assaults were reported across the city [Vancouver], only one in five resulted in charges, and only 2.9 per cent ended up with convictions.”
Of course, those are only reported assaults.
According to Statistics Canada, 91-95 per cent of sexual assaults are not reported to police. A fear of being revictimized, distrust of the justice system, and feelings of guilt and shame factor into this abhorrently high rate of underreporting.
On the heels of my experience aboard the 319, is the Harvey Weinstein scandal which has deeply shaken Hollywood’s core. A long list of women, including famous Hollywood stars such as Angelina Jolie, Rose McGowan, and Ashley Judd, and women whose names we’re only just beginning to learn, have come forward, alleging that Weinstein, a powerful Hollywood mogul, sexually harassed or assaulted them.
Every day, that list grows a little longer.
On Oct. 10, Ronan Farrow, a reporter with The New Yorker, published a bombshell report detailing the numerous women who’ve come forward alleging heinous and criminal behavior, which has remained one of Hollywood’s darkest and dirtiest secrets for decades. One victim, Lucia Evans said that after her sexual assault she ‘“just put it in a part of my brain and closed the door.” She continued to blame herself for not fighting harder. “It was always my fault for not stopping him,” she said told Farrow.
The story is always the same: tales of sexual harassment to outright rape, victims coming forward, reporting their assaults, and then no one believing them, or simply choosing to remain silent, and ending with the ultimate disintegration of their lives.
Asia Argento, another woman who came forward, said in The New Yorker article, ‘“The thing with being a victim is I felt responsible,” she said. She described the incident as a “horrible trauma.”’
Mountains of evidence, including first-hand accounts and recorded audio conversations, pile up against Weinstein, and while many of the reactions are one of genuine disgust at the allegations and compassion for the victims, there’s always that one voice crying out against the crowd yelling, “Why didn’t she come forward sooner?”
Guilt, shame, revictimization, not being believed, victim shaming and fear is why.
I should know.
I was sexually assaulted in a Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, night club over two years ago by a man whose face I don’t remember.
Last November, during Donald Trump’s infamous campaign, all those memories came flooding back.
But do you know what I keep blaming myself for? I didn’t say no.
I blamed myself, saying that I’d been asking for it because I only pushed his hands away during the assault, but didn’t tell him “No.” That I was leading him on, and that I was drunk. In my mind, I’d convinced myself that because other women have suffered far more heinous sexual assaults or rapes, I was not a true victim.
But as I’ve learned, self-blaming, as well as victim blaming, also needs to end.
Do not be passive. Fight like hell and call out misogyny, victim blaming and rape culture when you see it. If someone had practiced this, then maybe the young woman on the 319 Scott Road Station wouldn’t have been sexually assaulted. Our silence equals complacency in this epidemic.
