Dear RedEye Editor,
On New Year’s Day this year, my sister awakened in a downtown hotel room with dark, knee-shaped bruises on both her thighs, and a black and violet, fist-shaped contusion just above her genitals. Her first day of 2004 was largely spent in the emergency room, lying supine, in cheap hospital garments, a congenial yet clueless police officer looming over and peering down at her on one side, a rape-crisis advocate, earnest and kind, looming over and peering down at her on the other.
My sister doesn’t remember any of the evening because she was either drugged or so drunk she blacked out. She was out with friends, all of whom were boys she knew.
Before discharging her, the doctor in emergency told my mom and me that it was “inconclusive” that she was raped. He said it’s apparent that someone tried, but that whoever it was didn’t get what he wanted. We breathed a sigh of relief that she was OK and we drove my sister away.
Our relief, however, was bittersweet. Two years ago, three boys tried to and succeeded in raping my sister after slipping her a date rape drug that knocked her unconscious. Since then our family life has been strained, all of us, and especially my sister, suffering a quiet anguish over what was done to her by a group of guffawing 20-year-old boys.
These weren’t random, sex-crazed men who ran out of an alley, beat her and ravaged her.
These were boys she met at a party at an Ivy League school. She’s doesn’t know who they are. They could be your next-door neighbors.
Presidential hopeful Howard Dean called the rate of violence against women in our country of “endemic proportions.” The word endemic suggests that we’re ailed by a disease. And Dean is right. One in four women in this country is raped sometime in her life. Many, many women will be raped tonight. That sounds pretty sick to me.
As a brother to my two wonderful sisters, as the husband to my incredible wife, as a man who loves and deeply respects women, I am ashamed of the rate of rapes and sexual assaults here and around the world.
To the staff at RedEye: I applaud you for taking the initiative to report on the reality of rape in our culture. The article you ran should run on the front page of every paper in the country [“Date Rape Reality,” Jan 8]. Everyone should be talking about this. Your article will help that happen. Thank you.
Sincerely Yours,
Anonymous
