For the next few months, we’ll be featuring a guest blogger who has agreed to share her experiences with all of us as she works to change her school’s sexual assault policies. We’re calling her Lyn to protect her privacy. If you’d like to be a guest blogger and share your story, drop us a line. Here’s her first post:
“Hello Everyone!
I should probably start by giving you a slight introduction into who I am and what I am doing.
My name is Lyn, and I will be a sophomore at a university in the state of New Hampshire. Like many first year students my freshmen experience was quite difficult, disagreements with roommates, adjusting my sleep schedule to accommodate the never-ending homework, and trying to keep some money in the checking account. However, these changes and adjustments are ordinary for a first year student at any university, my situation that nearly ruined my first year was something never expected or planned.
You see, the first week of my freshman year, someone I thought I could call a friend raped me. On September 8th at 6:00 p.m. I was misled into a situation that I wish upon no one. Rape is such a violation of dignity, personal space, pride, and can bring down even the strongest of people. I find it difficult to believe there is such a lack of respect of the survivors of such a heinous crime. That lack of respect and failure to act accordingly to these situations is why I am writing to all of you, and I will continue to write several other blogs over the course of the following months.
Like many survivors, I thought that if I just denied that what happened was rape and just forgot about it than I would be fine. Although I wanted to deny it, in the back of my mind and in my heart I knew that what had happened to me was wrong and I needed to speak up. I was in a situation though, where the new friends that I was making, could sense that something was wrong. Despite not knowing me for very long, one of my closest friends said something to me about it. This was when I realized something had to be done to bring justice to this individual who had scarred me so badly. Once I had the support of my friends I worked up the strength to tell my parents, and was on my way to pressing charges against this individual.
On October 12th, 2006 my roommate and I made our way down to the University Police Department to file charges against the individual. (That was my first mistake.) After a twelve-page statement from myself, and other lengthy statements from those who were close to me, the department decided to begin an investigation. They started by conducting a wiretapped conversation between myself and the individual who had raped me a month earlier.
As reported by police to family, my close friends, and myself, the conversation had the individual ADMITTING to three of the four crimes that he had committed. Despite these confessions to myself during the conversation, no action was taken. Once it was apparent that my wishes of a restraining order, “would not be necessary†according to the officer in charge, I filed a restraining order through the school to try to protect myself.
Sadly, as the months went by and 2006 quickly became 2007, I began to realize that the department and the school were more interested in brushing this case under the rug, as opposed to actually doing the right thing. As the “update meetings†began to be more of an interrogation of myself, I knew I had to do something, before the case began to spiral out of control and out of my reach.
In April 2007, I decided to just skip over the processes and systems and go straight to the woman I knew could let me in on some information and possibly help me make some changes on campus. I called the President of the University and made an appointment with the President myself. I had only a few days to compile questions, complaints, concerns, etc, that I knew needed to be completed in order for our University to be an outstanding and safer institution. Upon arriving at the meeting, I had the support of my father in person, and my mother at home praying for me and sending good luck. I must have done something right because I shocked the President with the vast information I knew and had documented to explain the shortfalls of the university. Instead of taking notes myself on information that I was unaware of, Madame President was making notes herself on things, ideas, and other thoughts that needed more research.
At the end of the meeting the President was outraged at the way my investigation was handled and willing to work with me on changing policies on sexual assault on our campus. When I return back to school in the fall I will be presenting her with more research from other universities nationwide along with some of my own input. The goals of these meetings will be to make our campus safer, policies clearer, and to hopefully prevent what had happened to me from happening to someone else.”
