The reality of being raped
The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network reports that eight out of 10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.
Faith woke up and hoped it had all been a nightmare … a really vivid nightmare. Still in her dress from the night before, she staggered to the bathroom.
“It was almost like a bad dream,” Faith recalls. “I peed and I wiped and there was all this blood. That’s when the reality of it started to hit me.”
Faith had been raped, and what’s more, her rapist had been her closest friend. This is not at all unusual. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network reports that eight out of 10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim. Also, 39 percent of reported rapes are by an acquaintance and 33 percent are by a current or former spouse or partner.
Faith had said no, but it made no difference and she couldn’t fight him off. She described her rapist’s behavior during the crime.
“The whole time he raped me, he didn’t speak,” she says. “This was someone I knew really well, and he raped me for almost an hour and didn’t speak, not a word.”
Afterward, Faith was afraid he would attack her again if she attempted to leave. Crashing from the surge of trauma-infused adrenaline, she passed out.
The next morning Faith tried to think rationally, but the trauma was too raw.
“I was slowly unraveling,” Faith recalls. “I just couldn’t really grip my reality. I was starting to have symptoms of PTSD and I wasn’t processing it. It’s poison to feel like that.”
Faith called the National Sexual Assault hotline which got her in touch with the Sexual Assault Center of Northwest Georgia. Later, Executive Director Kim Davis met Faith at the SAC door.
“She walked me through what was going to happen,” says Faith. “They had a detective on the way and (Davis) told me the police were going to ask me some really hard questions, but just be honest and don’t be afraid because (she and the advocates) were there. They supported me and they believed me.”
The Sexual Assault Center of Northwest Georgia serves Floyd, Chattooga, Gordon, Polk and Bartow counties. In addition to the 24-hour crisis line, the center assists victims with on-site medical exams, counseling and criminal justice advocacy.
While she was at the SAC, advocates and trained medical staff collected forensic evidence of Faith’s rape.
“They took pictures of my body, and did an internal exam. Your kit also includes your testimony and DNA samples from the swabs,” Faith explains.
Faith had bruises on her body because she had been chased and beaten during her rape. That evidence also makes it into the rape kit.
“The examiners circled each one of the bruises and they numbered each one with a marker and took pictures of that, too,” she says.
Because of the brutal nature of assaults, the exams can be invasive and exhausting. But rape kit exams are necessary to collect hardand-fast DNA evidence to send to a crime lab in the event the case makes it to trial.
Faith’s rape occurred in 2011, when there was little rhyme or reason to Georgia’s law regarding rape kits. Back then, law enforcement got to decide if a victim could get a post-assault examination and if the kit would be sent to the GBI.
After Faith’s exam, her kit was sealed and placed with many others at the SAC that possibly never saw the hands of a scientist.
“We’d keep it for a year,” says Davis of that time period. “At the end of the year, we would usually destroy it. If law enforcement did not want to move forward with the case, then the kit either sat in our fridge or it would sit in their evidence room forever and it never went to get tested.”
Backlogged rape kits have been a tremendous issue when it comes to investigating and prosecuting crimes of sexual assault. In the last few years, old kits have been discovered in evidence rooms and crisis centers across the nation, and states have ramped up efforts to test the backlogged kits.
Imagine you’re a police officer working a sexual assault case.
The victim is from out of town, visiting a friend. The two went to a party last night and after drinking, the victim passed out. When she woke up, she felt like she had been raped while she was unconscious.
At the Sexual Assault Center of Northwest Georgia, you make sure she gets the resources she needs. The victim also gets an exam and a rape kit, which you pick up and send off to the crime lab.
Two years later, you get the kit results back from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. By this time, the victim has left town and you have no idea where she is. Your case has hit a wall.
This exact scenario happened to Sgt. Misty Pledger of the Floyd County Police Department.
“I got results back from the DNA for a rape that happened two years ago. The report lists male semen and a name attached to it. It’s one of the names she gave me from a list of people who were at that party, but I can’t find her now to see if she wants to press charges.”
Unfortunately, this situation happens a lot. Law enforcement officials receive forensic evidence results months and sometimes more than a year after the crime occurred, because of the rape kit backlog.
“The crime scene is gone,” she adds. “The victim’s gone. The perp’s probably gone. How am I going to take that before a jury?”
Few people report rapes, says Kim Davis, executive director of the Sexual Assault Center of Northwest Georgia. The long process of the legal system isn’t very encouraging.
REALITY
“I think it’s having to wait on kit results and having to wait on the court system,” says Davis. “Some of these cases don’t go to trial for a year… It’s discouraging.” tim, the next step is interviewing the alleged perpetrator, Pledger said.
“Then we have to find the evidence,” she says. “Sometimes it’s physical evidence, circumstantial, witnesses or anything to corroborate what the victim is telling us. It’s just usually, when it comes to rape, it’s one person’s word against the other. It comes down to the evidence we wait to get back from the GBI.”
It’s also difficult to prosecute rape cases because of Georgia’s definition of the crime of rape.
“If you look at the law in Georgia, as opposed to the law in other states, we’re so back in the 1970s with it. It’s just terrible,” says Davis. “In Georgia, it’s ‘ forced and against her will’ where in most states, it’s ‘forced or against her will.’”
This means that you have to prove the victim said “no,” and also that the rapist physically forced her into having sex.
Pledger says she hopes victims of sexual assault will come forward and report the crime so they themselves can get help and in turn help others.
“It’s never the victim’s fault,” says Sgt. Pledger. “It’s nobody’s fault but the rapist. If this person has done this to you, they are going to do it to somebody else. We’ve got to stand up for each other and fight for each other.”