Images tell stories of sexual-assault survivors in Ohio
Ginny Taylor examines the image of herself that photographer Honey Lazar shot through her camera lens a couple of years ago – her prayerful hands pressed against her lips, a single tear clinging to her skin, her lashes clumped from all the ones that fell before.
In that photograph she sees tangible evidence that even nearly 50 years after a man sexually assaulted her at a summer camp when she was just 10, there remained such healing power in telling her story. And that having someone listen to you and believe you is healing, too.
Taylor, a 62-year-old college registrar from Cincinnati, sees Lazar’s “Seen + Heard” project that documents the journeys of 24 sexual-assault survivors in images and audio clips as offering survivors a chance for hope and teaching others to be more understanding.
“For survivors it is never too late to begin the healing process. It is also not too late to use that process of healing so that you come out as a stronger person, a more-compassionate person, a more-authentic person, because you are not hiding anything anymore,” she said. “For everyone else? My biggest takeaway is if you hear a story, believe it. And ask how you can help.”
Portions of the “Seen + Heard” exhibit is being showcased by Ohio State University’s Student Wellness Center as part of its comprehensive programming to recognize April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The university planned 31 events as part of its programming, everything from panels on the economics of sex trafficking and the support of victims, to art therapy sessions for sexual-assault survivors, to classes on self-defense.
Cate Heaney Gary, wellness coordinator in outreach and prevention at the wellness center, said some of this year’s programming focuses on topics such as consent and healthy relationships.
“It’s important because sexual violence is a prevalent issue not just at Ohio State but on all college campuses,” Heaney Gary said.
“How to prevent problems before it starts is important to the well-being and safety of everyone on our campus. Awareness and education helps create this culture of care where people feel empowered to recognize violence and feel empowered to stop it.”
In December, Ohio State released its 2019 campus safety report. It showed there were 118 reports of rape in 2019 at Ohio State, up from 93 in 2018, and 72 in 2017.
Reports of stalking also increased to 91 in 2019, up from 57 the year before, while reports of dating violence totaled 64, nearly double from 2018.
Nationally, every 73 seconds, someone in the United States is sexually assaulted and every nine minutes, the victim is a child, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). One of every six women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape and about 3% of men in the United States have been raped or experienced attempted rape.
Though the ongoing coronavirus pandemic forced this year’s Ohio State programming all online, being able to bring even a specially selected portion of Lazar’s exhibit to students and the greater public was special, Heaney Gary said.
“I think that the original ‘Me Too’ movement and so many survivors speaking up and using their voices has really turned the light on the conversation about sexual violence and brought it out of the dark,” she said.
In fact, it was after the accusations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein broke in 2018 and the #Metoo movement really gained ground that Lazar, a 70-year-old from Cleveland, knew what she wanted to do for what she thought would be her last professional project. (It wasn’t.)
For “Seen + Heard,” she invited 24 survivors to visit her studio over several months. As each spent hours sharing their stories, her camera captured their emotions. Each person was photographed wearing a white T-shirt, each in the same space, each in the same lighting. All the emphasis on each frame is on the subject’s face.
“I just saw the hashtag Metoo and thought, ‘Well that’s nice except that’s like throwing a brick from the back of the room.’ So I started to ask what I could do as a photographer,” Lazar said. “I could really use my camera to make a difference. I wanted all those secret hashtaggers to be public if they wanted to.”
But for her, the portraits weren’t so much about the stories themselves as they are a recognition and documentation of the pain and trauma invoked by just speaking the words aloud.
“It is to bear witness to how difficult the actual telling is so that people stop saying things like, ‘Why didn’t you come forward sooner?’” she said. “Me too isn’t just about ‘Oh, I believe you.’ It’s also about how excruciating the process of
speaking your truth actually is.”
Among those who sat for the project was Earl Pike, a 65-year-old from Cleveland Heights who runs the nonprofit organization, University Settlement, that serves the historic Broadway-slavic Village neighborhood in Cleveland.
Pike was a friend of Lazar’s and had talked publicly before about the sexual abuse his mother inflicted upon him as a child. So when Lazar put out a call for survivors for her project, he decided to participate. He found it especially important to tell his story as a man.
“People meet me and think, ‘Oh, he’s just an average older white guy with graying hair. You would not think about me being a sexual survivor,” said Pike, who learned late in life that his own father, a career Marine, had also been a sexual-abuse survivor.
“I just wanted partly for myself and partly for my dad to say, ‘Whatever stereotype you have about what people’s stories are or what they look like it is just gonna be wrong,” he said. “Part of it for me was telling the story for all the other dads who haven’t told their stories yet. To empower them.”
He and Taylor both said that being a part of the project reminded them that there is always another step forward to take, and that survivors are so much more than their trauma.
“What happened to me is part of my life story – the abuse is part of who I am,” Taylor said.
“But the healing process has allowed me to be more than just that story. My life is like an orange, made up of different sections and it takes all of them to make me whole.”
And Pike said it was important for people not to see survivors as only broken.
“It helped me realize even now that, ‘Wow. I am 68 years old and I am still here and I’m pretty ... intact,” he said. “It is so important to tell your story to someone who believes you.”
Information about OSU’S Sexual Assault Awareness Month programming and online registration can be found at www.swc.osu.edu/
For help, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673(HOPE) hzachariah@dispatch.com @hollyzachariah