HerLinked

I expe­ri­enced intim­i­da­tion at my for­mer high school when I tried to report a fac­ulty member’s inap­pro­pri­ate pur­suit of a student.

Steubenville, Ohio.

That place meant much to few and lit­tle to many before a rape scan­dal, involv­ing foot­ball play­ers from Steubenville High School, rocked the small town, and ignited debates about sports enti­tle­ment, free speech, and rape prosecution.

Dur­ing a series of par­ties after a high school foot­ball scrim­mage, a teenage girl from West Vir­ginia was “allegedly” raped by mul­ti­ple mem­bers of the Steubenville High School foot­ball team. The vic­tim was car­ried from party to party, uncon­scious through­out most of the events. Num­bers of teens wit­nessed the crime(s), and none of them stopped it by call­ing authorities.

The vic­tim was unaware of many of the events until she started see­ing and hear­ing about the attacks via social media, such as Twit­ter and text mes­sages. Most of the Tweets, videos, and mes­sages about the inci­dent were deleted when the event became more heav­ily investigated.

Why is a rape case from August still rel­e­vant news?

The police force was accused of being lax with the evi­dence, includ­ing the treat­ment of on-the-scene wit­nesses who decided to speak against the main defen­dants in the case. Some feared the vic­tim would receive lit­tle to no jus­tice, but a blog­ger and a group of activist hack­ers started fol­low­ing the case, demand­ing the removal of pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for the foot­ball play­ers and expos­ing per­sonal con­nec­tions to the accused and some pub­lic officials.

Now, typ­i­cal to the cycli­cal nature of the Amer­i­can news cycle, peo­ple will get out­raged briefly, ques­tion how some­thing like this could hap­pen, and con­tinue about their day-to-day lives.

I’m tired of Amer­i­can news con­sumers treat­ing every news event as some­thing hap­pen­ing in some mys­te­ri­ous “other” place to some mys­te­ri­ous “other” per­son. When we fail to acknowl­edge the misog­y­nis­tic cul­ture that allows under­age ath­letes to feel as if they can gang rape a teenage girl because their tro­phies will get them out of it, we fail every per­son who will ever fall vic­tim to such a hor­rific crime as rape.

Steubenville is every other town or city in America. Shadows of the hor­rific effects of such sex­ist cul­ture linger in the hall­ways of high schools and col­leges across the country.

My home­town of Ravenna, Ohio was no different.

When I was a senior in high school, I learned what it meant to be a woman in a coun­try that often val­ues the skills of male ath­letes more than the safety of every­one around them.

I had a friend who babysat for one of the coaches there. This coach was mar­ried with chil­dren. Many val­ued his sta­tus in the Ravenna schools pro­grams because he was involved in so many sports.

The first red flag I had about this coach was when he told this friend her “boobs were nice and he could put his face in them.” I couldn’t believe my ears when she told me this, and I told her it was inap­pro­pri­ate for him to say such things for any reason.

The friend recon­sid­ered babysit­ting for him but con­tin­ued to help him, believ­ing his com­ments were a slip-up. Then, the coach left her a dis­turb­ing voice­mail, invit­ing her to a Cleve­land Cav­a­liers game, just the two of them, because he had been think­ing about her.

Imme­di­ately, I begged my friend to go to a coun­selor or prin­ci­pal about the sit­u­a­tion, but she instead stopped babysit­ting for him and wanted to let the inci­dent dis­ap­pear with time. I asked my friend to recon­sider and while she was present, I told a female teacher about what happened.

The teacher dis­cussed the sit­u­a­tion with other fac­ulty, and before I knew it, I landed in talks with the prin­ci­pal about my alle­ga­tions about the coach.

Except, there was no inves­ti­ga­tion. And there was no dis­missal or sus­pen­sion of this coach.

The prin­ci­pal dis­cussed the inci­dent with the coach before he talked to me and con­cluded my entire accu­sa­tion was a con­spir­acy. Accord­ing to the prin­ci­pal, the coach claimed to be close friends with my mother and knew about a large num­ber of par­ties I was attend­ing. In the coach’s opin­ion, I cre­ated this entire story about his inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior to stop my mom from hear­ing about these par­ties I was attending.

I was shocked. There was a voice­mail prov­ing my story was true. There was not truth to this coach hav­ing any­thing close to a friend­ship with my mom, which could have eas­ily been proven by a phone call. I attended very few par­ties in my high school career. I was too busy being one of the school’s vale­dic­to­ri­ans, cap­tain of two sports teams, and main­tain­ing lead­er­ship roles in honor soci­eties and vol­un­teer groups.

And none of that mattered. 

The prin­ci­pal wrote me off as a news­pa­per edi­tor look­ing for scan­dal, and the coach con­tin­ued to coach. There were more rumors about him and other girls, and based on the lack of pun­ish­ment he received when he was caught harass­ing an under­aged stu­dent, I’m sure those rumors had validity.

I’ve never told that story pub­licly until this blog post. Even though I was try­ing to help my friend, a vic­tim, I was made to feel ashamed and embarassed because the adults who were sup­posed to pro­tect me were slave to a big­ger mas­ter than the truth. That prin­ci­pal chose to pro­tect a mediocre sports coach and a mediocre school’s rep­u­ta­tion instead of pro­tect­ing the past, cur­rent, and future stu­dents at that school.

That is the def­i­n­i­tion of rape culture.

It is a school, a city, a coun­try, or world where vic­tim­iza­tion breeds fear and secrecy and rapists and harassers receive con­fir­ma­tion of their normalcy.

Today, I am break­ing my silence. I refuse to be quiet about that school year that taught me to dis­miss my con­cerns when I per­ceive sex­ual harass­ment or vio­lence. I’m tak­ing back my power.

Now.

The best oppo­nent to rape cul­ture is the refusal to accept it. I will not be intim­i­dated. And for those who ever doubt telling their sto­ries, I hope you read this, and feel as if you don’t need to be again.

Her­links:

The New York Times: Is New Delhi So Dif­fer­ent From Steubenville? 

The New York Times: Rape Case Unfolds Online and Divides Steubenville

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