I…would like to feel that.
I was guessing Deep South.
One reason “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is not an easy book to read is all the descriptions of sexual molestation, mostly of girls by boys but not always. Until this generation, the kids did not know if it was right or wrong or if it happened to anyone else, just that they didn’t like it. Henrietta herself had her first child at age 14 after being raped by a cousin, but she didn’t know WHICH cousin - and one of them may have been the man she eventually married, her first cousin. :eek: Interesting, it was that baby’s eventual marriage to a woman from an educated, middle-class family that brought it to light and let them know that it was NOT right on ANY level.
That was a key point in the Manada case, and one of the things which absolutely needs to be reviewed in Spanish laws as they currently stand. She froze. She had no way to flee and couldn’t have done much in the way of fighting: she was a small woman, they were five strong-looking men; she didn’t know this but one of them was a soldier and another a cop, they’re going to look more buff than your average male student the same age. But because the degree of assault depends, among other things, on whether she fought, what current laws perceive as a “lack of response” officially moved the crime down from “rape” to “short-term sexual assault” :smack: (note that a coworker who always grabs your ass would already count as “long-term [continued] sexual assault”).
Those guys are right now (as in, news from yesterday’s newspapers) back in the cage awaiting trial for another attack. Which again they videoed. Maybe the whole sexual attack thing would have changed a lot sooner if the brothers Lumiere and those who built upon their work had been born earlier!
I’ve struggled with the terminology myself and try to avoid it when possible. I don’t define myself by the assault, but the assault was inevitably something that helped defined me. That is, I was not the same person I was after the attack. One of several reasons I pushed the experience aside was because I didn’t want to acknowledge that it had damaged me at all. The idea still ticks me off. Yet there I was just last night, sobbing into my keyboard.
For all those who have shared stories here, thank you, and may your telling help in your continued growth as wonderful human beings.
For those who continue to deny, disparage and denigrate…well, you know what I wish upon you.
Thank you to everyone sharing their stories.
He said he would do it to my sister if I told anyone.
I had some counselling many years later - the therapist said I’d been coping on my own since I was seven years old. FFS.
Some of it came out at one point - resulting in all the kids laughing at me. One kid said his dad said girls like me usually end up on drugs and getting murdered. That was very helpful to know.
I have a young woman on my staff that was the target of unwanted advances and inappropriate remarks from a co-worker both at work and in phone and text messages. When she finally rejected and blocked him on her phone and social media. He began a campaign of alienation and bullying.
When she confided in me as her supervisor (and friend) I was very upset that this was happening to her. I convinced her that she had to file a complaint with HR and guided her through the process. She had her evidence, my support and that of another corroborating witness.
The result?
First, all those involved were issued a directive not to discuss any of the details with anyone under the threat of being reprimanded by HR for tampering with the case. Secondly, she was relocated to another site and put on the evening shift for “her own safety”.
Now she regrets ever speaking up and thinks she just should have just tolerated and/or ignored the behaviour and maybe it would have went away eventually.
It makes me sick to my stomach that this kind of shit happens in my workplace and we couldn’t even help someone who was brave enough to step forward and report it.
Thanks and best wishes to everyone sharing their stories.
Human Resources does not exist to help employees, or even to aid line management in dealing with employee issues. HR exists to protect the company from liability, plain and simple, and they will do whatever they believe best to minimize the potential for a lawsuit regardless of fairness or discrimination as long as they think it will resolve the problem, including suppressing employee complaints, discipling or moving an employee who speaks up, invoking nondisclosure clauses in a contract to prevent an employee from pressing a complaint, and manufacturing a case for firing a ‘troublesome’ employee, which is remarkably easy to do as they own the employment records and can apply disciplinary action arbitrarily and often without any avenue for recourse by the employee.
Your friend should talk to an employment lawyer who specializes in harassment and employee claims, as should anyone who is being harassed or propositioned in the workplace before going to HR with a complaint. It is explicitly illegal in most states to retaliate against an employee who makes a harassment complaint which stops HR not one bit until they see the letterhead of an attorney describing in detail that what they are doing is illegal and will result in litigation. Your friend should not have to put up with this asshole in the workplace nor suffer the impact to her career, and HR has absolutely no fucking business threatening to reprimand her beyond asking her to not discuss the situation with other witnesses so as to avoid any appearance of influencing witnesses. With the evidence you state she has (texts, phone messages, corroboration) she should have an adequate case to force the company to put her back to her normal work schedule and location and remove the abuser, which is what they should have done in the first place.
Stranger
Sadly, almost none of this is applicable to her case since we are not in the U.S.
Our employer has a anti-harassment and respectful workplace policy and procedure which involves several levels of escalation but it is a slow process. There is also union representation provided for all those involved.
At this time, we’re waiting on the result of the investigation…but she (nor I) expect anything to change.
ETA - your response is another excellent example of why things go unreported.
Once a girl is “sexually active” she gets reclassified as an adult. Part of our weird obsession with virginity. It’s much, much worse for minorities, who often are thought of as “adults” earlier in any case. People just double-think it.
Another reason we don’t report is male anger and violence.
Two events when I was eighteen:
Hanging with friend, her boyfreind and his friend when my friend and her boyfreind went to another part of the house. I stayed and talked to the friend about mostly music. He then put an fairly aggressive move on me. I backed up and said, “no”, which was fairly bold for me.
He got furious. He just started ranting that I led him on, I was playing games, etc. Apparently, politely having a conversation translated to Hey why don’t you fuck me right here on the kitchen table. I ran to get the other two - I was sure he was going to get violent.
Second event:
In a dentist office a guy starts up a conversation. I was polite and we had what I thought was just two strangers passing the time. He showed up at my work the next day with flowers!:eek: He apparently figured out where I worked by a couple of statements I made. (later I realized, he had to put a lot of time into figuring this out, not just mental deduction, but driving around the area to find the place I worked).
Not only was this embarrassing, my boss wasn’t happy. And the fact that he didn’t want to leave without me agreeing to go out with him or give him my number. Instead of lying like I usually did in a situation like this and tell him I had a boyfriend (which was the ONLY reply that would make a guy go away), I told him I just wasn’t interested in going out with him. He turned beet red and huffed out. He left the flowers with a sarcastic comment, “You can keep the flowers”. I through them away.
Then the stalking began. Over the next three months this guy somehow kept showing up in public where I was as well. A bar (three different times) a store, (once) a fast food place (two different times, two different places) and lastly, my friends apartment pool where he just happened to lease an apartment that weekend.:eek:
He approached me in the pool and started with “It must be in the stars because we keep ending up in the same place, we should go out”. I AGAIN told him I wasn’t interested. My friend yelled at him that if he kept showing up in the same places I was she would make sure he got the shit kicked out of him by some big guys. This was pure bullshit but whatever.
His response was to call us lesbians and call my friend fat. We laughed at him. I never saw him again.
Male anger when we don’t do what they want can be very scary and can keep women from speaking about it.
A family member was raped by a stranger when she and a friend were walking home from a movie. Both of them were raped. They reported it to the police who told them that it was their fault for “dressing like sluts”. They were 12 years old. The year was 1981. I know for a fact that she suffered abuse after this incident that she did not report; she always felt it was her fault. She finally recovered from the incident in her early 40s through the help of a lot of therapy. What a fucking waste.
I know another women who lost her virginity at 18 years old when she was raped by her step-sister’s husband. I think he must have been 26 years old at the time. She never reported it and I think I am the only one who knows about it. She didn’t want to break up the family. I don’t know what would have happened if she reported it, but knowing what I know about humanity I think she would have carried some of the blame though she was completely blameless. She did confront him ~20 years later and he tearfully apologized. I still wanted to kick his ass.
Why didn’t you fire him?
ETA: I see you aren’t in the U.S. Also, this kind of thing should be handled by the police, not H.R., because he was harassing her outside work.
Basically, because of the unions. All disciplinary actions, etc. are handled by upper management, H.R. and the lawyers.
Because I was in prison, and thus everyone believes that I deserved it. People care so little about prison rape that “don’t drop the soap!” is a fucking punchline.
I believe you.
You didn’t deserve it.
It wasn’t your fault.
Extend this sentiment to everyone in the thread.
I believe you.
You didn’t deserve it.
It wasn’t your fault.
Not related to the above at all:
Can we stop using the passive voice? No more “I was raped” but rather “A [type of person] raped me.” Let’s stop writing the assaulters out of the story. <3
I hear the anger and pain that fuels this sentiment, but that doesn’t make it true.
IME (as a male survivor of 2 separate rapes), the people on this board who *most *need to hear it will just call one a liar. That one made it up, in advance, to score rhetorical points years later. And I imagine that would go for society in general. The people who are sympathetic when told, would have been sympathetic anyway.