Trying to Forget Will Never Make My Experience Less True
About a month ago, raging over the response from both the media and the American public to this notorious Rolling Stone article (since inelegantly redacted) and the multitude of Cosby assault allegations, I wrote a piece about sexual abuse and the effect of trauma on memory. This is something that I feel doesn’t get nearly enough attention when we talk about rape and assault in our society. I am sharing my experience and my thoughts because if this meandering little blog of mine reaches even the slimmest of audiences, hopefully it will be read by someone who has been through something similar and can take solace in the fact that they are not alone, that dissociative amnesia is very real, that recalling every detail of an assault with perfect clarity is unnervingly impossible, and talking about these experiences with veracity is the only way to enliven and enlighten the conversation. -Meghan
Here’s what I remember most vividly about my assault: his left hand tight around my throat and his eyes, mean and angry, menacing. The peaty odor of stale cigarettes. Short breaths – mine – and my waist pinned under his weight. I remember that brief second as his fingers eased their grip, and my guttural scream. I am going to die, I thought. Or worse.
In July 2013, after more than two years of silence from the Washington, D.C. police department, a man was arrested in connection with my assault. I didn’t want to press charges. But I also knew that it wasn’t about what I wanted anymore. I met with the prosecutor on a stifling August morning in downtown D.C. I needed to prepare for my testimony before the Grand Jury, said the detective handling my case.
“Let’s discuss what you told the detective on the night of your attack,” the prosecutor said.
We sat in a windowless room with a long, brown scuff-edged conference table ringed with puffy pleather chairs that swiveled. My hands shook and my insides quivered. I started at the beginning. I remembered seeing the Ledroit Park arch on Florida Ave. when I first heard his feet pumping the pavement behind me. Out of instinct I stopped, turned around. The man stopped running, shifting to a casual lope. What is a lope, exactly, Ms. McNamara?
The prosecutor kept interrupting. Be specific, he said. So many questions: How far was it from the Ledroit sign to your front door? What did you say when your attacker approached you? How many steps is it from the front door up to the kitchen landing? Where did he push and how did you fall?
“Do you recall what you told the detective this man said to you as he held you down?” The prosecutor looked up at me from behind a leather portfolio.
What he said? I plied my brain for the answer. The night drifted away from me. When I grasped at the memory, my attempts to recall it only seemed to push it further.
“… about your tights?” The prosecutor prompted.
And there we were again, a slice of that night bursting forth: his broad shoulders hovering over me, the firmness of his fingers on my neck, his right hand clawing at my legs, at my tights. “Take them off,” he had said as his hands moved up under my skirt. This was the moment. A moment I hadn’t tried to extract since that night.
The prosecutor nodded. His eyes were bright and blue and sad. This was what I needed to tell the Grand Jury, he said. Next, he played the recording of my 911 call. My voice trembled through the speakers of the grainy, government-issued computer, my heavy breathing scattering the electric static, the tiny pitch of my voice like that of a scared child’s. My throat felt tight, like I had swallowed a pill dry. I didn’t remember any of it, but there it was, my voice. Then I heard the voices of the first responders calling out to me. Calling me back. I saw my roommate’s bathroom, the place where I had locked myself while I dialed 911. I recalled how I clutched my roommate’s tiny mustache shears in my left hand, the pepper spray from my keychain in my right. I saw my pale reflection in the glass, ribbons of grey mascara winding down my cheeks.
I experienced so many moments like these; recall flashes of things I hadn’t or couldn’t have remembered before. I was scratching at something, like a half-healed scab – something that I had spent the better part of two years almost subconsciously forcing myself to forget. These fuzzy, faded memories are remarkably common among survivors of sexual assault I have only lately come to learn.
From Rolling Stone’s “Jackie” to the multitude of women accusing Bill Cosby of sexual assault and so much in between, rape has been in the headlines a lot lately. And it’s hard not to ask, given everything we know, what have we learned? What do we take away from these stories and the way in which they are framed for us by the media? Sadly, sexual assault is still very much an intrinsic part of the female experience, affecting one in six women in the United States, according to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. That’s 17.7 million women. And of those, only 40 percent report their assaults and less than three percent of rapists ever serve time in jail.
In August 2014, following a Grand Jury testimony, two trials (the first of which resulted in a hung jury after one of the jurors admitted to having been acquitted of sexual assault charges during jury deliberations), and a multitude of terrible moments that I have had to relive too many times before so many strangers, I am part of the fortunate three percent of women who have seen the justice system work in their favor. But how many stories must we hear before that number increases? How often will we question the stories of victims and wonder why they can’t remember it all perfectly?
It was hard to stand up and talk about my experience, and it’s not difficult to understand why 60 percent of women wouldn’t want to do that. I didn’t have to confront the national media. My experience didn’t become the poster child for rape awareness. If it had, I’m not sure how I would have fared, or how I might have reacted. I’m not sure if my narrative would have been exactly what the public wanted to hear. But I don’t think it should have to be.
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