He was like a distant nightmare that suddenly returned to her. She had recently arrived at a place in her life where she was happy, in love, and focused. She no longer felt broken or unsure of herself and life brimmed with possibilities. Then she heard that he had victimized another woman, and it all came raging back: the painful memories, the injustice of what he had done without consequence. Again she saw the same disheartening reactions from friends and acquaintances that she had experienced years before - people unwilling to acknowledge this new woman’s experience or her own, unwilling to call out the abuser. She felt helpless. How many more women would go through this because of doubt and disbelief?
Two months ago I attended the LoveBurn in Florida with a man, Robert, who I was seeing at the time. A day after arriving he became extremely aggressive towards me and proceeded to subject me to severe verbal and emotional abuse and manipulation for the entirety of the event. I decided to make my story public when I learned that he had a history of abusing women in the Burner community, in hopes of preventing other women from being deceived and abused by him. The ensuing response has been eye-opening and for the most part painful, because while I have received support and encouragement from some, I have also learned the extent to which women are systematically disbelieved and their experiences devalued.
Earlier this year, This American Life ran a story called “The Anatomy of Doubt,” about a rape case that was derailed because of disbelief. An 18-year-old women named Marie told her friends that she had been tied up and raped in her home. She reported it to the police, which prompted an investigation, but then something happened. One of her mentors, Shannon, had a feeling that Marie wasn’t telling the truth because her behavior after reporting the rape seemed strange. Marie wasn’t crying and didn’t seem very upset. She was not acting the way that Shannon imagined herself behaving in the same situation, so she began to think Marie had made it all up. Shannon told the police about her doubts and the investigation took a drastic turn. Despite strong evidence corroborating Marie’s story, the police stopped investigating the rape and instead began to scrutinize her credibility. There was no awareness or understanding that victims of trauma experience and express that trauma differently. Because Marie did not behave in a way that the police considered typical for a rape victim, they bullied and threatened her into withdrawing her report and signing a statement that she had lied. They then charged her with false reporting, her case was closed, and all the evidence was destroyed. Her entire community then proceeded to vilify, harass, and shun her.
Years later an identical case appeared in another town, but the police there followed through with the investigation. They discovered irrefutable evidence that the same man had raped multiple women, all in different towns, including Marie. Since Marie had been disbelieved and her case closed, he had gone on to rape six other women before he was caught. It is fascinating how thoroughly she was discounted, even among her close friends and in spite of hard evidence. Perhaps even more bizarre is the fact that after Shannon learned Marie had absolutely told the truth, she continued to blame her. Shannon claimed it was Marie’s fault the case went sour because her behavior had caused the doubt. She could not acknowledge that she and others had failed to believe and support Marie because of their own unfounded suspicions. It was more comfortable to believe Marie had some responsibility, because then what happened to her could seem less unjust, less terrible.
We live in a culture where women are widely disbelieved, especially when it comes to rape and intimate partner abuse. Just a few weeks ago, an Idaho sheriff made a statement that most rapes in his district are actually consensual sex. His follows similar statements made by police chiefs and politicians across the U.S. over the last few years, all with the implication that women are deceitful and untrustworthy. With every teen and college rape case that appears in the news, articles are published that continually focus on how tragic it is for the perpetrator, bemoaning the loss of his potential athletic or academic career. High profile domestic abuse cases repeatedly evoke negative judgments and speculations about the woman and why she put herself in the situation. When it came out that Robert had abused other women in addition to me, the initial outpouring of concern was primarily towards him and his suffering. People demanded that we each come forward with our own accounts as if we were on trial. We were also told we should talk to Robert directly and deal with it in private. Demanding this additional ordeal of survivors of abuse, especially when the abuser is a remorseless narcissist who has a history of inflicting extreme psychological abuse, is as inappropriate as it is dangerous. Talking about it publically at all was a risk, and it was apparently not enough to be taken seriously.
We are not viewed as the authorities of our own experience, and so there are those who refuse to believe us because our experience is not their personal experience. The hesitancy of some friends to show their full support has been illuminating - even when they do believe I’ve experienced what I’ve told them, their response is an approximation of “Well, that person never did anything to me, so I don’t believe I have the right to judge him.” What can that be interpreted as except, “I’m not sure it was as bad as you’re saying it was,” or, “I don’t value your experience enough to condemn this person for hurting you”? The message remains that what I and others have suffered is not meaningful enough for most to stand with us in solidarity.
The most disheartening part of this experience has been the insistence by community members to view my experience as an isolated, personal incident rather than acknowledge the pattern of abuse, not only perpetrated by Robert but which exists within the community in general. Several women contacted me after my initial post with stories of being abused by prominent men in the Burner community, mostly in Colorado but a few from other communities in other states. All said that they either distanced themselves from or left the community entirely because of disbelief and lack of support among their community members.
An Apogaea Ranger contacted a friend and co-founder of this blog about arranging to meet with Robert and myself. She claimed she and another Ranger were attempting to facilitate healing by meeting with us individually and hearing each side of the story. When Robert’s ex offered up her personal testimony, the Ranger told her she would listen to her story but continued to insist on viewing my experience as an isolated incident. She was not interested in the fact that Robert had abused multiple women and repeatedly gotten away with it. Apogaea Rangers are not trained to deal with partner abuse and yet she and one other had appointed themselves judges. She said they wanted to act because of the community hurting. However, according to her, this wound came not from the abuse, but because we had gone public and it made people uncomfortable. There were no words about wanting to assist the healing of the survivors of abuse. There was no concern expressed for our well-being, but instead for the harm the public mode of relaying this information had supposedly caused. Never mind that we had done this for the benefit of the community, so that this man could be stopped. I must also mention that this Ranger claimed to my friend that she had reached out to me “several times.” I was never contacted. While people felt comfortable enough questioning and criticizing my post to those around me, not one person had the nerve to do so to me directly.
How abuse affects the victims should matter more to this community than how it affects those uninvolved, but this has not been the case. The women who have been repeatedly disbelieved and denied a space to speak out are the ones who are hurting. We are the ones who must deal with the pain of what we have suffered as well as the pain of witnessing our friends and community treat us with contempt and disregard instead of support. We are the ones who desperately want to move on from our experience but are hurt again and again by those who unequivocally stand by our abusers even as they continue to victimize others after us. We do not go public because we are spiteful, but because we are genuinely concerned about more people being deceived and hurt in this culture of shame and silence.
This community cannot ever heal as long as it ignores and protects abusers. The whole motivation behind going public was because this is not an isolated incident, and as long as the community safeguards abusers and refuses to hold them accountable they will continue to victimize more people, just as in Marie’s case. There is no question about that. No abuser simply stops abusing on a whim, especially when his behavior is actively defended or hidden. This community has provided an environment for abuse to persist without accountability, and that must change.
I will not be attending Apogaea this year. My past experiences at Apo and Burning Man have taught me that the poorly-trained Rangers are much more interested in protecting the fantasy of Burning culture than they are in keeping festival goers safe. At least a few people attending this year are repeat abusers and sexual predators, most of whom have friends among the Rangers. I used to love Apo, but I cannot enjoy the freedom there that I once did knowing that unsafe people will be there and that they have more support than I do. I understand that people would prefer to move on and forget the situation, but that will only perpetuate more incidents like this one. There are those who think that bringing up this kind of abuse unfairly involves other people, ruins their fun and tarnishes the fantasy of love and freedom of expression. I say that the only way to make that fantasy a reality is by holding people accountable and making sure these spaces are safe for everyone. Otherwise it is all hypocrisy.
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