[Debate] The V-Report, Eve Ensler

[Riaz K Tayob]

    Eve Ensler <http://huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler>

Author of 'I Am An Emotional Creature" and "The Vagina Monologues," 
Founder of V-Day


  The V-Report

Posted: 8/26/11 05:05 PM ET

The day DSK was dismissed I sent this out via Twitter 
<http://twitter.com/#%21/eveensler>: I am so OVER women being put on 
trial when they get raped, leaving their houses when they get beaten, 
quitting jobs after they get harassed.

Within seconds, emails, tweets and Facebook responses began to pour in. 
Women sent me stories about cases reported and unreported.

One woman pressed charges against a younger male student who stalked and 
attempted to rape her at Seminary school. She wrote to the Dean and a 
church district Superintendent. She was told no one could help her. She 
faced much hostility from members of her community. She kept going. Her 
tale had a happy ending: "I was granted my Order of Protection; I am 
affecting important change here at my school, the school is stepping up 
to create better policies."

A 12-year-old in Missouri is blamed 
<http://jezebel.com/5831447/school-allegedly-made-girl-write-apology-to-her-rapist> 
for reporting a rape and forced to write a written apology to the boy 
who raped her and deliver it personally. She is accused of filing a fake 
report and thrown out of school. Then, when she returned to school, he 
sexually assaulted her again. Her mother took her to an advocate and 
they discovered his DNA on her clothes. Eventually the boy plead guilty.

Women's activist Monique Wilson from the Philippines writes:

    This reminds me of our Filipina girl, Nicole, some years ago raped
    by a U.S. soldier on our soil. He was actually found guilty in our
    courts and sentenced but our cowardly government -- ever reliant and
    dependent on the US -- bowed to the full might of the US embassy and
    government who gave him full protection from our jails and laws. In
    effect they gave him immunity after he had already been tried and
    sentenced. Meanwhile, Nicole had been vilified by our press and
    religious groups, because on the night of the rape she was wearing a
    short skirt and she was dancing at a party like any other young
    woman would. They made judgments on her because of that. Then the
    saddest thing of all Nicole could no longer live in the country so
    steeped in religious righteousness, that demonized her so she took
    up the U.S. offer of a visa and left for the US. They bought her
    silence and broke her spirit.

The list goes on. What happens to women who come forward to press 
charges against rape and battery? They are often told it's because of 
the way they were dressed, they wanted it, they are making it up. Their 
own histories are put on trial. Forensic evidence: bruised vaginas, 
semen-stained collars, destroyed souls. Often these are the last things 
considered. The DSK dismissal outraged women and made us sad, but I 
think the worst thing it could do is lead women to believe that speaking 
out and getting justice is too grueling, too shaming, too impossible. 
It's a long road. Justice does not come fast or easily. While there are 
dedicated and innovative prosecutors and officials seeking justice for 
rape survivors, they are far too few, and the justice systems often 
appear to work against the victims.

I really do believe there will come a time when rape is understood as 
rape, where men and justice systems will understand that no one has the 
right to take a woman, grab a woman, hurt a woman, have sex with a woman 
against her will. And it doesn't matter what she is wearing, what she 
does for a living or even if she has lied or made mistakes in her past 
or was not a virgin. RAPE IS RAPE. I know this time will come and the 
only way it will come is for all of us to be super brave and come 
forward every single time we are raped, molested, beaten or groped. I 
think the DSK dismissal should be our call to action, not despair.

In the name of justice for women, V-Day is initiating the V-Report, 
inviting women throughout the world with a story or case to report to do 
so online -- to tell us what happened, to share your story.

Here's what you need to know. We will listen to your story. We will 
record it on this site. We will give you the space to say what you need 
to say and we support your right, your need to say it.

We are going to create a live space for these stories and then down the 
road we will call a Global Press Charges Day.

There is a sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious force of silencing women 
that occurs in this ongoing state of patriarchy. Whether it is 
consciously intentional or not is of no consequence. The mechanism 
exists. It is a very dangerous thing as the tenuous ground that abused 
women stand on is already so shaky and fraught. We need many, many more 
lawyers and prosecutors and courts that want rape to end, that want 
women to live safely and freely. We need systems where women feel 
invited, not shamed to report their cases. We need legal structures that 
actually discourage rapists and take the act as seriously as the woman 
whose life it destroys. Nafissatou Diallo should have had her day in 
court. A jury should have decided her fate. She was entitled to that. 
Women are entitled to that.

In the absence of truth, the public and the media fill the void with 
their negative projections. Nafi is left after the dismissal attacked 
and demonized. Now she is another disappeared woman.

Where there is impunity, where there is no accountability, where a woman 
does not have her day in court, rape and violence spread. Scrape the 
surface of 1 billion women on the planet (and that is a UN statistic 
that one out of three women will be raped or beaten during their 
lifetime) and you will find a story of violence or rape that determined 
the trajectory of that woman's life in some fundamental way.

How many of those women never spoke up or out? How many of those women 
were afraid to press charges?

Let the DSK dismissal be our call to rise. Something has shifted with 
this case, let's seize this moment. Let so many of us speak out that 
it's a landslide and it turns the tide and the courts and the method of 
justice.

So, I'll go first:

My father regularly beat me senseless and sexually abused me. He gave me 
bloody noses in restaurants and smashed my head against walls and 
whipped my legs with belts. There was no one to turn to. I am reporting 
it here and now. He has passed on, but I want it on the record.

JOIN US, CONTRIBUTE TO THE V-REPORT AT http://www.facebook.com/vday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/the-v-report_b_937287.html
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