Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence (25 page)

I was invited to a youth conference a year later. I was on a panel with two very powerful and well-known Native men speakers. After I spoke, the eldest of the two openly admitted he was abused as a child. It takes great courage for a Native man to confess he was abused in front of a lot of people. He was actually acknowledging me for speaking. I was in such awe of his strength!

My first college experience is not going to hold me back from continuing my education. If I let it, then it would be like letting him win. I am much too strong to quit everything I have worked so hard for these past seven years. My advice is—don’t let the bad things get in your way of pursuing your dream. If you do, you will never go anywhere because there are always downfalls in everything we do. Just keep looking at the positive side and things will pay off at the end.

It gives me great pleasure to help someone open up and start the healing process by telling my story and what I’ve gone through. I can give them some options of what they can do to express their repressed feelings, such as writing down their thoughts, joining a support group, or even joining an exercise class. Or I can let them know that being raped was not their fault and listen to their story. These simple gestures mean so much to a person when they feel down and out. They will soon find their own strength to keep living life. We each have a strength deep inside us, but we have to be patient to explore it. I keep thinking if my ancestors survived for thousands of years through a lot of rough times, I could get through this too.

This cycle of violence needs to be broken. We, as Native American and Alaska Native women, need to acknowledge the fact that domestic violence and sexual assault exist in our communities. We need to deal with the effects of these issues, individually and as a culture. Once we are individually healthy, we need to stop accepting this violence, as a tribe. Tolerance is the reason why violence against women still exists today.

Abuse will continue to exist in our communities if people don’t do anything about it. I have been told that I am strong for surviving what I’ve been through. I don’t feel as strong as they say. The reason I’ve made it this far is because of the support I received. I am very blessed to have the courage, energy, and the will to go on and speak openly to try to make a difference in at least one person’s life. I hope my story will encourage more victims to speak up and to discover their own strength.

In all cultures and religions there is a higher power that comes in many shapes and forms. I believe that the higher power has a plan for each of us, whether it results in a good or bad situation. How we, individually, deal with these situations is our test in life. In my situation, it would be easy for me to give up on life by ending it with drugs and alcohol or by my own actions, but I have chosen to deal with my situation and learn from it. I responded by healing myself and helping other victims. I personally feel this is my calling because nothing gives me the happiness I feel when I reach someone by telling my story. In these past ten years, I have met so many strong, spirited survivors. These women have overcome so much, and yet they still have a smile on their faces helping others who are in the place they once were. These are the people I truly envy because they have courage, willpower, and knowledge to help victims. I have heard many speakers who have these qualities, and I hope one day I will be like them.

In the summer of 2003, I learned that my perpetrator was picked up in California for a probation violation. He had two counts against him since the time my case went to court in the summer of 1996. The two counts were Attempted Aggravated Sexual Battery and Aggravated Failure to Appear. He was extradited back to Lawrence, Kansas, to appear in court. I was not sorry to hear that he cried in court during his appearance and was sentenced to a year in prison. This outcome is better than the nine months he served in Douglas County Jail for my rape. I am very happy that he spent more time in jail, where he belongs forever. Knowing he was finally held accountable for his actions is helping me to see the light!

Questions

1. What are some of the effects of sexual assault or rape that Frank identifies? Why is it impossible for the victim to just “get over” these feelings? Why is it so important for first responders, such as advocates, police, nurses, and lawmakers, to understand these feelings and stages?
   
2. What is the process that a victim of sexual assault has to go through if he or she decides to report the crime? Why does this often feel like a revictimization?
   
3. Why do so many women fail to report sexual assaults?
   
4. Why is it so important to have emotional, physical, spiritual, and legal support throughout the process? What are some of the consequences of not having that type of support?
   
5. Why does Frank point out that every rape or sexual assault survivor’s feelings are valid no matter how seriously others interpret the assault?
   
6. How did the university fail the victim? What can college campuses, particularly tribal colleges, do to be more supportive of victims? How can they make their programs sensitive to the needs of American Indian women and men?
   

In Your Community

1. What can people in your community do to assist a victim of sexual assault through the process and lessen the unknown?
   
2. If you could design a Sexual Assault Response Team on your campus, what would it look like? What would the composition of your team be? What professions or students would be represented?
   
3. What should colleges do to sexual assault perpetrators who are students?
   
4. What does healing mean for you and your community?
   

Terms Used in Chapter 7

Felony
: A crime carrying a minimum term of one year or more in state prison.

Flashback
: A recurring, intensely vivid mental image of a past traumatic experience.

Misdemeanor
: A lesser crime punishable by a fine and/or county jail time for up to one year.

Perpetrator:
The person responsible for a crime.

Plea bargain:
In criminal procedure, a negotiation between the defendant and his or her attorney on one side and the prosecutor on the other, in which the defendant agrees to plead “guilty” or “no contest” to some crimes in return for reduction of the severity of the charges, dismissal of some of the charges, the prosecutor’s willingness to recommend a particular sentence, or some other benefit to the defendant.

Prosecute:
In criminal law, to charge a person with a crime and thereafter pursue the case through trial on behalf of the government.

Sentencing hearing:
The period in a criminal case devoted to determining the sanctions to be imposed on the defendant.

Suggested Further Reading

Anderson, Michelle J. “The Legacy of the Prompt Complaint Requirement, Corroboration Requirement, and Cautionary Instructions on Campus Sexual Assault.” Villanova University School of Law, Paper 20 (2004).

Holtfreter, Kristy, and Jennifer Boyd. “A Coordinated Community Response to Intimate Partner Violence on the College Campus.”
Vtctims and Offenders
1 (2006): 141.

Sanday, Peggy Reeves. “Rape-Prone Versus Rape-Free Campus Cultures.”
Violence Against Women
2 (1996): 191.

Intimate Disfigurement

Lying in a dark pool at the bottom of the shower
I see myself
Tied with sinew
Gagged by my pride
And struggling, dragging my body
Across the hot floor
Cold thick liquid beats me down
The more I drag myself the stronger the torrent
It sticks to my skin
Adheres my skin to the tile
My hair clumps in knots
Ripping away from my head
Like survivors of a sinking ship
Jumping overboard in one last effort to
free themselves from disaster
I give in, I cry out
Except no one is there to listen

Amanda D. Faircloth (Lumbee)

Chapter 8

Violence across the Lifecycle

DIANE E. BENSON

I
t might have been the first time I was hit, but I could not say for sure. I remember it well, even now; because it seemed to be the first time I was convinced that a violent act against me was unwarranted. A keen awareness had swept over me—I knew no safe place to be. I was in another foster home then, my young life welted by a society and a system that provided no justice. But on that day, home from my sixth-grade schooling, I ran in the door, proud artwork in hand, only to be greeted by a fist that knocked me near unconscious straight across the small living room. Apparently, I startled my foster mother’s son visiting from logging camp. Some things, no matter how normal, you never get used to.

A tiny hut of a home in Ketchikan, Alaska, nestled in a cove occupied by a mammoth pulp mill, kept my two brothers and I captive a good part of the 1960s. It wasn’t that our foster mother was a bad person, she wasn’t. She was an elderly widow, raised in Forks, Washington, and accustomed to the logging life, who felt sorry for my brothers and me. My father, a logger at the time, could not manage the care of three little ones and travel to the remote campsites at the same time. Dad approached other family members for help, but they felt unable or unprepared to take on more children. We arrived at our new foster home in Ward Cove when I was five, my brother Chuck four, and my brother Dennis three. We were all together and that seemed like a good idea from dad’s point of view. We were safe, so he thought. We missed our mother.

Our mother achieved only fifth grade in the missionary school in Sitka, Sheldon Jackson, where most of our tribal members were eventually confined for American schooling. A family member says our mother was withdrawn from school because she contracted tuberculosis. She was physically beautiful, too beautiful some would say, and jealousy seemed to cause others to avoid her so I am told. Always dressed up, she played in her own big doll house in a backyard in the modest village of Sitka, alone. I was an adult when I learned from my father that she had been sexually abused as a child. This spoke to why this hardheaded, unemotional, yet curiously sympathetic man tolerated her many inconsistencies. My father, a bit of a happy drunk, a cynical intellectual, and a gambler, was no saint either, but he was our father. It was our deepest desire to be with our parents and with our older half brother. We wanted our family.

Prior to the time we were dropped off at Ward Cove, my brothers and I had moved often from home to home. Alaskan Territorial Court records reveal that my mother did not show up at divorce court to argue custody or notions of child neglect. It was the late 1950s; my mother was Indian, uneducated, and had no court representation. Alaska was about to be the forty-ninth state. Laws were still forming. Issues of alcohol abuse and infidelity remained unsettled in court and unsettling for us as we again unpacked bags.

Mom left Alaska in shame and never came back after the divorce. Her absence left a hole, but in some ways, we never knew her anyway. She was just a beautiful sad face in my memory. But dad, he had taken me hunting from the time I could walk. He took us down to the beaches under the light of an early morning moon to dig clams. He showed us the trees and the waters. During the divorce period, Dad took us kids around from house to house looking for safe places. He didn’t find any.

It happened that as toddlers we would find ourselves homeless, and not by anyone’s intent. Even prior to divorce, we three kids were frequently left behind in our parents’ drama. Once, a local tribal woman in Ketchikan recognized us three children sitting in the airport, alone for some time, and took us to her home. She returned us to our feuding parents, but we were eventually shuffled off to another home. We stayed in a wonderful home in Juneau. I remember the man was a fireman and his wife smiled a lot. I rode the fire truck in the parade, and it was the happiest day. Maybe it was Alaska Day. When I had a birthday, she made a cake, and I wanted to stay with them forever. Soon after, we were sent to another home. It was never clear how much these placements were my dad’s effort, and how much were the State’s effort. A few months here and a few months there, in one home after another, began to create furrowed brows on the foreheads of three little children. We even have pictures to prove it. Then we were dropped at a home in downtown Ketchikan that would burn down.

Like most of the homes where we were placed, the family was white and this was true of the home below the boardwalk in Ketchikan. Our memories bring forth the images of well-fed older kids with lots of red hair and freckles, and a slightly rotund woman with a loud voice who was terribly stingy with bread and food in general. It seemed to amuse her to throw a piece of bread on the floor and watch us go for it. We were constantly hungry there, and our beds provided no comfort to these pains. She kept us in the attic, my youngest brother sleeping on a piece of plywood, and usually me with him, wrapped in an Army blanket. My other brother was kept in a crib with no mattress, only bare springs and a sheet. We were dirty and I can still feel it, and had no shoes. Her children tormented us, and I would hide my brothers behind me trying to protect them from the pinches and slaps and taunting. As winter went on, and Christmas got closer, I dreamed of owning a gun. Dad came once to visit and asked me what I wanted from Santa. I told him—a machine gun and food. I only got a fake gun with caps. I was a disappointed and angry little five-year-old girl. But I did get a candy bar.