Woman regrets inaction over campus abuse allegation
Dear Amy: A few months into freshman year of college (not too long ago), an acquaintance of mine accused a popular athlete on campus of date rape and notified the college and police.
I went to a fairly small school, so rumors spread quickly and before long, most students heard some variation of the story.
I can't remember the details of what allegedly happened, but I vividly remember how many of her friends turned on her and accused her of lying. "He's not that kind of guy," "She just regretted sleeping with him," etc. were publicly stated by the people who should have been first to defend her. The girl in question later withdrew for a semester. The boy remained at school and remained popular.
As sexual assault and harassment have become less taboo to discuss and confront, my circle of friends and I have talked about how we all remember that event, and how we regret we never said anything in defense of this woman when our peers dragged her name through the mud.
It's tempting to excuse our inaction then by telling ourselves we were young and didn't know any better. But in reality, I know we should have known better and should have done more.
So many times, I've wanted to reach out to this girl and try to apologize for what she went through. I don't know what happened, but I know she deserved better than what she got. She deserved better than my inaction.
I'm wary of coming out of the blue to bring up a traumatic thing in her life just to make myself feel better. Would reaching out to this women years after the fact be helpful to her -- or just hurtful?
-- Regretful
Dear Regretful: I applaud the fact that you have made the connection between what is happening now in the larger culture, and your own inaction previously.
I don't know if reaching out now would trigger this woman's trauma, but surely the current exposure to the suffering of people who have survived sexual violence and have been further injured by being denied is a trigger for many victims. It is also a trigger for lots of other people -- people who have witnessed assault, or who simply have the conscience to feel despair for victims and survivors.
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