I don’t know you and you don’t know me. The chances of you ever reading this are slim to none and slim is headed for the door. What I know of you is plastered on my Facebook timeline and my Twitter feed. On the front page of Odyssey there are articles and articles of nothing but seething rage directed at your attacker and heartfelt words to you after watching this story unfold.
Let me be one of many to say I’m sorry. First off, for being a college student who majors in media but chooses to dwell in caves. I found that so many of these stories would pop up in various sorts of social media, and your nightmare has been put on blast, so I want to apologize for my cave-dwelling. For my avoidance. You don't exactly get the chance to avoid your own story like I can or anyone else reading. Your story is out there and I can’t fathom how it feels to re-live it. How it feels to be out there. But I want to say thank you for being strong enough to share your story as well. For opening my eyes along with others – about what happened, your rapist, how wrong the media is nowadays, about rape culture, about safety, about the trauma, and the list goes on. I want to say I’m sorry that it’s taking me this long to just read about your story, to get the facts together, to Google search “Stanford rape victim’s name.” From what I can tell, I can’t find your name, and maybe it’s for the best and for anonymity, which makes sense to me. But also know, you’re not just “Stanford rape victim.” Whatever your name is (and if it is out there and my detective skills are lagging, I apologize), please know you are whole. You are a person. You are strong and just your words and your story have created such an impact on the world around us, as hellish as I imagine it may be. You are not minimized to the term of “Stanford rape victim,” and I hope you don’t feel that this is all you will ever amount to. Your words are definitely ingrained in my mind and your story is one I will not be able to get out of my head. As I’ve said before, not being able to imagine the pain it brought you back to, I still thank you for your strength.
I’m sorry this happened to you. Not to say that I’d want it to happen to someone at all; nothing like this should ever happen, to anyone. It brings me pain to know you’ve had to spend time to piece it together, to have the events of the night spat back at you as though the event were nothing more but a jigsaw puzzle. It pains me to know your story has been overshadowed with pictures of a bright and happy athlete, painted with statistics of a swimmer as though this should make the public forget or feel better about his actions. It bothers me to come across these articles and know more things about this student and his family and their side than your actual side. I said before I know that it could merely be for anonymity, not to mention to take whatever Hell away from recounting the story, but why is he being glorified? He has his name plastered all over the place and yet the media has deemed you anywhere from “20 Minutes of Action” to “Stanford Rape Victim,” and it only makes me back my sentence more – you are a person. I hope that you can only see that while the media chooses to name you this, this is not what you are. I hope you understand that you and your story should not be minimized, that what happened to you is not small like a paper-cut, but way more significant. Something that should open the eyes of women (and men) like myself and should leave us terrified. None of us will understand what you went through, but all of us stand together enraged and upset from learning about what has happened to you.
While I can sit here and continue to go down the list of apologies I have, and the “sorrys” I could count up from the heartbreak I carry reading your story, I still thank you for your strength. The immense pain that the evening has given you mentally and physically from that point and here on out is unfathomable. The trauma that you have gone through, the side effects (short and long-term), the time you have spent trying to fight the issue altogether: this is unfathomable. The range of emotions you have felt by giving your statement or even going through this battle within a year, the new life you’ve had to adjust to, the memories, the changes, it’s all unfathomable – simply put. But I thank you for your strength. The way you ended your statement, the gratitude you hold for everyone that lifted you up in some way, shape or form throughout the process, and the girls that you stand with at the end of your statement sheds an incredible light on myself and those who have read your words, thanking you for your courage throughout everything and the vitality that you give to victims and anyone that’s reading.