Status Updates From One Way Back: A Memoir

When one person steps forward to speak truth to power, it does more than just redeem them or atone for wrongdoing. It adds to a collective whole, a larger wave of fresh outrage and demands for our government, our representatives, and everyone to not just #BelieveWomen but to do better.

Maybe it’s the scientist in me, but I’d like to believe that we’re in the middle of a revolution that will only be recognizable in years to come. If it takes countless survivors to tell their story despite personal risks and consequences on an individual level—all of us slowly stacking on top of one another until there is finally a collective response—I’m proud to have contributed.

Additional allegations came out against Kavanaugh...but every time more information came to light about Kavanaugh or the way the confirmation was handled, contacts in DC told me the harsh truth: there's zero chance that anything will be done. I now know the difficulty of asking a bureaucratic organization to disrupt itself when everyone involved—even the people on my side—want to keep the processes going as they are.

Working through this alone, I’ve reached my greatest sense of empowerment in an unlikely place: the abyss. Where even if no one on earth were to believe you, you know it still happened. No one can take that away from you.
–To everyone who didn't believe me, I responded, "your disbelief doesn't negate the truth."

"Here’s how it would have gone down. Opposition researchers would have discredited you within a week. By July 15, no one would have spoken your name again. Staying anonymous for as long as you did was what allowed you the chance to tell the truth.”
It was ugly but true, gruesome but comforting. I had to stop underestimating the evil that these people were capable of. And the reality that they would never give up.

There’s a term, DARVO, introduced by psychologist Jennifer Freyd, that stands for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.” It refers to a manipulation tactic used by a perpetrator (say, a sexual offender) who is called out or held accountable for their actions. In response, the accused reverses the roles to blame the victim, while also taking the role of victim on themselves.

Meeting David Hogg showed me what I could learn about survival from people much younger than me. I was struck by his courage and amazed at how he’d redirected his trauma into purpose and resolve. The misinformation and smear campaigns that had led me into isolation had motivated him into action.

As Steve Bannon once explained, “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

You can be ruthlessly targeted, and you can have more support than you know what to do with. You can hold space for both of those things.
You pay a price for telling the truth.
–Don't I know it!

You’re telling all women that they don’t matter, that they should just stay quiet because if they tell you what happened to them, you are going to ignore them. That’s what happened to me, and that’s what you are telling all women in America, that they don’t matter.

–To all who voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh

“I don’t mind being the poster child for mental illness,” I said. “If they want to rip me apart for going to therapy, I’m okay with that. If it means that the next person in my shoes doesn’t have to go through this, I’ll take it.”

Later I would have one of those mock conversations you have after the fact, when you come up with a better answer you wish you’d said in the moment.

–I hate it when my brain obsesses over that.

The survivor’s Catch-22: you’re told not to tell too many people, but then later you’re told your story isn’t credible because you didn’t tell anyone. You can’t win. It’s one of the many ways survivors aren’t supported in coming forward.

Everybody experiences trauma differently, and unfortunately what happened to me in high school has been eclipsed by what I’ve gone through the last few years. Being retraumatized has made the original wound much worse. I was not as messed up by it in earlier years as I am now.
–We are being retraumatized over&over by the epic failure to hold rapists accountable, from the Epstein Files to the Cornell 7 & legions more.

I never got to thank the people who wrote [letters]. Statistics had helped me quantify them all...I was able to look at the data and see that the prevalence of sexual assault was so high it was basically at an epidemic level. It seemed to have happened to almost everyone, and while the stories were all different, the effects they had on the letter writers echoed each other again and again.

Once [Brett Kavanaugh] was confirmed anyway, it was clear that I, and Anita Hill before me, hadn’t solved the problem. Unfortunately, many others after us would need to come forward to bring about a larger systemic change. The strange part was that it didn’t feel like I hadn’t been heard. It felt like I had been believed, but then the response was a proverbial shrug. I couldn’t fix the fundamental injustice of that.