By Cheryl Springer
In July 1984, a young American journalist who had gone to a university campus to interview members of a theatre group, was raped at knifepoint in the empty theatre around 5 pm. On May 4 this year, Joanna Connors, who still works for the same newspaper, finally told her story with no holds barred. I spent about an hour on Thursday last wrapped up in the gripping feature in the online edition of the Plain Dealer, a Cleveland, Ohio daily.
“Beyond Rape: A survivor’s story” was also published as a supplement to the actual newspaper, because it was very long and the editor did not want to split it up and run over several days. What made it even more interesting was that Connors did not choose anonymity, which is standard practice with stories of this nature. She researched and wrote her own story 23 years after the fact in her quest for closure.
Even before I had finished reading the story, I knew it was one I would never forget. It is the sort of feature for which awards are won, yet I got the feeling that the only reward the writer was seeking was peace.
Rape is said to be a fate worse than death. In today’s world and even back in 1984 in the US when Connors was raped, it is akin to dying twice. Connors, like most other rape survivors, would have had no guarantee that she would not die even though she cooperated with her assailant.
An acquaintance of mine who had been raped at knifepoint about a year ago, told me that she almost felt grateful to her rapist for not killing her. Then when a few days later she discovered that she had a sexually transmitted infection, she wished he had. Finally, months later, when she was physically healed and declared HIV free, she found herself thinking that her assailant had not been “that bad after all.” This woman has never reported her rape to the police. She chose not to undergo a formal counselling process which she so desperately needs, thus prolonging her mental and emotional healing. I have forwarded “Beyond Rape” to her in the hope that she will read it and act. And if not, I hope she reads this column and acts.
Connors said she had to force herself to come to terms with the fact that she entered the deserted campus theatre with her attacker, not because she was not wary, but simply because she did not want to be seen as a bigot – she was white and her attacker was black. She had been counselled and knew at some level that it was not her fault. But perhaps because rape brings with it shame and stigma; because Connors knew that once she felt the knife at her throat and saw her own blood when she put her hand there that she did not scream or resist, she became a victim rather than a survivor, believing that she must have done something to deserve it.
She writes: “The fear I felt, all these years, was not primarily fear of another assault, although I do carry that fear, too, more for my daughter than for myself. It was a fear of exposure and shame.
“I’m tired of being afraid.”
The article included the details of the rape, all of which had emerged during the trial, but had not been made public before. And it contained all that only Connors knew before, about how she had become an accessory in her own rape, feigning cooperation, agreeing with what her assailant said.
Although Connors had seen psychologists over the years, she never really overcame the episode and her rapist, even from his prison cell and eventually from the grave retained some sort of power over her. Where she had been wary before, she felt paralyzing fear; her relationship with her husband suffered and after she had her children she watched them like a hawk.
Just prior to writing the article, Connors had told her two children about her ordeal for the first time, finally helping them to understand why she had always been overprotective. She then decided to try and find her assailant because she felt she needed to confront him. He had died, but she found his relatives and learned about his life, which had been sordid, sorry and filled with abuse almost from the moment he gave his first cry. Not that it excused the fact that he had committed a heinous crime.
What I realized too from reading Connors’s article is that in writing it she has begun the process by which she finally frees herself from the power of the man who assaulted her. Hopefully, she would have also empowered other women in her situation to do the same, even if they do not use the same medium.
