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I am so very tired today.
My weekend was endlessly busy. Dinner and errands with the Boyfriend on Friday. To my mom�s at 9:00 Saturday morning. Longaberger meeting there and a graduation party for Mr. M�s daughter Bailey at their house through my mom�s yard, both at the same time. Preparation for the tea. A flurry of housecleaning, a trip to the grocery store, a couple hours in the kitchen. A preliminary guest list discussion (our half�my mom�s and mine�now numbers 170 people). Bed around Midnight. Sunday, I woke up at 7:30 to vacuuming in the hall. Several more hours in the kitchen assembling tea sandwiches. I never want to cut the crust off another piece of bread again. Di and the other guests arrived at12:30, starting several hours of wedding flurry. We cleared one party out and reset for the second, a Longaberger open house starting at 7. I finally dragged myself out to the car at 11, hoping to hit my pillow by Midnight again.
I�m not even sure I remember yesterday. It was far too busy in here. I started posting an entry several times, only to be distracted by actual work (the nerve of those people I work with, interrupting my Diaryland time!). I left a few minutes early, hoping to make it to BARCC in time to watch an hour-long documentary before our training started. I didn�t count on the Red Sox traffic, though. Damn Kenmore Square!
Last night was legal night at BARCC, with a member of the legal office presenting for the first half, and two Cambridge police officers coming in for the second half.
Stephanie, the lawyer who came in and talked first, gave us a new list of statistics. I learned a new word: recidivist�one who relapses; specif: an habitual criminal. As in, �rape is a recidivist crime, with an average of seven victims per perpetrator.�
This is a statistic that frightens me a lot.
I�ve believed for a long time that I am probably not the only person Lorne has assaulted in his lifetime, but it was just a gut feeling. It becomes something else entirely when it�s staring you in the face.
Here�s another statistic that frightened me a lot�only one percent of convictions result in a prison sentence of more than one year.
The two go together in my head somehow.
It�s such a double-edged sword. The survivor gets so little out of going to the hospital and reporting the crime�a long and invasive medical examination. A string of questions about a situation she (or he) is uncomfortable about. The chance of having people she doesn�t want to know find out about the assault. The likelihood of not being believed. The opportunity to have her entire life scrutinized and exploited by a defense attorney (although there are better laws surrounding this approach now, it�s still far from perfect). Public blame and guilt. And the huge likelihood of having it all end with the rapist getting slapped on the wrist if he gets anything at all.
So she doesn�t tell.
In return, having gotten away with no repercussions, the rapist goes and does it again. And again. And again. To an average of six other people.
This makes me sick.
And I think, �but if the first person spoke out, and he got a six-month sentence, and still did it again, and the second person spoke out, the second sentence would be longer!�
But how can you be that selfless? How can you, after going through something that horrible and humiliating and dehumanizing, then turn around and say, �I�m not doing this just for me but for women in general!�?
I don�t know that I�d have that in me.
I didn�t have that in me.
I didn�t say a word.
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