Loyola University • New Orleans • Volume 95 • Issue 8 • October 28, 2016
THE MAROON FOR A GREATER LOYOLA
It could happen to you As the discussion of sexual assault becomes more prevalent on college campuses,
Loyola takes a moment to have an open discussion during Take Back the Night By Lester Duhé laduhe@loyno.edu @LesterDuhe
Sexual assault could possibly happen to one in four people on college campuses. “Possibly,” because experts struggle to pin down a precise number. “It is so hard to capture stats about sexual assaults because we really don’t know exactly what they are, because you can focus on so many different ones,” Amanda Tonkovich, a therapist at the New Orleans Family Justice Center, said. While it is a common misconception that sexual assault only happens to a small few, statistics show it can and does happen to anyone. Women may be more at risk for sexual assault than men, but men have a one in sixteen chance of being assaulted on college campuses as well. Combatting on-campus sexual assault is the purpose of the Take Back the Night event at Loyola University New Orleans. On Oct. 27, hundreds of students from the New Orleans university community gathered to listen to speakers openly discuss their stories of sexual harassment and participate in a candle-lit walk through Uptown to Tulane University’s campus. However, even though hundreds of people stand together for Take Back the Night each year, you never know who could be a victim. They
are our friends, our coworkers, the person we bump into in the hallway and our classmates at Loyola. A young woman, who chose to use the name Cyril to keep her anonymity, shared her story about sexual assault to let victims of the crime know that they have a voice and that they are not alone. “I was stupidly on Tinder and some dude invited me to go to a party as a first date, and I was like, ‘OK, this should be fun,’” Cyril said. But as Cyril got a little intoxicated, things began to get out of hand. “He started trying to kiss me, and I was like 'OK, this is fine.' Then, he started to grab on me while we were in a public place, and I was like ‘stop,’” Cyril said. He didn’t stop. As he tried to guilt her into returning to his residence hall with him, Cyril kept refusing. It didn’t help when she found out that he has done this to several other women as well. Cyril was able to get away before the situation escalated any further. “I remember slapping the hell out of him and then running away, and that was about it,” Cyril said. Erin Shapiro, a staff counselor at Loyola and co-chairwoman of Take Back the Night, said when talking to a victim at Loyola who was sexually assaulted, the most important thing is to stay calm. She also said it’s helpful to inform the survivor of the options available to help them make a decision, but not to influ-
ence their choice. “When someone is sexually assaulted, all of their power and control is taken away from them. By giving them their options and empowering them to make the choices they feel are best for them, we help to give them back power and control,” Shapiro said. Cyril didn’t realize how much the assault was affecting her until a few weeks after it happened. “I hadn’t been going into work a lot. I felt like I had been failing in my classes because of it,” she said. After talking to a professor about what happened to her, she decided to report her story to the Loyola University Police Department. However, when the moment came, she wasn’t sure how to handle giving the report. She didn’t want to ruin her assaulter’s life or be labeled as a victim of sexual assault. “They took me to a back room, and it was all female officers. They didn’t want any male officers in the room,” she said, which was fine with her, because she said she had a hard time talking to men. After asking her to fill out a report detailing who she was, they gave her a piece of paper for her to write down everything she remembered about the assault. The first time she went to talk with police, she actually forgot her assaulter's name, so she only gave them a description. Multiple officers interviewed her to make sure her story didn’t change,
and then they let her go, stating that someone would contact her soon via e-mail. Police Captain Roger Pinac said that Loyola police report all incidents that occur on and off campus. If a sexual assault happens off-campus, Pinac said, the New Orleans Police Department Sex Crimes Unit is contacted if the victim wishes to pursue criminal charges. The
“We’ve all gone out drinking. We’ve all worn a skimpy outfit, and we expect that we are still going to get home safe. The only time we don’t is if a rapist is present.” — Amanda Tonkovich Therapist at the New Orleans Family Justice Center police department also encourages the victim to receive medical examination by a sexual assault nurse examiner. While Cyril chose not to press charges, she still sees her attacker on campus. Even though they both try to avoid each other, the whole process triggers memories from Cyril’s childhood. “For three years of my life I was brutally raped by my step-father,”
Cyril said. “You feel like you can’t do anything about it, and you feel kind of worthless.” Cyril said this is why she believes that survivors’ stories need to be told: so other victims know that they are not alone. She also understands that in the current social climate, that is not always possible. Tonkovich agrees that the culture does not support survivors. “[Victims] are getting a lot of shame and blame from their family and their friends,” Tonkovich said. She added with that it’s not uncommon for survivors to ask themselves, “Why did you do that? You shouldn’t have been drinking. He’s such a great guy; he wouldn’t do that.” However, Tonkovich said there needs to be a shift on a cultural level in order to prevent sexual assault from happening, not only on college campuses, but everywhere. “A big misconception is that all the victims are going to act a certain way or look a certain way. Our big thing here, and with most advocacy organizations, is to meet the person where they are at,” Tonkovich said. “We’ve all gone out drinking, we’ve all worn a skimpy outfit and we expect that we are still going to get home safe. The only time we don’t is if a rapist is present.”