Because rapists need to be stopped before they harm more people:
NEW YORK –
Teri Hatcher, one of the stars of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” says in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair that her uncle sexually molested her 35 years ago.The 41-year-old actress says she learned in 2002 that a 14-year-old victim of her uncle had committed suicide. Concerned that he would escape charges of molestation, Hatcher approached the prosecutors.
“This is something I’ve tried to hide my whole life,” Hatcher tells the magazine, which hits newsstands Friday with the actress on the cover.
“I was just blown away by this young girl’s pain,” she says. “I thought, boy, that’s really close to being me. Any day of the week I could feel that sort of pain. I haven’t tried to kill myself, but I’ve certainly thought about it.”
After Hatcher came forward, her uncle, Richard Hayes Stone, then 64-years-old, pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation in the case of the 14-year-old victim and received 14 years in prison. […]
Hatcher said she was 5-years-old living in Sunnyvale, Calif., with her family when Stone would manipulate situations to get him and Hatcher alone in his car so he could take advantage of her.
“These are haunting things that I’ve remembered all my life,” she says. […]
As many victims of sexual abuse do, Hatcher says she had complicated feelings about the abuse. She didn’t see her uncle after she was 8- or 9-years-old, and never told her parents, though she thinks they suspected.
“I think their way of dealing with things is denial and guilt,” she says. “Nobody wanted to talk about it. But all I did was blame myself.”
All I can add to this story is a big thank you to Terri Hatcher. I’m not someone who watches Desperate Housewives, but, like the many brave women here at Booman Tribune who have been telling their stories in such heart breaking detail over the last several days, she’s now a hero in my book.
(…..)she’s now a hero in my book.
All I can say is that I am in total agreement with you.
These stories have to be told in order to stop molesters from hiding behind the veil of silence and shame.
Well, I didn’t watch Desperate Housewives before…but now I guess I will give it shot! We need a whole hell of a lot more to come forward. Women, Men, Boys, Girls….I wish there was a way to make them all feel safe enough to talk.
Thank you Terri. Definitely a hero.
Most know that I’m not the silent type. 🙂 Many knew of my story but no one person has known all of it. There is a lesson some of us learned afterwards and I think that it is probably more vicious than the actual crime itself. My lesson was primarily offered up from the other women in my life. Those I turned to in the beginning taught me shame. Those I saw sneering at other’s stories, taught me to be cautious in who I told. Well no more, baby. Why should anyone be judged, criticized, shamed for a being a victim of a crime?
As Madmam stated in his Mission diary…give these fuckers an earful of our dissent, SHAME THEM, show them our faces. We’re not damn dirty hippies or sluts. We’re your daughters, your wives, your bosses, your students, your neighbors… yourself.
Normally I respond to each and every post in a diary of mine. I’m overwhelmed with the response in my diary as well as the courageous stories from others who have come forward. Some for the first time.
I will try to respond to each and every post from the wonderful people here who offered their support, their outrage, their own stories and their shock.
I wrote about how that night ended and how my days of surviving started. No one, not one person, asked me how that night started. That has given me so much hope and strength to continue.
My husbadn has yet to read what I put in words. He’s always had to deal with the fact that I’m dealing with it – or that I’m not dealing with it. I shared this link with my friends so that they could walk with me.
What I want to do is this: I want to take my initial response to Booman’s post about Napoli, edit it a bit – give it more punch and make it more brief.. and send it and a link to our stores in this forum to ALL OF THE SENATORS. ALL of them. Not just that rapist supporter, Napoli. I need help in obtaining all the emails (fax is broken) or unless someone could take what I write and fax it themselves? I would like to make available the mass emails to all the women here at Booman and the men who love us and support the women in their lives.
Odd … that a revolution is coming from soldiers, or from guns.. or from marching but from women who have had enough, the men who have had enough – and who are standing up and speaking out.
This is hard. It’s like standing in the street naked for all to see. But it beats standing the shawdows crying that it’s all starting over again.
I said, “No!” I said no no no no no, first in screams and then when I was unable to scream, I said it inside my head.
Now, we need to say it to our “government”… in one voice. “NO!”
I now realize they are so weakened by the terror that lives within them that I need not fear the judgement or sneering any longer.
That those who counted on women to be quiet due to threats and fear … they should now be the ones afraid to say such things about us without facing the retaliation.
They should be the ones to hold their tongues. They should be the ones living in fear. They should be the ones confronted with our anger, our strength and damnit – with our DIGNITY.
Let them be the ones who have tto think twice before they ever again try to lay blame on the head of a woman bloodied from rape.
Sometimes people ask, why do men rape?
In my opinion, the answer is very simple:
Because they can.
For all the posturing and stirring speeches and the occasional sensational trial, most victims do not report being raped for reasons that if we did not already know, we have had the opportunity to learn and understand from the stories that have been posted here the last few days.
Even in the west, rape tends to be viewed as more of a property crime than an act of violence, and that is when it is not considered somehow justified because the woman had a relationship of some kind with the man, or how she was dressed, or whether she had a cocktail, or went to a man’s apartment, or admitted a man into hers, had a flirty walk, a saucy smile, or in one news story yesterday, because the rapist was a crusader returned from Iraq.
None of these things have anything to do with crimes of violence. Or even actual property crimes. No lawyer would ever defend a client accused of breaking into a house while the family was out shopping by telling the jury what a pretty house it was, how inviting the lace draperies peeking seductively onto the street from the windows, how alluring the rose bushes that flanked the wide front door, with its beveled glass dormer.
Nor would he try to convince them that it was not really robbery because the defendant is a neighbor, who had been invited into the house every New Year’s day for cider and cookies.
Or the defendant had hoped to buy the house, and was devastated when it decided to become someone else’s home.
It will be necessary to effect a cultural change, that women may be accorded the same rights as a burglarized bungalow.
I might need to borrow your perfect words and analogy. 🙂
Consider them a gift.
Excellent comment DF. Yup, perfect analogy.
D Janet,
This link goes to the South Dakota legislature page. On the left is the list of state Senators and you can click on each name and get the contact info.
Hope this is helpful.
For everyone, this link to the National Political Index is quite a useful tool for contacting all sorts of state politicians.
Fantastic, Thank you!
and I feel okay with telling my rape story….so here goes Steven.
On a slightly different but analogous note, this is in essence why I am a liberal because our focuses is one the value of Human Beings and not on the value of materialism and the value of private property, see DuctapeFatwa’s comment above.
As I’ve just said in a comment on Militarytracy’s new diary, we need to break the silence. Courageous women who tell their stories as survivors are a great start. And the rest of us need to challenge the silence and the snide remarks in our homes, workplaces and streets.
You are now dubbed Canberra Warrior in my mind 🙂
That is what so many wonderful men, and g-d knows I love the men that are in my life – do.
Strong, loving men like you and several here… put the “man” in Humanity.
With much love and respect.
Thank you, that is humbling, DJ. I wish I could live up to the image you created. I must admit that I haven’t put much energy into practicing what I preach about this – well not for a long time anyway. Over ten years ago I did end up in a confrontation with a politician who had raped a woman who worked in the same political circles. It ended up being very difficult because it was ’embarrassing’ for my boss – a female politician on the same side – when I spread the word about what had happened (with agreement from the survivor). When I was intimidated one-on-one by the rapist it was very empowering to look at him and say “I know what you did and I am not going to be silent about it.” I literally shook for a long time afterwards… he eventually quit politics, although for other reasons.
doing less lurking and more commenting, your voice has been needed around these parts. Can you believe the site hits its one year anniversary on Monday? Crazy stuff.
that BT kicked off. What a busy time it’s been!
Yes, the number of site visits is amazing. Looking at the sitemeter, I see that there has been a sharp downward trend since last October. I can’t remember what happened back then – I thought that the great exodus from the other place took place earlier – June or July? Perhaps I’m wrong…
You have been a very consistent contributor since the beginning, ME. How do you make the time for it?
That’s a great question, canberra, I’m sure my boss wouldn’t approve of the amount of worktime I spend online, but the way I see it, things are spiraling so far out of control here in the U.S. that my sanity depends on hearing the voices of the people here (at BooTrib, not the voices in my head) 🙂