It Was Like We Were Having an Out of Body Experience: Brenda & Leroy Tate on Parenting a Rape Survivor

In this powerful and deeply personal episode of The Unwanted Sorority, host Dr. Leatra Tate sits down with the two people who raised her, Brenda and Leroy Tate, for a multigenerational conversation on healing, community, and the legacy of silence around sexual violence in Black families. Leroy Tate, a retired Air Force veteran, reflects on his upbringing in a tight-knit Black community, his thoughts on masculinity, fatherhood, and his raw response to learning about his daughter’s assault. Brenda Tate, a retired administrative assistant and mother of three, opens up about growing up in the 1960s, how community centers shaped her childhood, and the heartbreak and self-blame she experienced upon hearing her daughter’s disclosure. Together, they talk candidly about: the generational shift in how Black communities discuss sexual violence, how the fear of judgment and distrust in policing impacted responses to assault in the 1960s, Parenting through trauma without a guidebook, and the urgent need for more Black mentors in youth-centered programs like Big Brothers Big SistersThis episode is a moving example of what it looks like to confront the past, lean into vulnerability, and choose healing together—even when it's hard. It honors Black family, community resilience, and the sacred act of telling the truth.

Resources & Mentions

bell hooks books referenced: Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981), Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996), All About Love: New Visions (2000), Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2000), Salvation: Black People and Love (2001), and The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004).

Big Brothers Big Sisters- Mentoring Programs

CapRadio episode titled “Sexual assault survivors want less police, more trauma-informed professionals, especially for Black victims”

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence- History & Community Accountability Toolkit 

Incite Collaboration- 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to another episode of The Unwanted Sorority. I'm your
hosts doctor the Etritate. This is a space created for
and by black women, films, and gender expansive folks who
have experienced sexual violence. Whether you've f lifted, love someone
who has, or simply want to hold space, you're welcome here.
On this week's episode, we're giving flowers to our beloved

(00:24):
ancestor Bell Hooks, who I reference as my inspiration in
episode one, and honestly, I'm probably gonna talk a lot
about during this entire season. You'll also hear a long
overdue conversation between me and my parents about their reactions
and responses to me telling them about my sexual assault
for the first time, and I'll highlight exactly what my
mom meant.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
By this family meant everything to us back then. So
when they said took a village to raise a child,
the whole village raised us, and vice versa. We were
all like family in our neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
As a reminder, the Unwanted Sorority is space for community
connection and care, but it's not a substitute for professional
mental health, medical or legal support. So if anything you
hear today resonates in a way that feels heavy. I
encourage you to reach out to someone you trust or
a licensed clinician. You deserve to feel whole and you
deserve to feel supported. Bell Hooks born at Gloria Jean

(01:29):
Watkins in nineteen fifty two in Hopkinsville, Kentucky is a
black feminist thinker, writer, scholar, and cultural critic whose life
and work were shaped by both the personal and the political.
She chose to go by the pseudonym Bell Hooks in
honor of her great grandmother, whose name was actually Bell
Blair Hooks, and she insisted that her name be written

(01:52):
in lowercase to emphasize the power of her words and
the message over her individual identity. Case lettering also offered
her distinction from her ancestor, a way of kind of
showing respect to those who came before her. Her upbringing
in the deeply segregated rural part of Kentucky gave her

(02:12):
first hand experience of structural racism, class inequity, and the
overlapping harms of ginger based violence. She once wrote that
her childhood was marked by not just books in black womanhood,
but also by assaults to the spirit, which is just devastating,
isn't it. It highlights how intimately she actually understood the

(02:34):
violence and presence of domination in everyday life for her
and for all Black girls. So a lot of Hook's
work returns to the topic of childhood, family, and survival,
not just in a metaphorical sense either, but in very
literal ways. In her memoir Bone Black Memories of Girlhood,
which she published in nineteen ninety six, she shared that

(02:57):
she experienced sexual abuse as a child. The disclosure would
later become foundational in her writing and her advocacy for
healing justice for survivors, especially for Black girls and women
who are so often silenced and disbelieve.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
In her first.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Nonfiction book, Aniowoman, Black Women and Feminism, which was published
in nineteen eighty one, Hooks exposed how this legacy of
slavery created a systemic and cultural devaluation of Black womanhood.
She wrote that during slavery, black women were routinely raped
and commodified. Their bodies were treated as both sexual property

(03:35):
and reproductive flavor, which I broke down in Bonus Episode One.
That legacy, she argued, didn't disappear, it evolved. It laid
the groundwork for the continued to sidle neglect of black
women's pain, particularly in conversations about sexual assault and domestic violence.
So in Aniowomen, Hooks showed that Black women are uniquely

(03:58):
positioned in this kind of cross fire of oppression, forced
to navigate both the racism of white feminism and the sexism.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Of black liberation politics.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
At the time, and in her later work, Belle Hook's
writing took on kind of a different intention in dressing
specifically the possibilities of healing.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
She believed deeply that.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
The path towards ending sexual violence required a revolution of
sorts and how we love, how we parent, and how
we relate to one another. In her book All About Love,
which was published in two thousand, which has become kind
of popular over the years, so you've probably heard about
it or seen it in different contexts, she argued that

(04:40):
love and abuse cannot coexist. Let me say that again
for the people in the back. Love and abuse cannot coexist,
and that families, especially Black families, had to unlearn domination
as a parenting style. So rather than viewing children as
poverty to be controlled, Hooks encouraged a liberatory parenting ethic,

(05:05):
one that's rooted in mutual respect, care, and justice. Shout
out to episode two our last week's episode where we
kind of unpacked this a little bit with Trina Green.
Hook's vision of black parenting was radically loving and yet
still deeply political. So, for example, she defended single black

(05:27):
mothers from blame and pathologization in Salvation Black People in Love,
which came out in two thousand and one. She insisted
that the presence of love, not a two parent household,
was the true measure of a healthy home. She rejected
the idea that black families were inherently broken. Instead, she

(05:48):
clocked that familial harm comes from the patriarchal power dynamics
that prevented emotional intimacy and care. So she wrote in
her book that quote, wherever domination is present, love is lacking.
And I want to give another shout out to one
of her books titled The Will to Change Men Masculinity

(06:09):
in Love, which came out in two thousand and four,
where she directly addressed the socialization of boys into men
and how that process forces them to suppress their emotions
and sometimes enact violence. Hooks challenge this deeply held myth
that male sexual desire is uncontrollable and don't worry, we'll

(06:30):
unpack that.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
In a later.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Episode, she called for the transformation of masculinity itself, writing quote,
what the world means now is liberated men. Only then
could we imagine a world free from rape, child sexual abuse,
and intimate partner violence. So what sets Hooks apart is

(06:52):
that she never stopped believing that liberation was possible, not
just at the societal level, but in our daily intimate
spaces of black life. She believed survivors could heal through community,
sisterhood and storytelling. To be loving, she wrote, we willingly
hear each other's truth. That ethic kind of runs through

(07:13):
her entire body of work. It's a commitment to truth telling,
to dismantling shame, and to offering survivors the tools to
love themselves again. And we're taking on that charge from
Bell Hooks with this show, inviting each of you listeners
to be loving as you taken these stories each week
and reflect on how that love can permeate in all

(07:36):
of your interactions with people in your life and in
every book, Bell Hooks returns to that idea of domination
in all its forms and how it must be a
brooted for love and healing to grow. So she invites
us to do the hard work of and learning, and
she gave us language for what it feels like to
survive while actively reclaiming our sense of self. Bell Hooks

(07:58):
became an ancestor in twenty twenty one, but her work
continues to guide those of us who are searching for
ways to live fully, to parent lovingly, and to heal boldly.
Her legacy is a love letter to black women and
survivors everywhere, and like all true love letters, it comes
with truth and it requires self discovery. So we thank

(08:20):
you for this legacy, Bell Hooks. Next, you'll get a
glimpse of a conversation with two of the most durable
people on the planet, my parents, Brenda and Leroy. All
three of us were born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania,

(08:41):
so this conversation includes a kind of cool added element
of intergenerational navigations of the same space. It is also
interesting to listen to them both reflect on what their
childhood and adolescent periods brought with them in terms of
awareness of sexual life violence related issues in their neighborhoods,

(09:02):
with their families and friends, and in society at large.
So pay attention to some of the gender dynamics that
present themselves. I think they tend to align with some
of the research supported classifications of how men and women
view the societal threats related to sexual violence and communities.
But I'm super curious here which y'all think as you listen,

(09:25):
So without further ado, let's get into this conversation, all right,
So thank you for doing this episode with me, Thank
you for having me. Would you like to introduce yourself
and tell everyone who you are.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
My name is Brenda Tate. I am a mother of three.
I am the mother of leat To Tate. I have
two sons, Cameron Tate and Kindred Tate. I'm retired administrative
assistant from Halfway House for Women and Children with Drug
and Alcohol Abuse.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
What was it like growing up when you were younger?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
It was it was hard. I grew up in the
early sixties. It was rough, but we were very I
come from a single family home, so we were very
close knit family. Family meant everything to us back then.
And when they said it took a village to raise

(10:27):
a child, the whole village raised us, you know, and
vice versa. We were all like family in our neighborhood.
So it was good growing up, but it was hard.
Back in the sixties, it was hard.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
So who are some people that you can remember that
were a big part of.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Your village at all of the neighbors, all the neighbors,
neighborhoods were really close. Whatever neighborhood you lived in, those
were your families. So that was good living. I think
growing up where everybody raised everybody. Back then, we had

(11:07):
community centers where you could go to different centers like
Martin Luther King Center, JFK Center. It was like family
there too, so we had places to go where we
could hang out, where we didn't have to hang out
in the streets. It was just a lot of family
oriented things that we all did together. We all partied

(11:30):
together as far as like cookouts and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
So you said it was good.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
It was good living back then, but it was also hard.
In what ways do you think it was hard?

Speaker 2 (11:41):
It was hard because a lot of black people did
not have the means of rising above too much, too
far above poverty. Every time you took one step, they
would knock get back three.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
So now it's like the people that are responsible for
helping determine what the community looks like are a lot
more diverse than which you remember growing up.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Definitely, we have our youth today is stepping up. And
I am so proud of our youth today because they're
stepping up and they know that they are our future.
So they're making ways. The old school they're all you know,
I hate to say it, but they're all like passed
on and you know, so they passed on whatever they

(12:37):
had down to the youth of today and the young
adults of today, and I got to give it to them.
They move, and they're moving. There's moving things here.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Do you feel like there was a lot of resistance
to that change from older older people?

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Don't. I don't think there was much resistance. I think
it will. We just couldn't keep up. Things has changed
to the point where us older people can't keep up
with all this new, new things that's going on. So
I think we just gracefully bowed down. I don't think

(13:16):
we I don't think we gave up. I think we
just gracefully bowed down and let the youth just take
over and do their thing.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
So, speaking of you know, all the new stuff that
is coming up and keeping up with it all, do
you remember when the Me too.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Movement started getting big and like, I don't.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Does that resonate at all with like what you remember
of growing up? Was there anything that happened back in
the day that you remember of like, oh, we were
talking about this kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
A lot.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
This came up in our community, This came up with
our family, This came up with you know, friends and
stuff we did.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
We did not talk a lot of this stuff that
is being talked about and it's been in the media.
We did not talk about this stuff growing up. A
lot of this stuff was like if you talked about it,
you talked about it, like with a friend that didn't
go anywhere. You know, you keep my secret, I keep

(14:15):
your secret. But back then, there was not much talk
about the me too movement or nothing. It was like
swept under the rug. It was I think people were
ashamed to come out about something happening to them out
of the norm or what they think is the norm,

(14:38):
or to think that I brought this upon myself. So
nobody really talked about it back I mean, it was
talked about, but it was talked about in like.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
Very hush hush, yeah, in secret.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
So it sounds like there was a lot of shame
around it.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
It was a lot of shame around it. And I
think it's because back then they would have a female
and believe that she asked for it or back then
it depends on the type of clothing that you wore.
You know, how you walked, you know how you look,
you know at which you have nothing, You have nothing

(15:20):
to do with these things. These aren't I mean, this
is just the way you look, this is how you walk,
this is how you talk, this is how you dress,
this is how you dress, and that doesn't give anyone
the right to take advantage of you because of that.
But a lot of people would put the blame back
on the woman, especially the woman. Put the blame back

(15:42):
on the woman for those things because of the way
she carried herself, because of the way she dressed.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
So there was self blame, But then there was also
a lot of blame that was push around or push
on to women, and you said, by other women, right.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
By other women, and these silents as well, and that's
why there was so many, so many women that were
assaulted back then and never spoke up about it. You know,
you have you have a lot of things that come
from from that stuff that uh, they just swept under
the rug, which is unfortunate.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
I think that's a big part of how the Me
too movement got started is recognizing that that was happening
a lot, and that there wasn't outlets for women to
talk openly about it without getting reprimanded by their friends,
their family, their peers, and let alone going and filing

(16:40):
police reports about it and get getting reprimanded there or
not being taken seriously or getting blamed for the situation
that happened. There was just so much fear around the
whole experience.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, because back in the day, laughing at that, because
you know how we used to say back in the day,
and you guys used to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, back
in the day. But back in the day, a lot
of women did not want to believe that their brother

(17:15):
assaulted their daughter, or or or their father assaulted them,
or their own father, your boyfriend assaulted them. They would
take the word over the man. Back then then they
met their child, Yes, then they would the child. So
saying that to a lot back you know, back way

(17:37):
back in the day, I mean, I mean way back
in the day, saying that to a parent that somebody
did something to you. It was almost like, you know,
like not saying anything at all and and a lot
and that's what shut down a lot of the younger
women from from coming forward because nobody would believe them.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
So you talked about like community centers and things like that.
Did they have resources there for back then for women
actual or boys? Right, because boys and young men could
also experience it, So did they have resources there or
did they talk about this kind of stuff?

Speaker 2 (18:20):
They did. They had counselors at these community centers that
if you needed someone to talk to that you could
go and talk to them. But it was not so
much that the center was engaging with the parents. It's
not like, I mean, you could go and talk to
someone about a problem that you're having, but you might

(18:44):
never talk to your parents about it. And it's not
like the people from the community center is going to
go and talk to Well, Brenda came to me today
and she has an issue with such and such a thing.
It never happened like that.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
It's just you just.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Relieve some of the stress that you have or something
that you don't understand. And sometimes a lot of these
counselors that these centers had had a lot of remorse
for the children, you know, the young adults, because actually
they were young adults and at the time, we were

(19:20):
like teenagers, preteens, you know, we were just coming in.
So they were big help, you know, to us if
we needed someone to talk to, like a big sister
or a big brother. Like back then they had big
brothers and big sisters, but you didn't have that in
the black communities too much. So these were like our

(19:42):
big brothers and big sisters, and we kind of looked
up to them, and they had upper people that they
looked up to. But it's yeah, it was just it was, yeah,
that's what the community centers were for. And I think
they're solely missed day now.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
We don't have a lot of community centers for.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
They are solely missed because we have a lot of teenagers.
They kept us off the streets, they kept us from
off the corners selling drugs and all that, all this
stuff that you see today. We were in the community
centers doing stuff you know, that kept us, that kept
us engaged, that kept us doing you know.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
I'm gonna just make a plug for big brothers, big sisters,
because like you said, they weren't necessarily available back when
you were younger in the black community. And I've gone
through two different types of Big Brothers, Big Sisters programs.
The first was a school mentor program where I went
into schools and worked with kids, and there weren't a

(20:48):
lot of black mentors in that program. When I was
in Pittsburgh, I was one of the only black people
that was going into the school and being a mentor.
And I actually had the the mentee that I was
working with tell me about sexual abuse that she was experiencing.
And to your point, I don't know that she would
have She may have, I don't know that she would

(21:09):
have though opened up about that if her mentor wasn't
a black woman, you know, somebody that she felt like
she could relate to. And that I did the community
based Big Brothers Big Sisters program here in Erie, and
my little sister in that program has told me how
and her mom actually has told me how much it's
meant to her to have a black woman as her

(21:31):
big sister. So, you know, just I want to make
a plug for that for whoever's listening, that that is
something that can go a long way in a young
person's life of feeling like they have that, you know,
person that they can go to because they may not
always get it in their community, especially like you were saying,
things have changed so much in the ways that our

(21:52):
communities are kind of operate. They don't necessarily have that
same family mentality that they had back in the day.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, they need to be able to have a safe space,
a place where they can go to and be able
to talk freely without being judged.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
And I think a big part of it is listening too.
A lot of parents in general just don't know how
to listen, and I think that also negatively impacts a
child's development and who they feel like they can talk to,
and a lot of them feel like they can't talk
at all, which.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Exactly it is very sad because it doesn't I mean,
even if a male wants to talk to a female,
that's okay. A female is close to a male supervisor,
that's okay. You know, you just have to be able
to talk to somebody. If you're not getting it at home,

(22:49):
you know, you need to get it from somewhere, even
if it's another peers long as there ground it and
level headed and can give you some sound advice, that's
even helpful. Everybody needs to talk to somebody or be
able to talk to somebody.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
And I mean that's a big part of why this
show even exists, all those things that we don't talk
about or we don't have anybody to talk about it with.
You know, being able to come in to the show
and talk about it is a way for somebody to
feel like they have some connection or to listen to
somebody's story. There's probably women your age who you know,

(23:27):
may listen to this and who have never talked about
their experience but are listening to you talk about what
it was like back in the day and talk about
what the experience is like now. Who are going to
take something away from this. So I'm grateful to you
for having the courage to come on here and talk
about what we're going to get into, which is like

(23:48):
the parent's perspective.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Okay, we're not into it yet.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
No, we're just catching up, Danny, but we could.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
Get into it if you're ready.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
So I'm curious what would you say it was like
for you When I first told you about my experience.
I remember it very vividly. We were in the living
room and I was telling you, guys, because I had
done all this research for my dissertation, and I was
writing and writing and writing. I was halfway through my
PHG program, and then I was like, oh, shoot, I

(24:23):
should probably tell my parents because it's about to be
out there. But I came to this realization that, oh, no, like,
there are people very close to you that you need
to tell about this, who need who deserve to hear
it directly from you before it's written in this document

(24:45):
and out there. So what do you remember about that
moment when I told you?

Speaker 2 (24:53):
When you told me, I just couldn't believe the words
that was coming in your mouth because I thought that
we had such a good close relationship till if anything,
and I have always told you if anything like that,
if anything should ever happen to you, always come to

(25:15):
me or your dad and let us know what's going on.
And not knowing it was just it was It was
a shocker to me to find out the way that
I found out. And I blame myself. I blame myself

(25:36):
because I was like, where did I go wrong? Did
I miss something? Did I not give her the proper
tools that she needed to deal with, you know, with
this sort of thing. I thought I did, but I

(25:56):
wasn't sure. And this is what I was doing, was
I was blaming myself for it happening. And I felt like,
you know, I thought we had a closer close enough
for relationship because we did everything together. We had mommy
daughter days, we had sleepovers, we went we went everywhere together.

(26:21):
I thought we had that bond that if anything should
happen to you, that you would be able to come
to me about it. But to find out years later
it was just I was just shocked. I was speechless
and just blame myself. I just blamed myself for the

(26:45):
whole thing.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
That's crazy. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
I didn't know that you had blamed yourself at all.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, I felt like I just it was something that
I could have done, or something that I should have
done to prepare you for if something ever happens to
you like this, or to avoid something like this from
happening to you. And did I miss that that I

(27:14):
missed that chance?

Speaker 4 (27:15):
Do you know?

Speaker 2 (27:19):
That's how I felt.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
I can honestly say now, like now and then, there
was nothing that you didn't teach me, you didn't prepare
me for. I don't think there was anything that could
have prevented that from happening from anyone other than the
person who assaulted me. And actually something that sticks out

(27:47):
to me still to this day that I have to
remind myself this is like on replay every time I
talk about it, because I kind of default to the
words a person who assaulted me. But I remember when
I told you guys about it, you said he didn't
assault you, he raped you. And I was like, oh,
I've never I never thought about it, like using that

(28:07):
word specifically until you said that. And there's actually a
lot of research on this, and there's some activism that's
happening on language use, and they say, you know, we
tend to default to say somebody sexually assaulted you because
it feels softer then rape. Rape feels like extreme rape,

(28:29):
feels like the worst thing a person could do, But.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Which should That's what it was, right, right?

Speaker 1 (28:36):
And so I have to I have to remind myself
of that sometimes when I'm talking about it, because I'm like, oh, no, like,
it's not that is that is rape is the term.
That is the term that I should be using. But
there were no other tools that you could have given
me that would have prevented that from happening. The only

(28:58):
thing that could have prevented that from happening is that
person deciding not to do that. And I also think
about it from like a larger community perspective, right, because
we had also grown up with, like, you know, being
told to go to the police, like you guys told
us go to the police if you need anything, go
to your people in the community, go to your trusted

(29:20):
adults if you need anything.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
And then in school, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
And then I you know, it was my first year,
of my first semester of college, and we had gone
through I can't remember exactly because you know that time
is like hazy sometimes, but I don't remember if we
had gone through like Title nine training, where the Title
nine coordinator was the person we were supposed to go
to if you had been sexually assaulted or raped, or

(29:46):
if you'd experienced any kind of sexual violence on your
college campus. Your Title nine advisor or coordinator is a
person who is supposed to provide support. So if I
had received training from that person when I started, I don't.
They weren't even the person that I would go to.
So again, there was no amount of like preparation that
anyone could have given me to prevent that from happening,

(30:09):
other than the person deciding not to rape me. So yeah,
all these years later, we can talk about it, like
I can tell you, there is nothing that you could
have done. No, there is no blame for you, there
is no blame for me, there's no blame for anybody
in the scenario other than that young man who decided

(30:33):
to do that.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Well, a parent is always going to take the blame
for something going wrong with their child. A parent is
always going to take that blame upon themselves. And I
don't blame. It's not blame, it's just it's I don't

(30:55):
even know the word to say. But I just felt like,
uh that that was just something that just should not
have happened. It just it just should not have happened,
not only to you, but to anybody anybody that violates

(31:20):
another person in that way. It's just wrong. I don't
care how you look at it. There's there's no justification
for taking any anything from anyone without their consent.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Is just Uh.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
You know, you have to answer to that, and you will,
you know you will. He's gonna answer to that if
you haven't already. Just like many of the other people
that assault people in any way, shape or form, you know.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
Yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, but that that that was a hard pill. That
was a hard pill, I think.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
I think.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Me and your dad took it personally. The conversation that
we had about it later, it was just almost like
we were talking about something totally different, not not something
that happened to our child.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Really, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Because the conversation that we were having it was like
we were we was like we were having an out
of body experience. We were talking about it, but we weren't.
We weren't connecting that with our child. We're connecting that
with someone that was assaulted, you know, but we weren't
relating it to you per se. So it was like

(32:46):
hard and it was really really it was hard on me,
but it was harder on your dad really, I think.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Yeah, yeah, well, I'm planning on having He's also great
to have this conversation with me, so I'm good. I'm
gonna talk to him about it too. But I would
have never known that if you hadn't told me.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And you know, I
don't mind talking about it now, but it was really
hard for a long time. For me to talk about.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Did you so, I mean just for I mean, I
guess I'll put this in there. Let me know if
you want me to remove it. But you guys are
divorced now, but you were still married at the time,
aside from each other. Did you talk to anybody else
about it? Like, did you get support from anywhere else?

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Actually?

Speaker 2 (33:39):
No, I didn't. I didn't talk to anyone. I didn't
talk to anyone in my family. I didn't talk to
any friends. I didn't go to any counseling m I
just don't. I just dealt with it, you know, I
just felt I went to one friend. I just I

(34:04):
just remember that. I just went to one friend about it,
and she felt just like I do about it. And
that's the only person I mentioned it too. But I
found out when you graduated, or you were getting ready

(34:29):
to graduate, when you when you did your dissertation, That's
when I found out that other family members knew about it.
Because I didn't know that anybody knew about it. I
never spoke to anybody about it. I don't know who
spoke to your dad's side of the family about it,
but I know they knew about it. I don't know
if it was because of your dissertation itself, how they

(34:52):
found out, or if your dad spoke with them, I
knew what was going on.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yeah, I know a couple family members were actually at
my dissertation defense, so or had wanted to come or something.
So to wrap it up, I'm wondering, what would you
say to a parent who's in a position where they're
not sure how to handle it. They've heard from their
child that they've been raped or sexually assaulted, or experienced

(35:17):
some kind of sexual violence. What would you say to them?

Speaker 2 (35:20):
I would say, just just be there for them emotionally,
don't blame yourself for it.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
I think there's just so many people who share that experience.
They don't talk about it because it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable
to talk about you're dealing with your own emotions. You
also don't want to not burdens not the right word,
but you don't want to upset anybody else emotionally, and
you know the relationships that they have with the person

(35:53):
you know. So there's so many reasons that people don't
talk about it. But then that's also on the other hand,
why we kind of suffer with those emotions. A lot
and for a long time individually because we don't talk
about it as much. And you know, I hope that
you know this can be a way for people to
just tell themselves that it's okay to talk about it. So,

(36:24):
how would you like to introduce yourself to the audience?

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Who are you?

Speaker 5 (36:27):
My name is.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Leroy Tate, the father of doctor Leach Tate, Leetrepnell Tate,
remember servers representative for a computer company.

Speaker 5 (36:40):
So I've done a lot of things in my life,
and the chance things that I haven't done when I.

Speaker 4 (36:46):
Was raising my family and trying to provide and do
things that most try to do. Make sure that your
children have all their needs met and try to put
them in the right direction of life.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
M hmm.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
You had a pretty big trip recently at that.

Speaker 4 (37:10):
It was a lifelong dream to god go to Africa,
but my plan wasn't really to go. I kind of
was talked into going on that trip and I'm really
glad I did.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Yes, you were armed stress fully.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
Africa was a good experience. It gave me a chance
to see what everybody views as Africa. We have this
vision of Africa being a copia where it is primitive
and things are different in that part of the world.
But it gave me an eye opener that South Africa

(37:51):
just like any other place in the United States, with
some exceptions, some big exceptions that I was able to
see that the wealth of the country is vast, but
the people of the country have little wealth and material
things well they have. It's a spiritual, spiritual of being

(38:13):
in So that's why I gathered from that as a
returning back to where we are from that apartheid and
those other things that have changed those people's lives forever.

Speaker 5 (38:29):
You know.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
So, yeah, it gave me a different perspective, that a
bigger perspective that the gap between the halves and a
nuts is big over there, and it seems like the
gap between a half and I have nuts or is
going back to that.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
I was just going to say, for some context, we're
recording in May of twenty twenty five, and so there's
a lot of talk about South Africa, and you know,
there is a lot of interplay between what's happening socio
politically here in the United States and what's happening in

(39:12):
South Africa, and so now it's just an interesting time to.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Be traveling there. A and B to the wealth gap.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
I think they're an example of a country where it
is vast, and while it is vast here, you saw
some pretty extreme wealth gaps that they see to the
same level here in this country today.

Speaker 4 (39:36):
But in parallel, when you think of the early nineteen
hundreds and in eighty hundreds, it seems like the wealth
gap in this.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
Country was just as bad.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
The history tells us that we've made a lot of
strikes in the US and for minorities to get to
this point where we're not closing a wealth gap. We've
able been able to make some strides and people being
able to.

Speaker 5 (40:04):
Work harder and share the wealth of this country through knowledge. Knowledge.

Speaker 4 (40:12):
Knowledge is power and enabled us to do different things
in our lives, whereas in the parallels of Africa, the
wealth is there and they haven't gotten those ranks yet
to be able to get to a financial status individually there,
and we've had that opportunity to do here in the

(40:33):
United States.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, yeah, I think I appreciate that perspective too, And
it also kind of goes into my first question for you,
thinking historically about just some of the changes that happen
within our culture that can you know, create pretty drastic
positive and positive ways as well changes over time within

(40:57):
our communities and within our culture. So my question for
you is, what were things like when you were growing
up related to sexual violence and sexual assault? Like, did
you have conversations about it? Did people talk about it?

Speaker 5 (41:13):
It wasn't a dinner table subject. And it's something I.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
Could speak for myself in our household well, that those
things may have happened. I don't think we were exposed
to it, just we do and as conveniently as we
do today. When you heard about sexual violence or something
like that, it was something that was in the second

(41:41):
of section of town where you lived. Everybody in that
second of town knew each other. For our case, we
lived in a certain section of town where everybody went
in a twenty block radius knew each other. You may
know the other people from the other side of town
because you went to school together with them, and everybody

(42:06):
would talk about the things in the neighborhood. A lot
of the older people knew the older people that my
parents they knew a lot of the older people. My
sisters knew a lot of their children, so they became
friends and associates that way. So whenever things like that
happened in the neighborhood. It knews traveled real fast. We

(42:30):
didn't have the internet, so you couldn't see all these
things that happened across the country, across the state. Even
you knew what was going on in your city. And
if you knew somebody had that kind of reputation of
assaulting women or vice versus o men or whatever, you

(42:51):
heard about that and that person was ostracized, I guess
for those kind of violent behaviors.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Yeah, So what did it look like for somebody to
be ostracized from the community at that time, Because what
you're talking about really is like a almost like a
community policing type of environment where people were what it
sounds like, protective of other people in the community, you know,

(43:19):
who weren't engaging in those behaviors. And then if you
did engage in that behavior or you were found out
to be somebody who would commit harms against other people,
you were kind of ostracized. So could you explain a
little bit about like what that looked like at the time.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
Yeah, people found out that you were messing with the
people that younger kids, for instance, if you were mess
with women, young girls and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (43:45):
The thing you have to be worried about it. It's getting
beat up, you know.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
And somebody, especially for uncle or somebody found that kind
of stuff out, they're going to beat jilt, you know,
and you wouldn't go to jail. But I think if
it was about lent enough or anything like that. Again,
I hadn't experienced that, so I wouldn't see any of that.
But I knew people that I ain't gonna say I
knew of them, but I've heard of people that had

(44:10):
that kind of reputation. Watch out for so and so
they missing he's always kind of trying to wait rape
women or trying to do harm to somebody. So the
girls or no, stay away from this guy, or they
wouldn't be bothered with him.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
And so you said that they didn't really go to jail.
Why do you think that is. Was it like people
just wouldn't you couldn't trust the police, or you didn't
go to the police, or was it just more like
street justice type of type of situations In.

Speaker 4 (44:41):
My opinion, because like I said, it hadn't been exposed
to a whole lot of it. But I think, in
my opinion, I don't think they trust the police. To
be able to handle something like that. They turned somebody
in from the neighborhood. They're going out in jail. It's
subject to be beaten or not even come out of jail,

(45:02):
be lost or something, and all this kind of things
that weren't spoken about, you know, things that happened to people,
they weren't spoken about.

Speaker 5 (45:09):
You know. I remember a friend of mine, not a
friend of mine, a cousin of mine.

Speaker 4 (45:14):
His son went to jail, not for anything sexual or
anything like that, but he was he went to jail
for some I can't remember when he went to jail for,
but a few days later they say they have found
dead in a sale. So people had that big caution
of the police back in those days, and they knew

(45:36):
if you went to jail, he may not come out
with a trial. You may come out period without even
having trial. So that's kind of those kinds of things
that people were afraid of from the police.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Did you guys talk about it in school at all, Like,
did you get any education or training on consent or
was that part of the birds and the bees conversations
and education that you got.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
It's kind of a version the be's thing because there
was no sexual education at all in school, it was
kind of a subject. The expectation was that you got
your education at home, you know, and you just know
that there's certain they just supposed to do and certain
things you're not supposed to do. Sexual education. I remember

(46:27):
now going through a sex.

Speaker 5 (46:30):
Class and junior high school.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
And only had it had to do with the version
of Bes you know, about sexuality between them boys and girls.

Speaker 5 (46:44):
And it was.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
A film we watched, and that was the extent of it.

Speaker 5 (46:49):
There's not a whole.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Lot of discussion after that film we watched, and that
was all I did. I remember when uh, one of
my classmate and.

Speaker 5 (47:02):
We were talking about it was a girl and we
were talking about that. Do you understand that?

Speaker 4 (47:08):
And so that was the extent of our sexual education
at that point, you know, I think it was seventh through.

Speaker 5 (47:17):
Well you just reach it.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
I disposed all this stuff and you're so confused already,
so it's hard to kind of just all the same
all this stuff.

Speaker 5 (47:26):
But it was it was assumed all the time.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Growing that's kind of you know, the point I was
trying to get at is even societally, we talk about
consent more, we talk about bodily autonomy, and you know,
even with kids nowadays, kids are learning about bodily autonomy.
You don't have to hug a family member, an older
family member just because you're a kid when you walk
in the room like you're you know, you don't have

(47:51):
to do that if you're not comfortable. Those kinds of
things that growing up we were taught or just expected
to show, you know, respect to older family members. But
now like societally, you know, it's kind of understood that
a whole lot of things could be happening for that
child why they may not want to hug their older
family member, and putting that pressure on them could put

(48:14):
them in uncomfortable situation. So just the way that we
have kind of built our knowledge as a society, we
become better at navigating some of those situations and talking
about you know, all of that being kind of the
stepping stones to sexual education, which makes sense to me.
You know, third graders don't need to necessarily learn the

(48:38):
birds and the bees, but they need to understand their
bodies and that they are responsible and in control of
their bodies and nobody can tell them what to do
with their bodies and that kind of thing exactly.

Speaker 4 (48:48):
And I think that's what we grew up knowing, is
that you go over there and you hug anti, you know,
and the antie comes over and then or whatever.

Speaker 5 (48:59):
Like you said, we grew up thinking it was a
level of respect, but.

Speaker 4 (49:04):
In the reality it presented a period uncomfortable in this
if that's a word, because younger people, little kids, like
you said, if they being abused by an adult like that. Again,
I'm hearing a lot of this stuff, even as old
as I am. The sexual abuse from elders or older

(49:28):
men or older women to the child or a niece
or nephew, stuff like that. It's kind of something that
I didn't experience, but it was kind of when I
grew got older and realized that it was kind of
a shock to hear that that kind of stuff was
going on because we weren't exposed to that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, and I think again, knowledge is power. I think
that's probably the biggest takeaway around all of this is
the more you learn and the more you we trust
the research and the more we talk about these things,
the more we can educate ourselves and re look at
some of the things that we've thought in the past

(50:11):
or some of the things that we've experienced in the past,
or some of the things that we've heard in the
past that may not be true now or ever, but
we thought that that was true, you know, at certain
points in our history. So the more we talk and
learn about these experiences and these situations, I think the
better collectively we become, and the smarter collectively we become

(50:32):
as community. So I'm curious, what do you remember about
the moment I told you and mom that I was
sexually assaulted?

Speaker 3 (50:44):
What came to mind for you in that moment, suck.

Speaker 4 (50:50):
What came in my mind was when did this happen?
And why didn't we know about it? And uh.

Speaker 5 (51:00):
Is it? It makes you feel like.

Speaker 4 (51:05):
It's something that we did or I did that didn't
protect you. So it makes you feel like, why not
the name email that when at the time when when
I heard it, it was disappointing to me, teared in
the vein I heard it, and UH realize that I

(51:29):
wasn't there, and uh, I should have been there. And
that's my job, is father to be a protector. So
when you can't protect your children, you a sense of failure,
you know. So, and that's a pretty pretty good big

(51:52):
blow to here something sexual assault. It's a total violation
of someone's privacy. And I think when you hear that
or experience that, you think of what can you do
to get back at that person? But in reality, and

(52:13):
you know who that person is, so yeah, you think
that's That's what ran through my mind. I would want
to find that person and do something, damn. But if
I'd known about it earlier or somewhere, maybe I could
have done something what I don't know, but yes, it's

(52:33):
shop there or something like that. Yeah, and it's helpless.
It's a helpless position because you think of I did
something wrong not to protect her.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
Do you feel like you have held on to any
of that or do you do you think that you've
kind of let that feeling go over time.

Speaker 5 (52:55):
I think I'm not gonna say let it go.

Speaker 4 (52:59):
But you know, I realized that when we go through adversity,
we have to learn from that adversity and we have
to find something else or go through the trauma or adversity.
We have to find something else to tryt our path.

(53:21):
Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but
it's also not the end of their life. So I
realized that somebody has that has to go through that,
or somebody has gone through that it resulted in their
life ending after going through that. So I was grateful

(53:46):
that whatever you went through didn't go through that to
that next step or go to that step to end
your life. So so I when you think about things
like that, you understand how grateful you are for life
and to realize that the light and then that it's

(54:10):
kind of like sunshine on a flower. You know, when
it rains, flowers fold up and protect themselves. When the
sun comes out, it dries up all the rain and
flower can floors again.

Speaker 5 (54:25):
And that's how I look at life anymore.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
Sometimes when you go through some trauma, you know, you
cover up and try to figure out how do I
protect myself or how to protect the things I should protect.
But things bloom and things get better. You have to
suck up all the sunshine that you can, and I

(54:48):
think you bourt yourself into your work to absorb that
pain and try to prevent anybody else from going through
that trauma or help somebody else not to experience those
kind of traumas. Although unfortunately the way the world is,
there's still going to be people out there. There's going

(55:08):
to be situations that are uncomfortable for people.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
So, yeah, that was beautiful, Dad, that was beautiful.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
That's a beautiful metaphor. It's a beautiful metaphor.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
I'm about to cry, actually, but yeah, I think, yeah,
not everyone has the opportunity, the interest, the desire, the
want to continue to talk about it or to bring

(55:46):
it up at all. You know, for some people, it's
just right easier for them. Easier may not be the
right word, better for them, more comfortable for them, safer
for them, even to just heal in whatever way they
need to heal and move on with their lives about

(56:08):
it or rehash it or you know, tell their store
or whatever the case may be. And I'm not saying
there's a right or a wrong.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Way to approach it.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
But for me, the healing, for me, you know, I
don't even want to say it's been part of my
healing journey. I feel like it has been the way
that I've been able to heal is just to be
able to talk about it because I didn't for so long,
and I think, you know, I talk about it earlier
in a different part of the episode, but with the
dismantling of the Department of Education, so much of that

(56:37):
is tied up in Title nine offices that you know,
reports to or is held responsible by the Department of Education.
So when that is no longer there, we're dismantling and
taking away all of those federal supports for students who
are at what is probably the highest risk level that

(57:00):
they'll be in in their entire lives. So there's just
so much wrapped up in that. But it's a scary
thing I can only imagine from a parent's perspective.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
Well, you know, but the student the thing that the
family of education. It's how many people are going to
be able to even consider college, you know, you know
aids being taken away. Yeah, it's going to be left
for the elite, you know, for those that can afford
to go. And people are going to question why am

(57:34):
I going on getting this dead?

Speaker 5 (57:36):
It's not going to be beneficial.

Speaker 4 (57:38):
You know, I can't get student aid as much as
I used to, and how am I going to qualify
to go to college.

Speaker 5 (57:46):
To be able to pay for it?

Speaker 4 (57:48):
So it's little that a lot of people are going
to face of choosing how to choose a career. There's
funds out there, but yeah, there's funds out there, help
out there. You have people that in college, they're seniors
and or upper classmen preying on these younger people, young

(58:10):
and younger women that are coming in college degree.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
We're people who don't even go to the school, who
you know, look to party with, you know, people who
are on that campus, who are you know, students at
that school. So there's just a lot of dynamics folded
into that that, you know, make it really a really
scary situation potentially for young people to navigate and without

(58:42):
you know, these conversations happening before they enter that environment.
And even if the conversations are happening before they enter
the environment, you still never know how you're going to
respond to it in that moment, because, like you said,
you thought I was strong enough to not get in
a situation, or strong enough to be able to open

(59:02):
up to you guys about it when it happened.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
I do.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
I do think I was strong in that moment. But
even strong people, you know, just try to survive, And
for me, that looked like just putting my head down
and not bringing it up again until that couldn't happen anymore.

Speaker 4 (59:24):
Even I think some of the times the parents put
a little more pressure on those on our kids because
you try and raise the kids to be to have
certain expectations, and you think they set that path for
them to take and the path they're gonna know enough

(59:48):
to be on the right path and old enough to
avoid these things. But the thing we fail to do
is sit down and actually talk about it.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
And to be fair, I like you all did.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
You did have.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Some conversations with us about that kind of stuff. And
there's no stress to the imagination where I would look
back on our childhood or you know, the way you
guys raise and say you did a bad job, or
you didn't prepare us for life or anything. I just
I think that things happen and you don't know how

(01:00:23):
you're going to navigate a situation until you're in it.
And this I think is something that most of us
don't ever anticipate having to experience.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):
Yeah, you're right, Unfortunately we can't cover all the bases
in life. You can cover it, you know, just pray
for the best.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Even the fact that you guys got three kids to
go to college or to start college, even if not
all of them completed it. You know, that's a huge
testament to you all's support throughout our our childhood.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
So I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
So I guess what would you say to a parent
who may be in this situation. You know may have
a child who've experienced this and who you know their
child is telling them about their experience for the first time.
Do you have anything you would say to that parent?

Speaker 5 (01:01:23):
I guess, help the student understand health the child understand that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
No matter what trauma they go through in life, they
should be able to open up about that trauma only
because you don't want to carry a burden in life
to make your life different just because And help them

(01:01:50):
understand that their their worthiness is something that you're trying
to make sure that they keep their head up and
stay focused on what they started out to do, because
it's easy to easy to get to a point where
you don't feel like you're worthy and quit it. Because

(01:02:14):
once you go through a trauma, and going through a
trauma as part of life, and when you go through
the trauma, you should be able to talk to somebody
that you feel close to.

Speaker 5 (01:02:26):
If it's not your parents, find somebody or.

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
Maybe it's uncle, maybe it's an aunt or somebody that
knows that you knows why your parent. But sometimes there's
an uncle, an aunt, or a sister that you're close to,
a brother that you kind of close to and tell
them what happened. Unfortunately, but big brothers or big sisters,
they want to go beat somebody up as something they

(01:02:55):
go through some time, some kind of trauma like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
That parents do. From the sound, yeah, they want.

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):
To protect the big kids, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:03:03):
And that's the first thing I want to do is
make sure that that person feels the pain that they
cause somebody, you know. And that's why you get people
that you know they sexual assault somebody first thing, and
think about going to beat them up, getting revenge on
the person.

Speaker 5 (01:03:23):
I don't think it's revenge.

Speaker 4 (01:03:24):
They want to make sure that person feels a pain
that they caused somebody else to feel, the helpless person.
And like I said, I would say to that parent,
it make sure you have that person with the line
of communication that they're striving to do something going through life.
Encourage them to nothing, take him down, because the alternative

(01:03:49):
could have been.

Speaker 5 (01:03:50):
A worse situation.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
If somebody and that kind of angering them or figures
they want to assault somebody, some people would get desperate
and think of killing somebody. So they won't be able
to testify or won't be able to come after them.
The situation that people get desperate. So I would tell somebody,

(01:04:15):
thank God that you got through this situation in tech.
Maybe somebody messaged your mind a little bit or did
something to your physical body, but you're here and you're
still a whole person.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Well, I was going to say earlier, I appreciate that
you all gave me the space two kind of I guess,
very publicly go through it and find whatever I needed
to find on this healing journey. And I think that's

(01:04:53):
big of you all when I made the decision to
start doing this and to include myself in my research
as much as I was, you know, looking at other
people's experiences in the research, but you know it is
it's really impactful that you all just gave me the
freedom to find what I needed to find throughout that time.

(01:05:15):
So I'm appreciative for you all support in that and
your continued to support. Y'all have supported everything that I've
you know, sought out to do. But this I think
is something that was very unexpected, but I truly believe
is going to help people.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
And so I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Just appreciative of you all support and everything that you
have done to get me here, because it's it's been
a lot, it's been a journey.

Speaker 6 (01:05:45):
Well, you know, you come from a family of love,
the family of believers, and you know, with God's help,
you know, and we truly believe in you, we overcome
a lot of things.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
I prayed on a lot of things. I prayed when
I was going through my stroke and pray for recovery,
and pray for forgiveness not only for me, for your
mother and uh everything else for you guys. And prayed
every night. And uh, I still pray things will work out.
And what is working out? It's kind of like, Uh,

(01:06:22):
when I was at work in corporation, people to ask
you think, give you these quizes and self help things,
and they say, how do you do when you're successful?
It's not a monetary thing to be successful. It's not
a spiritual thing to be successful. It's the things that
I found out and be successful is being happy with

(01:06:45):
what you're doing, and you become successful. It's with the
decisions that you've made. You can't make one hundred great decisions,
but a large percentage of them you made a large
percent of to good decisions. You'll come out on top.

(01:07:05):
I think the journey you've had you come out on top.
It's not over yet. It's still a lot of way
to go.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Well, I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
I appreciate you opening up about this because this is
really kind of the first time we've got a chance
to just talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:07:23):
It straight up.

Speaker 5 (01:07:25):
Glad to talk more.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
I appreciate you, Love your dad.

Speaker 5 (01:07:28):
Love your two books.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
As I mentioned during the interviews, these were my first
times having this conversation or this in depth of a
conversation I should say about their experience being my support
after my assault, and I'm honored to be able to
share this conversation with y'all. But after those conversations, I
couldn't stop thinking about what they said. How back in

(01:08:02):
the day, which for them was sometime in the nineteen sixties,
when someone in their community, that is, the black community
in our hometown in northwestern Pennsylvania, committed an act of
sexual violence, people didn't call the police, not because they
didn't believe the survivors, and not because they didn't care,

(01:08:24):
but because they knew the systems would either do nothing
or do too much to the wrong people. And in
the wrong ways. They were scared and rightfully so we
continue to see the ramifications of that even today, because
they knew that calling the cops meant inviting in a

(01:08:45):
force that historically hasn't protected us. It possibly meant watching
your brother, your cousin, your son get beaten up, blocked up,
or killed, while the survivor still may not receive any care,
any healing, or anything that comes close to justice, or
there's just simply no response from the police at all

(01:09:06):
to the report of a crime. And so communities handled
things quietly, but that doesn't always mean that it was
handled effectively. Let's talk about what community accountability meant then
and what it could mean now. In many black communities,

(01:09:28):
especially tight knit or rural ones, there were always ways
of dealing with people who cross those understood culturally identified boundaries.
So when a man was known to have hurt a
woman or child, the older men might confront him. We
see that written in some of our best author's works.

(01:09:48):
Shout out to Tony Morrison, who comes to mind. Specifically,
the aunties and the church mothers may rally around the survivor,
and sometimes the community would isolate that person. Sometimes it
got violent, and sometimes it just got swept under the rug.
And these perpetrators of violence weren't always men. Women were

(01:10:09):
known abusers at the time as well, and even today,
often it's less discussed because of a myriad of reasons
when it comes to boys and young men being survivors
in the scenario. But here's the thing, even when the
goal was protection, black survivors were rarely centered in these processes.

(01:10:31):
Their needs were assumed, not asked, and their safety wasn't
always guaranteed. And when I listened to my parents talk
about how few deep conversations they had about sexual health
and what advocates are pushing for in terms of programming
today focusing on consent and bodily autonomy with anyone, including

(01:10:53):
schools and family, it makes me sad for the little
of them's who had to navigate a world where that
was not part of their community understandings. And even if
they could not identify it in the terms we used today,
how many of the young men and women my parents
grew up with did actually experience sexual violence but didn't
or couldn't name it. So while the intent was to

(01:11:18):
shield people from violent state systems, we still carried harm
inside our own homes, our churches, and within our neighborhoods,
and it was often shielded with silence. And that brings
us kind of to today and what's happening in these spaces,
and that's calls for transformative justice. So transformative justice is

(01:11:42):
a political framework and a practice. It asks how do
we respond to harm in ways that don't reproduce harm.
So organizers like in SIGHT Women of Color Against Violence
have been leading the charge on this for decades. In
Sight came about based on a very real need. They

(01:12:03):
saw how mainstream anti violence movements lean heavily on police
and prisons systems that disproportionately harm black and brown communities,
and those dynamics often erase the needs and leaderships of
women of color, queer folks, and disabled survivors who didn't
rely on those same supports.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
So one of.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
INSIGHT's foundational ideas is that we can't in sexual violence
by relying on the same systems that perpetuate racial violence.
In their Community Accountability tool Kit, they define it like
says quote. Community accountability is a community based strategy rather
than a police slash prison based strategy to address violence

(01:12:46):
within our communities. These strategies aim to transform the behaviors, values,
and power dynamics of individuals and the community that create
and maintain violence end quote.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
So what does that look like.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
It looks like creating systems within our own neighborhoods, our schools,
our churches, and families where survivors can disclose without fear.
It means, by standard, intervention becomes a cultural norm. It
means calling someone in, not just calling them out, and
holding them accountable for their actions in a way that

(01:13:22):
centers repair and not revenge aka getting handled in these streets,
like my parents talked about in their interviews, and it
means asking the survivor what they need and believing them
the first time they tell you. So there's an article
that I found from a twenty twenty CAP radio interview

(01:13:43):
which I'll link in the show notes that talks specifically
about this framework for black survivors in particular. Their goal
is very clear, less police, more care, and one survivor
even said this quote, When I think about healing and
justice for myself, it's not a prison sentence. I want
the person to take accountability, and I want them to

(01:14:05):
get the help they need so they don't hurt anybody else.
But I also want the community to be better educated
so they don't protect that person while shaming me end quote,
And that hit me hard. I don't know about you
as you're listening to it, because it's not just about punishment,
it's about prevention, and we tend to put the emphasis

(01:14:28):
on the wrong stuff sometimes in our society. It's about
building a culture where abuse is not normalized, silence is
not rewarded, and survivors are not left behind. And let's
be honest, community accountability is hard. It can be real hard.

(01:14:48):
As author and organizer Kai ching Tom puts it, accountability
is not about perfection. It's about relationship. But what happens
when those relationships are already rooted in generations of trauma.
What happens when the person who harmed you is someone
you love. There's no script for that, But what we

(01:15:10):
do have are examples of folks trying trying to disrupt
silence in real ways, and sometimes trying and failing and
trying all over again. Community accountability is not a return
to the past. It's a reimagining of the future where
survivors aren't just believed, they're honored, where healing doesn't require erasure,

(01:15:34):
and where justice means something deeper than prisons or the
criminal justice system, because in this case, we far too
often have to ask justice for whom, and maybe, just
maybe where black communities finally have systems that don't punish
us for surviving but actually help us live. We'll talk

(01:15:55):
more about this exact ethos in a few weeks, focusing
on love and accountability, where I pay homage to someone
who has long stood at the forefront of bridgeting that gap.
And so that's where this podcast is headed.

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
Together.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
We're going to hear from folks trying to build those systems,
and I want to hear from you. What does community
accountability really look like to you? And how does your
community handle harm without police? Sound off in the comments,
find us at the Unwanted Sorority on all socials, or
you can email me at the Unwanted Sorority at gmail
dot com. I'd love to hear from you and maybe

(01:16:34):
share some of your feedback on our next episode. Until then,
take care of yourself, take care of one another, and
release whatever shame or guilt you may be feeling about
the harm that's been done to you.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
You're not alone.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
Join us next week for a brand new episode of
The Unwanted Sorority available wherever you get your podcasts, and
don't forget to stay safe, stay connected, and remember this
is a safe space, not a quiet space.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
I'll see you guys next time.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
The Unwanted Sorority is hosted in executive producer bymy Leander Tate,
Our executive producer is Joel Money, our producer is Carmen Loren,
and original cover art is created by Savannah Yuler. I
would also like to have special thanks to the iHeart
Podcast Next Up program for helping bring the show to life.
Also all of the guests who have taken a step
in sharing their story with you all on these episodes,

(01:17:32):
and finally, to all the members of the Sorority who
will never tell their story, We see you and your
story matters.