The Cost of Coming Forward

Anney and Samantha delve into the financial, emotional and physical costs of reporting sexual assault.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to STUFFMA never
told you. We are once again joined by my good
friend Samantha. Hello Samantha for this episode in our mini

(00:28):
series around trauma and sexual assault. UM, we're going to
be looking at why survivors of sexual assault don't come forward,
and then if they do, what happens. Over the course
of these next several episodes, we're going to go step
by step through what coming forward entails, reporting rape kids,
court dates, all of that stuff. Although we do want

(00:50):
to recognize at the front coming forward doesn't have to
be the rape kid or twitter or going to court
type things. It can be and often is just as
valid able to just tell someone that you trust. Right.
So triggers UM trigger warnings for this episode are sexual
assaults and abuse and trauma. Right. We don't want to

(01:14):
traumatize you all more or make you fearful to continue listening,
But and the next few episodes will be talking to
people who are willing to relay some of the more
intense aftermaths of going through a trauma, including actual hospital
visits and continue trauma due to having to repeat details
of the events. UM, what we're hoping to do is
shed light on why this is so much harder than

(01:34):
most people assume. And honestly, I'm tired of having to
prove to those who have never been victimized like this
assuming it isn't a big deal or the whole myth
of the fact that victims are trying to get attention
or wanting money. So we're gonna break it down a bit. Yes,
So let's start with why people don't come forward, because,
as you probably already know, sexual assault is one of

(01:56):
the most under reported crimes. Around eight percent go unreported,
is the estimate. And all the time you hear, um,
why didn't she come forward? Or why did she wait
so long to come forward? And I suspect hope that
this episode will answer those questions. According to the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission, they receive twelve thousand complaints about sex

(02:18):
based harassment annually. They estimate that up to three out
of four people who have experienced sexual harassment never come forward.
The co chairman of a Commission task force said that
instead of reporting, women quote, avoid the harass or deny
our downplay the gravity of the situation, or attempt to ignore,
forget or endure the behavior. I just wanted to throw

(02:39):
this in here because I found it so disturbing. But
on college campuses, the first six weeks are known as
the red zone of annual rapes on college campuses occur
within that time frame. Well, yeah, the cost of lost
productivity or of jobs or of education from things like
PTSD that survivors experienced in the aftermath of a sexual

(03:01):
assault directly impacts the American economy at large when people
do report. In the CDC estimates that the economic cost
of sexual harassment and assault came out to be around
one thousand to two hundred thousand per victim, or a
total of two hundred sixty three billion dollars in the
United States, And that's probably low balling it. The priest scandal,

(03:25):
the priest abuse scandal with the Catholic Church has cost
them three billion dollars in settlements for more specific example,
and they're still going I think, oh, yeah, so many more.
So overall health medical costs for women who has experienced
sexual or child abuse is six higher than a woman
who has not been through this experience. Yeah, so those

(03:46):
are like financial cost um and we're going to get
into more detail of a lot of other financial costs later,
but for now, let's let's talk about why people don't
come forward, because they are so many reasons. One of
the biggest ones is shame and self blame. So many

(04:08):
survivors report shame as one of the primary reasons they
waited so long to come forward, feeling that they were
to blame, that they sent the wrong signals. And can
you blame us when your action societally is so often
victim blaming In nature, sexual assault is dehumanizing. When you
are ashamed of something, you're not rushing to tell people

(04:29):
about it. It makes you want to hide, It makes
your skin crawl. I remember at one particular New Year's
Eve party after I was triggered, crying into a toilet,
puking while my friends tried to calm me down and
saying over and over again, I can't feel this way anymore,
to be less than human. That was my first New
Year's Eve party. I cligured out, um, and there's this

(04:51):
need to figure out why this event, this horrible, traumatic event,
happened to you. Um, that's how your brain works, So
you'll never do that thing again. You want to believe
have control of your own body. That means you might
start thinking of yourself as bad or that something is
wrong with you. I can say from personal experience, I
felt unlovable and that I was tricking people into liking me,

(05:12):
or that I had this huge obvious scar on my
face but everyone was being kind and allowing me to
pretend it didn't exist. But one day they would realize
that they would see me for what I truly was,
which I thought was something not worth their time. And
shame often leads to isolation because you don't want to
inflict your presence on others, or in some societies, isolation

(05:34):
is forced upon you. For a long time, I struggled
with this I don't want to bother anybody mentality, UM
like they need to reach out to me right and overall,
you do feel like you are inconvenience and that is bothering,
especially because they were like, this is my own problem.
I have to deal with this. I did this that
whole mentality. But you know, UM, for me having this

(05:56):
happen to me or being able to not being okay
or being able to let go made me feel like
I was being weak, which is a lie. Being strong
doesn't mean we aren't allowed to fill emotions and vulnerability
it's not something to be ashamed of. But I know
that constantly is in the back of my head because
I played to be this, not just play to be,
but I hope to be the strong, independent woman who

(06:18):
um takes care of herself and defends herself all of
those things. But then you have this nagging feeling in
the back of your head because you've been victimized or
traumatized several times, that you are lying and that you're
weak and you allow things to happen, as you talked
about earlier, um And in a book written as a
guide to surviving sexual assault violence, it's stated n of

(06:42):
rape trauma recovery is undoing a victim's tendency to self blame,
which is a giant wall individual victims have to scale
before they can even start the healing process. And I
think that's obvious a big question. A lot of us
don't want to talk about it, and that's the whole part.
Is when you come forward and we were again and
saying Ford talking to someone, whether it's to get health

(07:03):
for yourself or just to be recognized that you had
gone through something, it's hard to get there because to
say it out loud means that something happened to you
and you have to acknowledge it and it hurts all
over again. Yeah, yeah, you have to admit it to yourself.
So we have a lot more reasons why why people

(07:24):
don't come forward, but first we have a quick break
for word from our sponsor m HM and we're back,
Thank you sponsor. So another big reason people don't come
forward we've kind of touched on a little bit is

(07:45):
denial and minimization, because you don't want to believe that
you've been abused. That is a hard truth to accept. You.
You might also compare yourself to other people you know
that quote had it worse, and feel like you don't
have a right to call what happened to you sexual
assault compared to what others went through. You might make

(08:06):
excuses for your abuser who might be generally well liked
and respected, or a part of your friend group or family.
You know what, we could probably break this down just
growing up female, growing up to be a lady, growing
up to be a caretaker. That we are taught that
it's our responsibility as women to make everybody feel else
feel okay, and that includes those who heard us, and

(08:28):
it's the whole mindset that we're trying to Everybody, I
think is starting to realize, not starting to, but have
been realizing, and it needsily broken down. Yeah. Yeah, And
I think that this is something that does get lost
a lot of the time. That um, someone you know
is the perpetrator. Most most of the time, that's that's

(08:49):
the case. And speaking from experience, you are, the people
around you might go out of your way to reconceptualize
what happened is anything but sexual assault, even if that's
absolutely what it is. Because someone you know right and
again that you may like or you used to respect.
I remember several of the biggest controversies happened because this
was a well respected, let's say, teacher who everybody loved

(09:12):
and adored, or a preacher that everybody loved or adored.
They have this whole reputation as being a good person,
but they don't see the underlying issues that that is
the trust that they build and could actually be part
of the reason how or pal out of how they
can groom others. It's so hard you don't want to,
especially if you look up to this person. Yeah, especially

(09:35):
like if it is a part of your friend group
or your family or something like that, it's really difficult.
And a while back we interviewed Samantha not me different Samantha.
Samantha is one episode who worked for three years as
a prosecutor, and she spoke to this. Growing up as
females were always taught about the boogeyman and be careful

(09:58):
when you're walking at night or jogging, and not that
you shouldn't be safe and aware of your surroundings, but
really those situations that you hear about or sensationalized through
movies are very very rare. Typically not that they don't happen,
and they do receive a lot of media attention when
they do. But most of the sex crimes that occur

(10:21):
our acquaintances or the date rape situations UM. And I
think the more aware people are of that, UM, the
easier it eventually is for victims. Because as adults were
all looking for that boogeyman in the woods that's dragging
you off type scenario, You'll be hearing more from Samantha,

(10:45):
this other Samantha, and this Samantha to this. This is
gonna get confusing really quickly in the future. We also
spoke to Justin Boardman, who spent seven years as a
detective in the Special Victims Unit in Utah. He now
focuses on Trauman form training around the country and around
the world. Um he retired early, he told us from
his job so he could specifically do this type of

(11:08):
training and teach others about what he's doing and talking
about trauma informed interviewing. And we love him just to
say that. My name is Justin Workman, and I am
a retired police detective from the city of West Valley
City in Utah, which is the active suburb of Salt

(11:29):
Lake City. I spent seven years in the Special Victims Unit.
During that time in the Special Victims JUnit, I was
a sign just about So if you do the math,
that's a lot of cases to burn through, if you will.
So those are adult rapes, mostly child sexual assault, child abuse,

(11:49):
elder abuse, that sort of thing. So it's a pretty
heavy emotional type of caseload, if you will. So, in
and of itself, the two words informed is confusing as
all get out. There are numerous amounts of definition to
what trauma informs means. But I kind of take the

(12:12):
general version of everything, which means you are informed about
what trauma is and how it presents itself and you're
informed about it. So that's kind of where I go.
Most of my stuff is changing the places within the
justice system that can be trauma and forms, and you

(12:35):
will be hearing more from Justin in future episodes as well.
So according to the president of RAIN, which is the Rape,
Abuse and Incest National Network, one of the first questions
people ask when they call the hotline is was I rate?
And I can tell you through personal experience. I have
heard this so many times from friends and honestly from
some of you listeners. Yeah. So yeah. I actually had

(12:58):
two separate conversations with two very strong, independent women who
we had to talk out the fact that they had
been raped. But before then they didn't acknowledge that it
was um and didn't think to see how it was
a force experience. And I've had many moments at looking
at different incidents where you people realize, oh my gosh,
this was a man who was being predatory or being dominant,

(13:21):
you know, and and forcing himself on me and or
not listening when I said no. Right. A meta analysis
of twenty studies looking into women and girls who had
experienced in non consensual sex found six did not acknowledge
that they had been raped. Another study found that twenty
of men that have been raped as adults did not

(13:42):
identify it as rape. And one reason is this flawed
narrative of quote real rape, which is a male stranger
with a weapon assaulting a woman. Most rapes do not
fit that script. A sixteen study out of the UK
looking into the four hundred cases reported over a two
year period, not one of those cases fit this idea
of real rape. So someone who has experienced an assault

(14:05):
that's outside of that which is most assaults might think, well,
it wasn't that. Yeah, And um, as you heard Samantha
talk about the boogeyman, and many of our judicial system,
those who are in the jury our appears they also
have that mentality like, okay, so they didn't jump out
of the bushes and grab me and couldna be or whatever.

(14:27):
And that is part of the problem, is this whole
mindset that if you know them, and if it wasn't
didn't cause bruising, or didn't cause some kind of scarring
physical scarring on you, then it wasn't really rape because
what did you say? How did the conversation goes? Yeah?
And our laws are a big part of perpetrating this problem. Like,

(14:48):
like we mentioned, in some states and some countries, women
can't legally rape someone for instance, which we know is
not true. Um and a lack of sex head around
consent contributes to this problem as well. And justin speaking
with others who have experienced similar events, the number of
times an individual will say it was not that bad
in order to compare the ordeal, whether to deny it,

(15:09):
or because they feel like they didn't suffer enough in
comparison to other victims, which actually will have an example
of later on as well. Yeah, and kind of going
off of that, another reason people might not come forward
is um it drugged, inebriated, disassociated, resulting in vague memories
once that you might doubt or maybe you didn't fight back.

(15:30):
Are you froze? An emergency rape clinic in Stockholm, Sweden
found in twenty sevent of women reported experienced tonic immobility
during their assault. And this is a natural response to
protect yourself from further or worst harm. But it goes
to back to what you were saying, Samantha, like you
didn't fight back. If you can't remember these things, then
you know that might not hold up in court. Would

(15:51):
be very difficult. Another big reason is fear of losing
your job, of not being believed, of losing friends, fear
became mean the one that came forward, and missing out
on opportunities and promotions. Here's destined again. I would come
in on Monday morning, I would look at my box
and maybe there'd be a sexual assault examined board in there,

(16:12):
and I would look through it. And what we do
is we would call up our victim and we would say, hey,
I just went through your board. I'm sorry this happened
to you. And I see that you don't have You're
not remembering a lot. There's been some pieces here and there.
There's alcohol involved, which happens a lot. Actually, alcohol is

(16:34):
a tool that could be used to facilitate sexual assault.
And I go, you know, there's witnesses here. Could you
give me a list of all the people that were there.
The officers didn't do that. I'm there. I'm seeing they
got one or two, but there was twenty people there
I need to talk to and can give me that
information by maybe Thursday, unless you don't want to keep
going forward. While I was planting all this doubt in

(16:57):
their brains and I didn't know that, And I was
putting these huge tasks of somebody who had just been
praised for health. Say, so, I tell him, you know,
if I don't hear from you by this date, I'm
going to close out your case. But it can be
reopened if you feel like you want to come forward later. Well,
you know, Monday morning would come around. The next Monday.

(17:17):
I hadn't heard from them, so I closed on their case,
reduced squop rate, case closed, and that was it. Career
trajectory altering. That's how economist Jonie Hirsch described coming forward.
Through her research at Vanderbilt University, she found the existence
of something called danger pay. Does this pay for performing

(17:40):
something hazardous or physically demanding? And Hirsch examined the risk
of sexual harassment by industry, age, group, sex and reached
the conclusion that women are six times more likely than
men to experience sexual harassment while working. She also found
that women in occupations with lower risk of sexual harassment
are paid less, and that danger pay made up the
different for jobs with higher risk of sexual harassment. And

(18:03):
there is disagreement about the that interpretation, but interesting, nonetheless,
if you come forward, unfortunately, you might be known as
the person that came forward on a micro macro scale,
and this might keep you from getting jobs like this
has been documented because you were seen as a complainer.
And as I've mentioned, I've never come forward with what

(18:24):
happened to me, like officially, but I have spoken out
about smaller things, and I've mentioned before I do acting
outside of this, and I have definitely lost jobs because
I came forward more in the sense of pushing away
a producer that was kissing me without consent um and
finding out my job was gone the very next day
or something like that. And me too got popularized by

(18:46):
white actresses coming forward with that hashtag women's whose careers
were permanently changed or ended. And a lot of industries
don't even have a structure in place for you to
report as a part of this problem. Um, I had
no one I could have gone to with this, and
even if there was someone it, the system doesn't always

(19:06):
protect who is it is supposed to protect, right, And
I know we have that same complete when it comes
to racism. It is difficult to report because you never
know who's gonna listen and who's gonna take things seriously, um,
and who's actually going to care enough Another reason people
might not come forward is low self esteem, especially for
young girls or those that identify as women. Seeing how

(19:27):
women are treated in our pop culture, in porn culture,
and just in general in our lives. Um, we see
that and we might think, I guess that's okay. Minimization
of women's pain, the sacrifice of their well being for
men's pleasure. I can talk about that all the time,
right and honestly as a social worker. One of the
things that we studied and watched was The Lost Children

(19:49):
of Rockdale. I don't know if y'all have seen this,
but this is a documentary based in a small town
in Georgia which this outbreak of syphilis happened. It was
a brand new type of syphilis, and they went and
through the whole thing trying to find, you know, patient A,
patient one zero, Patient zero. I got this patient zero,

(20:09):
and it turned out this huge culture of sexually active
kids who are doing parties and the ages ranged from
like eleven to eighteen. And I remember watching it and
there was several twelve year old girls talking about losing
their virginity and being proud of that. But then when
they were asked, did you enjoy it? It got very somber,

(20:31):
and the girls were like, no hurt. I cried all
these all these things that were so heartbreaking, But then
they were able to scoot that aside and be like,
but man, this is what I got for that. And
he's popular and he's so cute, and I'm just like,
oh my goodness, this is probably one of the most
heartbreaking things I've ever seen, because this is what they
think sex is, and they think that sex is just

(20:53):
something to become popular with, and it's being used against them,
and they don't acknowledge the pain in that. They just
literally just slid by it. And it's just so heartbreaking
that many many people, and many of the younger generations,
and when I say younger, I'm talking about sixteen eighteen
and younger, I hope UM don't understand about pleasure versus

(21:16):
just getting it done. Yeah, And that's a whole other
conversation that we should have a talk about. We should,
we should. Another part of this conversation is hopelessness or helplessness.
If you've seen others come forward and not be believed,
then you might think, well, why should I put myself
through that? Or in a long term abuse of situation,
you might experience what's called learned helplessness if you have

(21:39):
a history of abuse, that will impact your likelihood of
coming forward as well. Um, there's generational abuse or re victimization,
continued abuse, observing and normalizing violent and or aggressive behaviors.
In some war torn areas or disaster zones or a
place where order has broken down, there's something called rape
normalization that can happen. Women accept it as a part

(22:02):
of life right um, and so here we want to
add specific statistics why the lgbtq I community do not
come forward, although obviously many of the reasons are similar.
But within the population, we know that the lgbt q
I have higher rates of poverty and stigma and marginalization,
which actually puts them at greater risk for sexual assault.

(22:23):
And some of the statistics from the CDC's National Intimate
Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, forty percent of lesbians and
sixty one percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence,
or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to the thirty
of the heterosexual women. Forty six percent of the bisexual
women have been raped compared to the seventeen percent of

(22:45):
the heterosexual women, and percent of lesbians. The of the
bisexual women have been raped by an intimate partner compared
to the nine percent of the heterosexual women. And according
to the U S Transgender Survey, about forty seven percent
of the respondents experienced sexual assault and in the same
survey have experienced in a department or violence. It's also

(23:07):
important to know people of color have a higher rate
of experiencing assault and violence than those who are not,
So why does this population not report? Due to the
mere discrimination by authorities and even people close to them.
They are more likely to not seek help as it
becomes just as traumatic to try to report the assaults.
For some, they've already been denied services or help, which

(23:28):
again discourages them to report or seek out help. With that,
many within the populations believe they will not be believed,
which is often reinforced by law enforcement and others in
authority which classify the population as secondary and some do
not come out because they were fear being outed. It's
not surprising to know that the likelihood of anyone from
this community to report an assault is less likely than

(23:50):
that of the head of sexual community, but oftentimes are
not included within the narrative which was a big issue
within the meat too hashtag, which for many in the
community they felt that it left out their voices as
it has geared more towards male female language versus the
non gender conversation. So there are so many reasons why

(24:11):
people don't report um, and we touched on some of
the big ones, but there's there's just a lot um
and this is why we see something like the hashtag
why I didn't come forward go viral. UM. So what
happens if you do come forward? We'll get into some
of that after a quick break for a word from

(24:31):
our sponsor, m and we're back, Thank you sponsor. So
if you do come forward, as in kind of more

(24:52):
publicly than just sharing your story with someone in your
inner circle that you trust, then one thing that you
can expect is that you and your loved ones might
be dragged through the court of public opinion. People are
going to dig into your past and the past of
everyone around you. This is especially true if like you
go to court or it's a more famous case. Yeah,

(25:15):
think about the families of prominent cases like Christine Blaisie Ford.
The people attacking you on social media, calling you names,
re traumatizing, you of the people delegitimizing your experience, which
in turn might influence other women not to come forward.
Like we said, um you might be called out by
the President of the United States demanding to know why

(25:38):
you didn't come forward earlier, which is what happened to
Dr Ford. Um. Trump tweeted that if it was as
bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed
with local law enforcement authorities, but either her or her
loving parents, I asked that she bring those filings forward
so that we can learn date, time, and place. I'm
physically nauseous from that statement. But let's take a closer look,

(26:02):
because I have heard that on many occasions, and she
stayed as she felt it was her duty as an
American citizen to relive these traumas in pain to protect
the citizens of our country. And we're going to talk
in an episode about survivors, and honestly, here is a
prime example of what people do as survivors. Right. Another
thing that you might hear if you come forward more publicly,

(26:26):
this question, why is she still friendly with her abuser? Okay,
let's go ahead and put the statistic back up. According
to the Department of Justice, nearly six out of ten
victims of assault knew their assailant, and eight out of
ten rape victims knew their attacker. So for me, who
was victimized by people who I knew and trusted but
was fearful that people wouldn't believe me, I kept pretending

(26:48):
like everything was okay because if I didn't, I would
make others feel uncomfortable or maybe even called a liar. Yeah,
there's also like that element of protection that was a
big one for me, like protecting other people from what
I was going through. Uh, And yeah, strangers aren't usually
the danger folks, right as in fact that my last
therapy session with Dr Coleman, we're gonna leave that name there. Um.

(27:12):
She and I talked about the fact that I still
haven't told my parents some things because I felt that
it would be vindictive and it would not be healing.
And that's partially in the fact of my mind thinking
I'm also trying to protect myself from damaging my relationship
with my family. Um. Another thing that survivors coming forward

(27:36):
a question they might get or an accusation I guess
is she doesn't act like a victim. Her memory doesn't
add up her story doesn't add up. She didn't fight back. Um,
and we did talk about a lot of of this
stuff in her episode on trauma. Oh wait, I didn't
realize there was only one type of behavior for victims.
Please someone tell me what that is for me being

(27:58):
a victim, that I was a survivor, and tell with
those who would try to have power over me. Yeah yeah, yeah.
And I'm gonna fight for those who can't fight for themselves.
That was my attitude. Yeah. Um, something else? Um? Is
she a slut? A flirt a t s in court cases? Literally,
look at this sexy Instagram photo has come up. Oh

(28:20):
my goodness, so many of those any of the times
they flirt with anyone? Automatic, you're a slut? Right, So
therefore how could you not or she wanted to have
sex with the random stranger and or the guy that
you weren't interested in before the wine to be friends with? Okay? Yeah.
The statue of limitations might be another thing that you

(28:43):
you run into, um, which is very complicated in various
state by state. Right. Um, And we wanted to talk
about why else wouldn't we want to come forward lenient sentencing?
And I just wanted to give a couple of examples
of the most fresh in in cases as of recent
and maybe not so recent, but brock Turner, obviously, I

(29:05):
think people know who that is. Raping an unconscious woman
behind a dumpster and being caught by in the act
by someone only cost six months of his life because
it would cause a severe impact on his life and
he's already suffered enough. Yeah, I am we There's so

(29:25):
many words that I can't say right now, and it is.
It was infuriating and such a blowback. The letter that
the victim wrote, the survivor wrote was heartbreaking and it
seemed to go to nowhere except for other victims to
hear her words and feel strengthened that. There was another

(29:46):
case in which a late forties something teacher groomed and
had sex with a fourteen year old student who later
took her own life, and at the hearing that judge
actually stated that the team acted older than her chronological
age and that the child was as much in control
of the situation as the perpetrator. The original sintence it

(30:08):
was for fifteen years, but he only actually served thirty days. Yeah,
this is an injustice. I'm sorry. A fourteen year old
being blamed for forty year old need to have sex
with a minor. That's absurd. This is one of those
examples where we talked about the Lolita effect in which

(30:30):
they are sexualized and being told because she acts older
than she is, she can consent, which is not true
in any way, shape or form. And for this to
happen and to have no real justice, I don't think
this is justice is heartbreaking and I just have to

(30:50):
take a deep breath. And another example would include the
case in Alaska which involved a man, and you can
look at this case up, but I don't want to
highlight the man specifically, but more so on the trial
and the result. This man kidnapped, choked, and masturbated on
a woman. She was able to get the parts license
plate after he left, and this man was sentenced to

(31:12):
two years of prison with credit for time served on
house arrest. The quote given by the judges he was
going to give him a one pass, which is great.
Everybody needs a pass right. I have so many reactions,
so many reactions, but let's also layer that with the
fact that under Alaskan law, masturbating on someone against their

(31:34):
will is not considered a sex crime. I want to
rant and be so lowed about how absurd this obvious
sexual gratification of a man against the will of a
woman is seen as a learning lesson for a quote
unquote family man who has apparently learned his lesson after
getting caught and possibly being incarcerated. That's great, it and

(32:00):
it seems forcible. These seems forcibly taking a woman to
an unknown location and dragging her out against her will
to be violated is not kidnapping in Alaska because she
got in the car with him even though that's not
where she wanted to go, and according to the actual
police report, the victim was so traumatized she could barely speak.

(32:20):
A woman was almost murdered for the mere pleasure of
a man who did not care about the humanity of another,
and the court system felled by minimizing the trauma, the violation,
and the overall ability for this woman to live a
normal ish life and essentially protect the rights of a
perpetrator instead of the woman who had no choice in
the matter except to trust someone to be a decent

(32:42):
human to get home. Yeah. Yeah, that's all pretty awful, um,
And we have even more awful because so many cases
of why yeah. So if we look at the case
of Roy Moore, so Lee Korfman, who was the first
to come out with Usaians against Ray Moore, said it
probably quote cost her more to come forward when people

(33:05):
assailed her with claims that she was getting paid to
sully his name. And then there's also Monica Lewinsky. And
for the younger listeners who may not know Miss Lewinsky,
she was at the center of the scandal involving herself
as a young intern and the current president of the
United States, President Bill Clinton. To summarize, they had an

(33:26):
affair and many of the details of the affair came out,
which led to the impeachment or yet the impeachment trial
to for President Clinton. Now, I don't want to linger
too much about the actual events, but of the aftermath.
Instead of being an issue of misconduct by the leader
of the country, it became a source to domain and
humiliate the actual intern, Miss Lewinsky, so much so that

(33:48):
he even missed. Beyonce Knows not too long ago referenced
her as a verb in her song, which miss Lewinsky
corrected by stating it should actually be called Bill Clinton.
Suppose you know what I'm saying which I agree with
because that's biology, you know, you know. And in the

(34:11):
documentary series The Clinton Affair, ms Lewinsky talked about her
feelings suicidal and having no real control in the relationship
as he was one of the most powerful men in
the world, and she finally addressed that she does feel
like people have moved on and has rightly so renamed
the event from the Lewinsky scandal to the Clinton Affair,
which it should have been to begin with. Yeah, while

(34:35):
we're talking about this, I did want to look at
some of the limits that occur with reporting sex crimes.
A majority of the country has a statute of limitations
in following criminal charges. And when we talk about statute
of limitations, we're talking about the window of time that
a state or of the has to charge the perpetrator.
With the focus on DNA evidence, many of the states

(34:57):
in the last years have allowed to either extend or
pause the statute of limitations when DNA evidence is found
in a case, so people are able to revisit old
cases because new DNA evidence were found, so they can
either restart the statute of limitations or just pause it
all together. So that's that's good to know. And Georgia, Florida,

(35:18):
and Hawaii are a few of the states that allow
that change. Now, there's still several states who have not
hopped on board with that change yet, such as Alabama
and Arkansas. There's also a few states who have stepped
up even further to eliminate statues of felony level of
sex crimes, including Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia. Now,

(35:39):
these are just few examples, and it's fairly fascinating to
research if you're curious to learn more about your state
reign are AI in n as we mentioned earlier, has
listed limitations in regards to sex crimes and offensive state
by state. There's also an option outside of a statue
of limitations for criminal prosecutions, which will st of talk

(35:59):
about a little more later, but it's civil suits and
why this option is important for some recovery. Yes, here
is justin again, since you were talking to your listeners,
are more on the jury pool, the way their biology happens,
and way of presents two people. It's counterintuitive to what

(36:23):
we we're raised to think and see, and the first
person that somebody discloses sexual assault is so important to
the system and to their healing, the victim's healing, and
you know you hear the term starting by believing that's good.
Things like that, but really just show some empathy and

(36:46):
don't question about what happened. Are stuff facts if you will,
can be predators and they work very hard and they're
very good at what they do. And people think that
the victims are lying. They were set up, they were
groomed for the most part, and rape not something that

(37:06):
happened in back alleyways. Often it's mostly acquaintance rapes. So
just to drive that point in one more time, and
this about brings us to the end of this episode.
But um, our next episode will be a little different because,

(37:27):
like we've we've mentioned, we spoke with a survivor about
her story, and we also spoke with someone who has
put a lot of research into rape, kits Um, and
we will also be hearing from Justin uh this former
detective of a special victims unit, and also from Samantha
the lawyer, and also from Samantha you the other one

(37:50):
bumbling through the words um. And to end with our
self care bit of the episode, um My dedn facts
what I'm calling the anier u okay section, UM so
once we we this was pretty early when we were
playing and I was still very new to things, and

(38:10):
our dungeon master, who is somebody who works in this office. Um,
we always made the foolish decision whatever it was, the
most foolish, dangerous thing, that's what we did. And one
time we encountered this portal that we knew had monsters
in it. Instead of like proceeding carefully, we attacked the

(38:33):
portal with all of this all this magic, and the
dungeon master, Tyler, he pauses, he looks down and he says,
give me a minute, because he clearly wasn't expecting us
to make such a foolish decision. And we had to
get the there's like all of these books associated with

(38:53):
dungeon and jackets. One of them is called the Monster Manual,
that's where all the monsters are. And he picks it
up and he's like heavy side and we had to
fight now not to not three but four basilisk and
turn you to stone. Barely made it out alive. And
did that stop as making another foolish decision almost immediately

(39:16):
after and jumping into the portal. No, you know, Anny,
I got those videos of the d and d playing. Yes,
she's got videos. She shares some with me. I'm really
excited to watch some. I decided I gotta wait for
a second because I want to be able to be
in the moment to see you in your best. I'm

(39:36):
assuming sure at your happiest. Oh yeah, prime, at your prime.
So I'm really excited about that. Um for me. You know,
we talked about Peaches a lot because she is my
dumb dog. Actually she's very smart. That is kind of
a jerk, and I adore her for that very, very
very much reason. But I will say she's been really

(39:56):
great to watch movies with. So one of the things
that I have to do come home if I've had
a really rough day is just try to shut down
my brain. And the way I do it is watch
stupid things as many stupid things as I can. And
typically it will range from Harry Potter. Yeah, I will
also do um Anna Green Gables, the Old School one,

(40:21):
the old School one? Is it BBC? No is the
PBS want to think, Um, I don't know which one
it is. Uh. Then I'll also do some silly movies
like Princess Bride. I adore that movie. Um, and I
usually make you just sit in my lap almost while

(40:41):
I'm watching these movies, and I turned my brain off
and hopefully I fall asleep. That is one of the
best ways I can do things. Just watch nothing nothing,
you mean. Yes, I actually took a Harry Potter quoth
the other day and I killed it. I once did

(41:02):
Harry Potter Trivia and did not miss a single question
and they were like, okay, um, cool, yeah, right right, Mike,
don't play with me. Don't play I'm also the same
one that will be like, um, that's not the same
in the book. That's not the same as book. I
like the better than book version. Yeah. On that person,
we all love that person. I am that Parson. Yes.

(41:28):
So that is the end the end of this episode.
If you'd like to email us, you can our email
is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Um
if you need any resources or anything like that. If
you have any experiences you'd like to share related to
this series, we would love to hear from you. You
can also find us on Instagram at Stuff I've Never
Told You and on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks

(41:48):
as always to her producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to
you for listening. Two