Rape victim speaks out

Being a two-time rape victim has not been easy for me, my family and friends, colleagues, professors and acquaintances. A culture of silence and shame surrounds sexual assault. As a personal example, last year for SAPW, I created a t-shirt for the Clothesline Project and faltered for a minute before I finally committed only my initials in the signature, A.S., even choosing to omit my middle initial for the sake of ambiguity.

    Although I felt compelled to voice myself through creating a public display, I could not bear to be held accountable for my "coming out," for a multitude of reasons: fear of ostracism, guilt for imposing pain onto others, hesitancy at recognizing the truth, and most importantly, shame for bearing witness to evil acts. Instead, I chose to hide behind the statistics as another of many faceless screams. In other words, I found comfort in anonymity. However, social exigencies demand discomfiture before resolutions can be made. In my own and our society's hesitancy to claim and place names to these crimes, we are delaying the healing process for individual survivors and the collective.

    I urge you to make it personal, in your daily lives, to realize that violence cannot be measured by mere statistics or nameless accounts, but instead, by breathing bodies and real lives. At the risk of forever being defined by events that constitute only a fragment of who I am, I shall make a leap of faith: My name is Aileen and I am a survivor.

    Aileen Yanan Shiue

Trinity '05