AUDREY GILMOUR | COLUMN

D

uring October of my 
freshman 
year 
of 
college, 
my 
father 
bought me a pink can of pepper 
spray to keep with me at all 
times. Starting college in 2015, 
everyone 
was 
talking 
about 
sexual assault. The statistics 
were circling, nearly a quarter of 
women attending college would 
be sexually assaulted. Across 
the country, young women were 
stepping up and sharing stories 
about the ways their bodies had 
been treated as objects. Young 
women, like the student at 
Columbia University carrying 
her 
dorm 
mattress 
across 
campus from class to class, were 
brave and inspiring in their fight 
to create awareness. I struggled 
to imagine why any victim of 
sexual assault would keep their 
story private in this time of 
social change.
Reporting 
and 
charging 
sexual predators was such a 
simple concept to me at the time. 
Perpetrators of sexual assault 
deserve 
to 
be 
charged 
and 
disciplined for their actions. 
More importantly, they need to 
be prevented from continuing a 
pattern of harm. This was the 
way I understood sexual assault 
and society’s reaction to it. I 
knew charging sexual assault 
was never easy; I had seen plenty 
of stories in the news about 
men emerging with less-than-
appropriate sentences as the 
legal system chose to put their 
future over those of the affected 
women. However, despite the 
difficulties 
that 
came 
with 
legal action, I felt that it was 
every victim’s responsibility to 
act and ensure their assaulter 
would never be able to harm 
another. What I was not able to 
comprehend at the time is that I 
was one of the many women that 
had been sexually assaulted and 
chosen not to act on it. 
As a young girl I was repeatedly 
molested and assaulted over a 
period of roughly two years. I 
was a 10-year-old girl smitten 
with the boy down the street, 
certain 
I 
was 
in 
love. 
He 
was a 14-year-old boy taking 
advantage of the power he knew 
he possessed over me. It took me 
years to realize that what had 
conspired between the two of 
us was not consensual, though 
it may have felt it at times. No 
matter the feelings I thought 

I felt for this boy, I was in no 
way capable of consenting to the 
actions that took place in dark 
corners of the park and empty 
bedrooms. Despite eventually 
coming to this realization, I 
never considered myself a victim 
of rape. I saw it as a chapter in 
my past and tried to believe I 
had left it firmly there.
Half a year ago I realized my 
past was not stagnant. My sexual 
assault is a fluid part of my 
existence, affecting my mental 
state to this day, and with this 
reality came the understanding 

that what happened to me was 
significant. My assault was just 
as significant as that of the young 
woman at Columbia carrying her 
mattress on her back. My assault 
was significant and if I chose to 
do so, I could take my rapist to 
court. I began preparing myself 
mentally for the battle ahead 
and went through old Facebook 
messages looking for evidence. 
I met with a close lawyer friend 
and 
explored 
my 
options, 
ranging from restraining orders 
to a lawsuit. For a week or two 
I believed this was finally my 
path to closure. The process of 
having my assault recognized 
legally would force me to fully 
accept what had been done to me 
and move forward. I was sure 
of my decision, until I returned 
home for winter break and 
found myself frozen at the idea 

of telling my parents what had 
happened to me.
I was acting, doing something 
I 
considered 
to 
be 
my 
responsibility by making sure 
my rapist wouldn’t be able to 
impact someone else’s life in the 
way that he had impacted mine. 
This was what I believed in. So 
why couldn’t I tell my parents? 
I told myself that I was being a 
coward and with a bit of bravery 
I would eventually be capable of 
confiding in my parents about 
this dark stain on my past. Every 
time I contemplated telling them 
I remembered things: the day my 
dad bought me pink pepper spray 
and told me that he would have 
to kill someone if they ever hurt 
me, the pain and worry in my 
parents’ eyes and voices when I 
struggled with depression and 
panic attacks as a freshman in 
college. I couldn’t bear to see 
their reactions to one of their 
worst nightmares coming true.
For months I lived with my 
decision not to tell my parents 
about my assault or pursue 
legal action. I saw myself as 
a hypocrite for not acting on 
what I perceived as a personal 
responsibility. 
How 
could 
I 
expect others who have had 
similar 
experiences 
to 
take 
action when I couldn’t? The 
thing about sexual assault is 
that you are never fully healed; 
it is never fully in the past. 
Every day I make decisions 
that are affected by my assault, 
even though it happened over a 
decade ago. It took me 10 years 
to process what happened to 
me and I am just now starting 
to recognize the significance of 
my experience. Right now, the 
healing process includes sharing 
my story with those closest to 
me, including my parents. For 
me, healing will probably never 
include 
taking 
legal 
action 
like I might have thought six 
months ago – and that’s okay. I 
am slowly learning, no victim 
of assault has a responsibility 
to take outward action. The 
only responsibility we have is to 
become survivors and do what 
is necessary to make ourselves 
start to feel healthy again.

5
OPINION

Thursday, July 26, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Some may find discomfort 
in this idea and view it as 
a biased assault on news 
media, which is guaranteed 
the right of free speech—
up to and including false 
statements. 
However, 
protection 
of 
the press does not excuse 
an institution as large and 
influential as the news media 
from deliberately misleading 
large swaths of listeners to 
the scale and degree seen 
with Fox News. The network 
has shed contributors hostile 
to Trump and tailored nearly 
all of its coverage to the 
president’s individual tastes, 
singularly 
aligning 
itself 
with a political figure and 
in the process transforming 
itself 
into 
an 
executive 
mouthpiece. 
 
Especially 
in a time when print news 
is 
in 
decline, 
television 
media’s preeminence in the 
information 
realm 
really 
does matter, necessitating 
honest 
and 
fact-based 
coverage by the networks 
who wield this power.
In addition to its content, 
Fox 
News’ 
interaction 
with the president further 
embodies the novelty of the 
Trump problem. While all 
news 
sources 
sometimes 
distort facts in advocating 
their political stances, the 
nature of Trump’s reliance 
on 
and 
his 
supporters’ 
subsequent 
attachment 
to, his preferential media 
sources is clearly unique. 
That the president so heavily 
feeds off of his coverage 
on Fox News—all the while 
his political brand strays 
even 
further 
from 
old 
party ways—supports this 
characterization.
Unfortunately, 
this 
alarming 
relationship 
is 
clouded by boilerplate calls 

for 
intellectual 
diversity. 
While society should always 
promote 
willingness 
to 
consider conflicting points of 
view, the seemingly magnetic 
tendency to denounce “both 
the left and right” of equally 
vile partisanship amounts 
to nothing more than false 
equivalence (which brings 
to 
mind 
a 
particularly 
misplaced 
invocation 
of 
the “both sides” narrative). 
 
Even if one could manage to 
write off several prominent 
anti-Trump 
Republicans 
jumping ship as a routine 
political shake-up, George 
Will calling for a Democratic 
takeover 
of 
Congress 
should sound some alarms. 
Listening to the other side 
does not mean ignoring signs 
that things are clearly not 
normal. 
Trump’s power to lead 
in a manner devoid of both 
caution and beneficence lies 
squarely in the constituency 
he has cultivated. Nourishing 
these new Republicans and 
steadily 
fueling 
Trump’s 
presidency – criticism of 
his decisions be damned 
– is Trump’s media corps, 
epitomized by Fox News 
and servile to the president 
insofar 
as 
its 
broadcasts 
resound through the homes 
of his devotees. This is a 
dynamic as disquieting as 
it is underappreciated, and 
it 
demands 
a 
newfound 
scrutiny of our media. In 
turn, this would promote 
greater accountability of our 
president, 
something 
that 
should be appreciated by 
Trump’s loudest supporters 
and critics alike. 

From victim to survivor: my path to healing

Audrey Gilmour can be reached at 

audreymg@umich.edu

Ethan Kessler can be reached at 

ethankes@umich.edu.

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Eyes wide shut by Ethan Kessler continued below:

“Young women, 
like the student 
at Columbia 
University 
carrying her 
dorm mattress 
across campus 
from class to 
class, were 
brave and 
inspiring in 
their fight 
to create 
awareness.”