The Cornell case forced me to confront the sexual assault I buried for decades

I am Jane Doe.

I was a freshman in college, second semester, when I got a call from my mom that my dad was in the hospital. I should find my older brother and we should come home. In the hour and a half it took me to locate my brother on campus (landlines, kids), my father had ceased to be.

It was a Thursday. Valentine’s Day, 1985. My dad’s memorial was on the following Sunday and afterward we just… went back to school.

I did not weather it well.

I had never been a drinker in high school. I was a lame, in-the-band, desperate-to-be-accepted-but-never-actually-belonged geek of a thing. A goody-goody. But at college, alcohol was so accessible and I loved to dance. I had become a little sister at a fraternity and found a group of friends there that I had so much – too much – fun with in my first semester.

(It has to be said, though, I never missed my 8 a.m., four-days-a-week math class, no matter how scuzzy I felt.)

It was that second semester, though, the semester I lost my dad, that things went off the rails. I drank too much, cried too often, let my grades slip. Became an even bigger disappointment to my mom. And I was not a fun drunk.

It was during this time, during what amounted to a teary therapy session with one of the fraternity brothers, the person I probably trusted more than any other at that house, that I became Jane Doe.

I have a propensity for flying my so-called “dirty laundry” at full staff. Friends know about my unsuccessful relationships, my failed pregnancies and my work screw-ups – like the time I nervously asked Lee Greenwood what inspired him to write “God Bless America.” But I never shared this.

NEVER.

But it’s not my dirty laundry. It’s HIS. This man saw a vulnerable grieving person on the verge of being blackout drunk, and forced himself on her. Forced himself on ME. I protested the entire time, told him I didn’t feel “that way” about him, but it didn’t matter.

I was already crying when he started, but I remember crying harder.

I remember it feeling like an out-of-body experience, and as if I could not control my limbs. It never even occurred to me until recently that I might have been drugged. I’ll never know. We were sitting on a couch in a dark living room as a party raged downstairs and then I was on the floor, a floor covered in a color popular in the 1960s of sculpted wall-to-wall carpet that I would fundraise to replace in later years. My red shorts jumpsuit was down around my thighs and he was on top of me, grunting.

At some point the overhead light was flipped on, a man saw us on the floor, said “oops,” turned the light off and departed. I have wanted to assume he did not see my tears, hear me pleading for the man to stop or realize that the arms of a woman engaged in consensual sex might be embracing her companion as opposed to lying akimbo. But that’s not really a luxury I have any more.

After this happened, I continued to exist at school and as a little sister at that fraternity until I graduated. I just went on. I buried it. Because it was my fault, right? Because that’s just what you did, I guess?

My perpetrator – and that’s what he was (is) – was a man who everyone I knew would have described as “a really good guy.” I wonder if he even knows that what he did was wrong. Does he even remember?

I assume this is why the Cornell rape case — and the woman identified as Jane Doe at the center of it — has begun to plague me. I am doing everything I can to erase this man’s name and face from my memory, but suddenly it’s like he’s in the room with me all the time. I can’t escape him.

I’m almost certain I never cross his mind.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Cornell case has caused him to be haunted by my cries for him to stop. Maybe mine is the first face he sees in the morning and the last face he sees at night. Maybe he – a person I trusted implicitly – is consumed by regret for the harm he did to me.

But I bet not.

We are so trained to blame victims that I’ve blamed myself all these years. I just chalked it up to one of my many mistakes. But while we tell girls from an early age how to protect ourselves from assault, I fear we are neglecting to teach boys how not to assault.

We really need to fix this.

I never saw this man after he graduated. I am not connected with him on any social media, but I do maintain contact with a few folks from my college days who are. Would they believe me if I told them what happened?

I mean, he’s just such a good guy.

This article was originally published by Missouri Independent and is republished by MetroSTL under a Creative Commons license. The reporting is the outlet’s; please support them.