The #TrumpTapes are having a real impact on survivors of sexual assault. After the leak of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape on
Friday afternoon, in which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump
is heard describing sexual assaults that he has since passed off as “locker-room banter,” RAINN
(the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) reported an increase of
33 percent in calls to the National Sexual Assault Hotline over the
weekend.
The number of calls to the hotline have only
continued to increase, as the media continues to cover the fallout from
the tapes, and as more and more people publicly condemn the kinds of
comments exchanged by Trump and by Billy Bush, who was co-host Access Hollywood at the time.
In this 2005 frame from video, Donald Trump heads to the set for an appearance on
Days of Our Lives, accompanied by actress Arianne Zucker and
Access Hollywood co-host Billy Bush, right. (Obtained by the Washington Post via Getty Images)
Scott Berkowitz, the president and founder of
RAINN, tells Yahoo Beauty that on Tuesday alone, Hotline usage had
risen 42 percent over its normal volume.
“And a lot of people on the hotline are
actually referencing Trump,” Berkowitz says. “And saying that those
comments are what prompted to them to reach out.” ‘P***ies In Formation’: Women Form Human Wall Blocking Exits of Trump Tour
Berkowitz says that such spikes in Hotline
usage frequently occur after intensive media coverage of high-profile
sexual assault cases, such as those of Bill Cosby or Stanford
University’s Brock Turner.
Just last night, author and blogger Kelly Oxford formally announced the hashtag #notokay as a means to help survivors of sexual violence continue to tell their stories.
After the initial reporting on the Access Hollywood tape released by the Washington Post on Friday, Oxford took to Twitter asking women to tweet stories of their first sexual assault.
By Saturday, over a million women had responded, at a rate of 50 tweets per minute, Oxford said.
According to the Justice Department, 1 in every 6 women and 1 in every 33 men will experience sexual violence at some point in their lives.
These numbers are probably even higher, considering the number of
people who experience sexual violence but never disclose it. One silver
lining of the Trump tape is that the strong reactions to it have been
encouraging more survivors to speak out.
Before the second presidential debate on Sunday night, Oxford tweeted:
She is, of course, correct: The shame of sexual violence should fall solely on the perpetrator.
It is important to note, in light of the attention around Trump’s comments describing sexual assault, is that 3 out of 4 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim:
43 percent by a friend or acquaintance, 27 percent by a current or
former romantic partner, and another 2 percent by a relative who is not a
spouse. Furthermore, 50 percent of perpetrators are age 30 and older
— in sharp contrast to the commonly held belief about sexual violence
that “Boys will be boys.” (Trump himself was 59 years old and Bush 35
years old at the time of the Access Hollywood recording.) And 57 percent of all perpetrators of sexual assault are white.
No matter who is committing such crimes, no
victim, ever, in any way, “allows” for such violence to occur. As
advocates for survivors of sexual assault insist, nothing causes rape
but rapists.
“I think we’ve been seeing an evolution of
the way survivors talk about what happens to them and the number of
survivors who are more willing to speak about it publicly,” Berkowitz
says. “And what we’re seeing now, I think that’s being fed up with the
election and the Trump [tape and coverage] last week. There are always
different effects on different survivors, but some of the comments we
are seeing now — some survivors are so offended at what seems like the
marginalizing or trivializing of what they experienced [as shown in the Access Hollywood tape and the Trump campaign’s response]
that they feel a desire to speak out. Other, I think, feel more
empowered because there are so many other survivors now speaking out.
There is power in numbers.”
He adds, “I think there’s a perception that
the public is so much more understanding [of survivors of sexual
assault] than it used to be. The public reaction to Trump’s comments has
overwhelmingly been condemnation — and survivors see this and are given
the confidence to know that if they talk about what happened to
themselves, it will be well received.
“No
matter which way Congress goes in this election, there is going to be a
lot of support for legislation to help survivors and improve the justice
system’s handling of rape,” Berkowitz says. “I think that we’ve seen so
many Republicans and Democrats condemning the remarks that this support
will only continue.”
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