// https://shancarter.github.io/mr-data-converter/ - COPY CSV FILE DATA INTO DATA CONVERTER AND THEN OUTPUT JSON INTO FREEPEOPLE.JSON FILE //
var classmates = [{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Aliza","lastname":"Amar","occupation":"Founder, Breaking The Silence Together organization","age":"58 years old","rape":"Aliza Amar was 6 years old when she was first raped in 1966. Abuse became a recurring theme in her life and she continued to experience instances of assault until she was 27 years old.\n
Her first experience of rape paralyzed her.\n
One day, a boy her age asked if she would like to take a walk with him. “Looking back, I thought, ‘Oh, that would be nice, somebody actually likes me. So, why not?’ she said, “So, I went with him.”\n
“All of a sudden, he ordered me to lie down on the floor and he took my pants. He did what he did in the moment and when he was done he got up, left me there and ran to tell everybody [at school],” Amar said.“When I put myself together and walked across the street to go to the class, people already knew.”\n
She had no words to describe what happened. But, “At that very moment, when I saw people looking at me, I knew that there is a huge mountain and cloud of shame that I have to live with for the rest of my life.”\n
Amar was afraid to create any kind of commotion so they would not mention his name. “That’s how terrorized I was,” she said.\n
She was filled with rage and now feels ashamed for not being able to stand up for her six-year-old self. “I made an agreement to shut up, not to speak and to use my silence as an anger which I took out in sports, “Amar said.\n
Looking back at how it made her feel, she was stung by everything that happened. “What is this? Why doesn’t it feel good? What’s going on here?” she recalls questioning. She didn’t have the language to recognize what happened to her.\n
“The first time I realized that what had happened to me was abuse, was assault, was rape, I was 45 years old,” she said. “Thirty-nine years after the first experience.” \n
Amar alleges that she was raped about 12 to 15 times by different people.\n
After completing her service in the Israeli army in 1980 she aspired to make a life in the city of Tel-Aviv. She responded to a newspaper ad for a modeling job and went for her first interview the following year. The sexual assault was recorded on video and distributed internationally as pornography.\n
Following many years of anguish, shame, mental torment, and therapy, Amar gathered the courage to speak out publicly.\n
I acknowledged that I was in a suit of a victim,” she said. This was when she began to ask how she could reclaim herself back.\n
She organized and participated in a 500K cross-country bike ride in November 2005, and a 160K walk in November 2006 to generate and create change in the Israeli law system, for which she received national attention from the media. Her story inspired survivors to come forward and share their stories as well.\n
“I was on the mission to reclaim my inner child to let her know that from now on, no one can actually violate her physically or sexually,” Amar said.“I’m taking the torch of shame and passing it on.”"},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Amber","lastname":"Greviskes","occupation":"Account director, GV2GT","age":"34 years old","rape":" A native of a suburb of Chicago, Amber Greviskes was living in New York when she was raped while on an evening run training for her seventh marathon. She was 29 years old when it happened on a hot, humid June evening. \n
“I got up in the morning, I went to work, I went to Pilates after work,” she said, “We had closed a big deal at the office so I was a little amped up…. So, I decided to go for a run to clear my mind, which was totally normal. Before I left the apartment I did all the double checking that I usually do on those kind of days.” She made sure she had some water, money and a Metrocard. \n
“I honestly never thought I would be attacked. That was not anything I ever thought about” she said, “I was used to running super early… and it’s New York, it’s 24/7.”\n
For Greviskes, it was a stereotypical day. “It is just an average day before it happens,” she said, “And then, from that day forward, everything changes.”\n
She was running at the north end of the park where she would cross from the east to the west side of town. It was not the safest area, but considering that she was running under eight-minute mile, it should have been a fast jaunt.\n
“I'd seen a guy kind of standing to the left of me. There was a baseball field and lights in the background… where he was standing. He looked like he was getting ready to like cross the park to try and leave too,” she said. “I thought it was kind of weird because he looked at me [and let her cross]. I thought maybe he didn't want to scare me or whatever.” \n
But when she turned the corner, he cut through in a straight line while she did a loop around and attacked her.\n
“He grabbed me off the trail, he put his hand over my mouth, I started screaming and scratching and kicking and trying to get away from him,” she said.\n
It was an out-of-body experience for her. “The best way I can describe it is I heard myself scream before I realized I was screaming,” Greviskes said. “I didn’t think a human could make that sound.”\n
Her assailant told her she was asking for it, he dragged her down and pinned her to the ground. “He didn’t actually rape me,” she said. But when the police got involved, he was charged with an attempted rape.\n
She had no way to determine if she would fight, flight or freeze. “It's kind of whatever happens…. If I were to ever be attacked in the future, I don't know what my reaction would be,” she said.\n
Eventually the perpetrator jumped up and ran away. “About what felt like two seconds later, another guy came running up to me,” she said. “I assumed that person was also going to hurt me, just because that was the mindset I was in. So, of course, I'm screaming and jumping up and down and like trying to get away from him.”\n
The passerby thought that she sprained her ankle, got stung by a bee or had a panic attack. When she gave him an overview of what happened, he called the police for her. The police made an arrest that night.\n
“I did a rape kit that night,” she said. “Mine was different because it was an attempted rape, so it was anywhere he touched me.” They took an elimination swab to not include her DNA in the results, they scraped her fingernails and cut them really short, they gave her medication and then the police officers drove her back to her apartment. \n
“That was it,” she said. “I was still in shock when I went to do it the kit. I wasn't in a place where I could even make my own decisions. I was shaking like a leaf and it was just basically like, ‘This is what you do next, this is what you do next, this is what you do next.’”\n
“They said some things that probably made me feel guilty about or made me feel like it was my fault even though it wasn't,” she said when looking back at the reporting experience. “Nobody really explained anything to me…. Nobody offered to call a support person or victims advocate for me.” \n
Greviskes was attacked at around 10 p.m. and was home by 4 a.m. “It’s definitely a long process,” she said. \n
After her experience, she was extremely anxious and hypervigilant. She couldn't take the subway during rush hour and either got into work early or stayed really late and she moved her desk so that no one could come up behind her. “Being in an elevator alone with somebody, that’s not something I would ever consider doing again because it just doesn’t feel safe anymore,” she said. \n
“I would not normally describe myself as a crier but I could not stop crying,” she said. “I could not make a decision to save my life. The day after the assault, I stared in front of my closet for a good hour before I was like, ‘I need to put on clothes,’ and I think that has to do with the things he said to me about asking for it. He liked my eyes and smile, the things that were really personal and that made it really hard for me to look at myself in the mirror.” \n
“You feel so dirty afterwards,” she said. “I mean you just feel like you can't get clean. I took the longest shower and then I took another shower and then I take another shower.”\n
Greviskes also didn’t want to be alone. “I felt like if somebody was there with me it was going to be okay,” she said. But she didn’t call anybody until later that day. “I obviously wasn't sleeping, but I waited until like inappropriate time to call [her boyfriend].”\n
Her advice to survivors or significant others and friends of survivors in the aftermath of an assault is to be careful with the first questions that are asked. Within the first 72 hours she emphasizes taking care of physical well-being and afterward focusing on emotional well-being.\n
“I wasn’t taking any extraordinary risks. In that moment [before the assault] I was doing okay,” she said, “If you look at the statistics, my story is weird because most people know their attacker.”\n
She emphasizes the importance of believing whoever shares their experience of assault. “Whether it's a man, woman, child, no matter how anybody gender identifies, whether they're transgender, gay or straight or somewhere in between,” she said, “It's real and it happens.”\n
Hearing other people talk about it helps too. “The first time I felt like I might have a chance for hope and that maybe it could get better and that may be life was worth living, I met another survivor who talked for a few minutes,” Greviskes said, “She just said, ‘It does get better. It will get better.’ That was probably 18 months after I was attacked. It was the first time I thought that maybe I can live through this.”"},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Briana","lastname":"","occupation":"Case manager of homeless services","age":"31 years old","rape":"A native of California, Briana was 21 years old when she was attacked and raped by two strangers at the Luxor Hotel around 10 years ago while visiting Las Vegas. She did not report the incident. \n
She went downstairs early in the evening while her friend was asleep and came across e two men she had been talking with earlier in the evening. “I didn't have any red flag type of feeling which is scary to me now,” she said. \n
They invited her to come with them to the rooftop but said that they needed to get their jackets from their room in the same hotel. “I went with them to go get their jackets and it was like in that moment I felt the energy change,” she said, “I think at that point I felt there was some type of plan.” \n
She was sitting at the edge of their bed because there were clothes strewn all over everywhere else. “As soon as I sat down on the edge of the bed, one of them came and sat down way too close to me and it became a little bit of a blur after that,” Briana said. “But the one that sat down next to me just put his hands around my neck and pushed me down. The other one started going up my dress. They were both attacking me at the same time. One was more focused on my mouth. The other one was more [focused] on my vagina. I was able to get out when they were done.” \n
It wasn’t until days later that she went to the restroom and she noticed something painful. “When I wiped myself, there was a small broken piece of latex and what looked like a pill,” she said. \n
Briana was terrified. She called a friend back home and told her what happened. “The first thing she said was, ‘Well, were they cute?’ and I was just like, ‘What?’” she said. \n
When she did get back home, she went to a party that that group of friends attended, and she walked into a room where, “Everyone was saying to my ex-boyfriend at the time ‘Do you really want to be with a girl who lets herself get raped?’ \n
This is when Briana shut down. “That’s kind of when I stopped talking about it,” she said. \n
“I certainly thought about it [reporting] the first time,” she said, “But, it didn’t seem worth it to go through the process of retraumatizing myself to go through something that seemed so fruitless…. I think that the survivor is really expected to endure a lot for something [reporting] that very rarely, if ever, produces any type of justice.” \n
At first she also didn’t tell her family what happened. Years later, when she confided in her mother and a few people close to her, she had negative experiences that discouraged her from sharing with anyone else. \n
Almost three years ago, around 2015, she was raped again by someone she was dating. \n
“I think he was intoxicated…. We had just gotten back to my car and he couldn’t take the fact that I didn’t want to have sex. He just pushed me up against my car and ripped my pants off,” she said, “I was crying and yelling at him to stop. [But] he didn’t care.” \n
Briana ended the relationship but she continued to see the assailant frequently because she worked in a community where he always was at. He never admitted what happened but she thinks it would make a big difference if he had. “That would be huge to me. If a person could have that much honesty and self-awareness [to admit what they did].” \n
Then, once again, her body was violated in the middle of what was previously a consensual sexual experience with an intimate partner. \n
“Without any type of conversation or consent, he ripped out my IUD. He just pulled it out with his finger. Considering that they have to dilate your cervix to put it in and then he just ripped it out, it was pretty painful,” she said, “He said that he didn’t like the way that it felt and that he wanted to put a baby in me. So he took it upon himself to remove that.” \n
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it rape, but it was certainly abusive,” Briana said, “Just because I consented to having sex does not mean that I consented to having him rip something out of my body. Me using any type of birth control is my prerogative and my choice, whether or not I want to have children. And someone trying to forcibly take that away from me I think is really wrong.” \n
“I think [that people should] stop asking stupid questions like, ‘What were you wearing? Did you have anything to drink? What time was it? Where were you? Why didn’t you get away?’” said Briana, a survivor who asked that her last name remain private, “These are not trauma-informed questions. These are ignorant questions and they just perpetuate rape culture, they perpetuate blaming the victim and they perpetuate victims silence.” "},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Caylynn","lastname":"Simonson","occupation":"District manager, ADP","age":"26 years old","rape":"Caylynn Simonson was 21 years old when she was raped at UCLA. \n
Raised in the Central Valley city of Bakersfield, she moved to Los Angeles to attend college in 2009. Although she initially enrolled as a chemical engineering major, she eventually pursued and graduated with a biology degree.\n
Simonson was also in an acapella group and competed at pageants. She overcame her fear of performing in public and gained confidence as a speaker, too.\n
She met her assailant on a pilot of Tinder, the dating application, in 2013.\n
“We had someone from Tinder come to our sorority and ask us to download it,” she said. “That’s kind of how they were promoting it that year.”\n
Simonson, who was not dating anyone at the time, was intrigued. She noticed that most of the people who would pop up she had mutual friends on Facebook. The pilot was exclusive to UCLA and USC.\n
“I think I had eight mutual friends with my assailant and I had asked all of those mutual friends, you know, ‘What do you think about this person?’” she said.“And they all agreed he was a great guy, he was an athlete.”\n
Her assailant’s profile said he was older than she. In fact, he was younger. Simonson did not know this when she agreed to meet him.\n
They went on a date and she informed him that she had to leave by 9 p.m. to be on campus for acapella rehearsal.\n
“He was like, ‘Oh, well, we have 30 minutes we can go watch an episode of “South Park” in my dorm room,” she said. “I reluctantly agreed. But pretty much the second that we got into his dorm room, that’s when the assault started happening…. Within, I would say 10 minutes, I left.”\n
Simonson immediately reported her crime to police. “I kind of went on autopilot at that point, called up a friend, had her pick me up and within 30 minutes reported everything to the police,” she said. “I took quite a different approach to it than I think other people have that I've spoken to about something like this. Because I reported my assault so soon after it happened, I was able to be very open with my friends and my family about what had happened.”\n
Throughout the reporting process, she was trying to wrap her mind around the shock of what happened. Her encounter with law enforcement made it worse.\n
“There were questions from them, you know, ‘Well, why didn't you try and get away? Why didn't you scream?’ Things like that,” she said. “And of course that didn't make me feel any better because those are putting the blame on me, obviously, for something that wasn't my fault.”\n
A week later, when she spoke to the District Attorney’s Office about what happened, Simonson regretted coming forward. For two hours she went through all the details again, crying the entire time. Toward the end, “She [a female D.A.] looks at me and says, ‘Well, unfortunately, he's saying everything was consensual and you know, it's a, ‘he said-she said’ situation. So, we can't do anything about this.”\n
“I was extremely discouraged and at that point, I had regretted ever even wasting my time with reporting,” she said. \n
Today, Simonson feels differently. \n
By law, the Los Angeles Police Department relayed her report to UCLA authorities. Her accusation was taken more seriously. The school suspended him pending an investigation; after two years and several victims coming forward. Her assailant was convicted and sentenced to a six-month jail term.\n
“I was contacted by the detective who had been working in the case and, you know, they told me, ‘OK, we're actually going to look into the charge for this person because three women have stepped forward. And so we're able to show a pattern of criminal behavior.’”\n
After her assault, Simonson joined RAINN’s speaker’s bureau and shared her story with sororities and other college groups. She spoke on college campuses to raise awareness about sexual assault. \n
“Sexual assault or rape is not about sex. It's about power. And so victims feel like their power has been taken away from them.” she said, “And so I just always would encourage someone to speak up and actively take back what was lost because that's really the only way that you can start your healing process. That's essentially how you move from a victim towards a survivor.&rdquo \n
Here’s what she calls her mantra: “Do not let the actions of another person affect the person you want to become. I had big dreams and aspirations and I didn't want my negative opinions of myself or the way that one person acted towards me, to affect me for the rest of my life.”"},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Colleen","lastname":"McBride","occupation":"Business developer pursuing her therapist's license","age":"33 years old","rape":"Colleen McBride was 14 years old when she was abused in Encinitas, a beach city in San Diego, by her tennis coach around 1995. For over four years, she was assaulted on a daily basis. \n
As a little girl, McBride was always objectified. As a blonde, who is 5-foot-8, she attracted attention and was constantly showered with cat calls. She was also harassed in private school during fourth and eighth grade.\n
“My mom's response to that was, ‘Just be lucky you’re beautiful,’ rather than giving me an example of an appropriate boundary like, ‘No one has the right to comment on your body,’” she said.\n
McBride met her tennis coach, who was a friend of her moms, when she was 10 years old.\n
“There was a lot of grooming and initially, I didn't think it was abuse, even afterwards,” she said, “I was raped and identifying with the perpetrator. It was very complex trauma. He became basically like my primary caretaker. My parents, you know, kind of just trusted him and I didn't feel comfortable talking to them about it.”\n
“He cared, we genuinely got along and he was able to kind of find his way in. He's smart and was able to break down my defenses. Instead of trying to go around them, he just acknowledged them as a strength.”\n
Eventually, her life revolved around tennis and her coach controlled it. “I would play rain or shine. I think I had like three days off in a three- or four-year period,” she said. “I never thought it was abuse,” she said. “He always discussed it [sexual assault] as, ‘If you were [a few] years older this wouldn’t be illegal.”\n
“By the time I realized what was happening, I didn't know how to say no and I just froze,” she said, “He took things that I can never get back.”\n
She described the first time an assault occurred when he was supposed to be dropping her off at home after practice. “He was touching my leg, he wanted me to touch his penis and eventually give him a blow job,” she said, “I didn’t know how to say no. I was scared and fearful but I didn’t want him to see that.” \n
The first person McBride told was her therapist when she was 23 years old. “Even then I characterized it as an unhealthy relationship. I didn't see it as abuse because there wasn't a gun to my head,” she said, “It was easier to accept this reality then too.”\n
Weighing only 68 pounds, anorexia was the reason she sought therapy. “I never had body image issues…. I just disassociated from my body… just watch it like a movie” she said, “That’s how I got through the abuse.”\n
He would be dismissive. “He would rape me and the turn around and say, ‘It's a good thing that we're not having sex or I could go to jail,’” she said, “He would say it's my job to keep him out of jail.”\n
Her assailant, who was 33 years older, tried to normalize the abuse and acted like nothing was happening. But McBride endured daily abuse, “Whether that was him touching my breasts in the car, penetrating me, me giving him a blowjob, oral sex both ways, intercourse, penetration, it was a combination of multiple things,” she said.\n
“As quickly as it was happening, I was trying to forget it. I just blocked it out. I didn't let myself have feelings about it. I dismissed it,” she said, “When I got home, I acted like everything was fine, took a shower and just pretended like nothing happened.”\n
This is how she survived. “I don't know how I could be in touch with what was really happening, genuinely feel those feeling and still be sane or alive. I think I would either have a mental break or kill myself,” she said, “So, not feeling is how I coped.”\n
She had a major depressive episode during her adolescence. “It was absolutely horrendous,” she said, “I just knew I wanted to die but I didn't want to kill myself…. It just never seemed like a solution to me for whatever reason.”\n
She was reluctant to report because she didn’t want to talk about it. “It was embarrassing. It was personal. It was not something I wanted to discuss at all,” she said, “I was ready to protect him and keep this secret and take it to my grave for the rest of my life.” \n
But since then, her tennis coach was convicted. He was booked around 2008. \n
Offering her inner child advice she says, “It wasn't your fault. I just didn't know. I didn't know what I didn't know.”"},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Debra","lastname":"Guckenheimer","occupation":"Sociologist and diversity and inclusion specialist","age":"42 years old","rape":"Upon arriving in Israel for an academic program, Debra Guckenheimer was raped by a friend while she was asleep in 1997. \n
“That first night I arrived and I got really sick on the plane, lost my voice and was really congested. I was in pretty bad shape. I hadn't slept on the plane because I was so excited about going to Israel,” she said, “It was nighttime. When I first fell asleep, that’s when I was raped and it was a one time thing. But because it was my friend, and I was sick, it took me a long time to really come to terms with what had happened.” \n
She didn't have a support because I she just arrived to an unfamiliar country, she didn't know any people and her language skills weren't the best. She was also somewhat dependent on him to take her to the doctor and get her medicine. \n
“When it happened, it was like I left my body and was watching it happen,” she said. \n
After a couple of days she made it to another friend’s house. “When I got [there], I remember her asking me about what had happened and I told her,” said Guckenheimer, “She said, ‘What happened to you wasn’t right,’ and I said ‘No, no, no, I don’t want to use that word [rape]. That’s not what happened. Let’s not talk about this again’” \n
Since then, she has never seen him again, although for a while he tried to stay in touch with her. “He kept calling and calling even though I would say, ‘I really don't want to talk to you,’” she said. \n
Since then, she has never seen him again, although for a while he tried to stay in touch with her. “He kept calling and calling even though I would say, ‘I really don't want to talk to you,’” she said. \n
“She discouraged me from labeling it as rape because she thought that would be traumatic for me,” she said, “She also encouraged me to do horrible things like picture my old self as dead and that I will be a better person now because I would be smarter and all that stuff…. Eventually I stopped seeing her.”\n
She then found a better therapist and that’s when things changed in terms of her healing and she went to the police. “I really started to acknowledge the impact it made on my life,” she said. \n
But she was not prepared at the time to deal with the assault and only fully processed what happened after she visited her parents back home in the United States many months later. “The first night that I was sleeping in my parents house I had a flashback,” she said, “I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I was really ready to confront it because it was the first time I think I really felt safe.” \n
Guckenheimer called a rape crisis hotline. “‘I think I've been raped, what do I do now?’” she said, “And of course they did not understand the situation at all. The person was like, ‘Oh, did this just happen? Let's get you an exam,’ and I was like, ‘No, this didn’t just happen, and she was talking to me about going to the police in the United States and I was trying to explain that this didn’t happen here. I think it was a very unusual call for the person who was on the hotline.” \n
Feeling safe at her parent’s house was the first time she could come to terms with her experience of sexual assault. \n
Guckenheimer spent years volunteering at rape crisis centers, including the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center. She also wrote her master's thesis on rape crisis centers. \n
“A little bit of denial can be psychological useful,” she said, “But if you're in it for a long time, it can make healing from the trauma more complex because you can get more complex post-traumatic stress symptoms.” \n
A native of Kansas City, Guckenheimer says that speaking out and telling her story has been empowering. “One of the things that happens with sexual violence victims or survivors, is we tend to blame ourselves for what happened and we feel a lot of shame around it,” she said, “The more I am not silent about it, the more the shame and the blame go away.” \n
Healing began when she started to realize that the abuse was not her fault. “It’s been a long time since it happened and it does still impact me, but definitely not in the same way that it used to,” she said, “It will always be a part of who I am, but not in the same way.” \n
“Healing has happened in layers.” she said, “It was a rollercoaster for a long time. I would be coming up out of it and feeling like, ‘Okay, I've moved past it,’ and all of a sudden something else would happen that would trigger me to have a traumatic response. Over time the roller coaster became not so extreme. I kind of learned to anticipate what would trigger me and I'd be able to acknowledge it and take steps to support myself and get myself the help that I would need.” \n
The experience lowered her sense of safety for a long time. “For a while everything felt dangerous,” she said, “So I had to really regain my sense of what is safe and what is not safe and who is safe and who is not safe.” \n
She would feel more danger at night, especially with sleeping. At some point, to try and feel safer, she got a dog. “The dog would sleep on my feet and it was really overly sensitive about noises,” she said. “So, it was really actually comforting to me that like if somebody was going to be there, my dog would notice. So I didn't have to hold on to that fear.” \n
“For me, one of the beautiful silver linings is that I met my partner in part because of our connection to the Jerusalem rape crisis center. He used to volunteer there and I did my research there,” said Guckenheimer. “So, in some ways, going on that path of healing from sexual violence led me to meet my soulmate.” \n
If there was anything Guckenheimer wished people knew, it would be to believe survivors who tell their stories. “If we could just practice believing people when they tell their story, practice not trying to come up with ways to blame us [survivors] for what happened to us, not trying to figure out what we did wrong and what you would've done differently, but to leave us and support us,” she said. “That can be really powerful.”"},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Johanna","lastname":"Soleyn","occupation":"Daycare provider","age":"26 years old","rape":"Johanna Soleyn was 14 years old when she was raped by a friend’s father. \n
The youngest of eight siblings, she was raised in California, in a Puerto Rican, Cuban and Jamaican household.\n
“When I was 14 I had a very good friend. We would have slumber parties and were experimenting with drugs like marijuana,” she said, “Her dad would say, ‘Let me guide you guys so that I know you're safe.’ And one night when we thought that he was protecting us, he took advantage of me. He raped me.”\n
He knew that her parents were going through a nasty divorce and he took advantage of that to make his home a safe place for her. “He would say, ‘You're like my daughter,’ but then he would say things like, ‘You look really hot in that outfit,’ she said. “So, it was this juxtaposition of, ‘You're part of the family. I love you like my daughter. You're always safe here,’ with sexualizing me.\n
Soleyn was scared, but she also experienced many feelings she could not articulate until she was in therapy years later. “I didn't tell anybody until I was 20 years old,” she said, “There was a good six years where I didn't even really fully process what happened to me…. But when I sat down with a therapist and processed… I was scared. I was angry. It was confusing.” \n
Her friend eventually also found out what happened. “She confided in me that it was happening to her [regularly].” she said, “At first it was kind of just like, ‘No, this isn't right. We should tell someone.’ But her situation was very complicated because she was the oldest of a lot of younger siblings and so for her, I think there was a feeling of ‘I need to protect my younger siblings,’ and I wanted to respect her wishes.”\n
Soleyn says that if someone asked her for advice, she would say, “This is one time where you cannot respect someone's wishes and it's OK.”\n
But part of the reason why she didn't tell anyone when it first happened was because with an LAPD officer as an uncle and an attorney for an older brother, “The joke in our family was like, ‘If anything ever happens to you… We can kill someone and get away with it,’” she said. “There was a part of me that was just like, ‘I don't want that for my family members…. I love my family so much and I wouldn't want them to do something because they're so protective that would cost them their careers or conscience for the rest of their life.’”\n
Working through the self-blame has been a process. “I should've known better because my parents told me things… my mom [explained] what grooming is and [said], ‘ If you feel uncomfortable around someone, tell us,’” Soleyn said. ‘As an adult looking back, I can say, ‘Yeah, this guy was definitely grooming me and I didn't notice anything.’”\n
Looking back at the abuse, she says, “It was so inappropriate. If someone was doing that to my child, I would be livid.”\n
After her first year in a half of therapy, she naively felt like she dealt with the abuse she experienced. “It was really hard coming to the realization that I'm not defined by this,” she said, “But it did change me and it's going to be something that I live with for the rest of my life.”\n
“If I could say anything to my 14 year old self, I would say, ‘It's not your fault.’”"},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Kristen","lastname":"Hogan","occupation":"Editor and writer, Walt Disney world parks and resorts","age":"31 years old","rape":"Kristen Hogan, who is originally from the Midwest, was a sophomore at the University of Oklahoma when she was drugged and raped twice by an acquaintance when she was 19 years old.\n
Hogan, who grew up surrounded by psychological and emotional domestic and interpersonal violence, said, “It’s not surprising that I would pick a partner to date in college that replicated those types of behaviors. I didn’t consciously know that I was making that decision, but now, later in life, I’m able to 100 percent realize that that was the pattern.”\n
“I thought he was the bee’s knees,” she said, “But looking back, there were a lot of red flags that I probably should have picked up on but I didn’t because I was so enthralled by a guy liking me.”\n
Hogan was invited to a party she didn’t want to go to, but she went anyway because he was convincing. “It was a typical college party. Nothing outrageous, nothing crazy, nothing alarming. But there was drinking and loud music and dancing. And, I was always really careful with alcohol,” she said, “I always knew how much I could drink. I was always the designated driver among friends, so I was always the responsible one.”\n
Her acquaintance handed her a shot of Tequila. “I didn’t see him pour the shot, but he handed it to me and I took the shot and then I started feeling really strange, like the walls just started to move, I kind of blacked out and felt really sick to my stomach,” she said.\n
She told him she wasn’t feeling well and that she wanted to go home. “He wouldn’t take me home and I didn’t want to walk home by myself because that’s not safe. So, he convinced me to stay in his room,” she said.\n
Hogan remembers being carried over his shoulder, down into his room. “The next memory I have is waking up on his floor in his room completely naked. I couldn’t find my clothes. I couldn’t find him,” she said, “I was sprawled… and in a lot of pain from my belly button down. There was blood and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what happened to me. [But] somehow I gathered my wits, grabbed all my clothes and things I could find to cover myself and I ran out of the house and didn’t look back.”\n
“I wasn't at a point where I could even think that I had been raped,” she said. “I just knew that something bad had happened and I didn't know what. I was confused. Why was I on the floor, why was there blood, why was there swelling, why was there pain? I was really confused because I couldn't remember anything. Like, that's scary to not be able to have any memory and then wake up and not know how you went to sleep.”\n
She never confronted him after the incident.\n
Hogan came from a traditional southern home. They went to church every Sunday, dressed perfectly, spoke perfectly and had good grades. “But on the inside, along with the violence, we never talked about uncomfortable topics like rape or ‘What do you do if this happens to you?’ or drugging or sex and the human body in general,” she said, “So I never felt like comfortable talking about that stuff.”\n
She didn’t process what had happened. “I had never been educated on what rape was. So I didn't know that is what had happened to me until later,” she said, “Because I always associated rape and sexual assault with some scary big dude in a black hoodie and a black alley.... But most of the time it’s somebody that you know and trust and probably love.”\n
A couple of months later, there was another incident with the same person. They were still dating and she was in a very similar situation, just at a different location.\n
At a friend’s house party, her acquaintance made her a margarita, which she liked at the time. “Again, I didn't see him make it. He handed it to me. I took a few steps and I started to feel the same sick to my stomach. Like, I'm going to puke and the room is spinning. I felt like I was going to black out,” she said.\n
When she asked him to take her home, he agreed but drove her to his house. When he opened the door to his Jeep, she remembers falling out of the car into the grass and puking because she had been drugged. “He picked me up, carried me back to his room and then laid me down on my back, on his bed,” she said, “And then the next thing I know, he's trying to penetrate me.”\n
“I remember screaming, ‘Please don't! You know I don't want to have sex. We talked about this. We talked about waiting. Waiting till marriage is something that’s really important to me,’ but he continued to penetrate and all of a sudden my body just froze,” Hogan said.\n
At that point, she couldn’t scream or fight back. “I was paralyzed on the bed until he finished,” she said, “And then I remember waking up the next day in a lot of pain with memories of what happened.”\n
When she confronted him about it to confirm what happened, she says, “He told me, ‘Well, we had sex and it was something that you wanted.”\n
With the lack of awareness about what sexual assault is, once again she didn’t know how to handle the situation.\n
At the time, reporting was not an option. “I didn't think that I should report it because in my mind I wasn't able to mentally get to the point where I could a 100 percent recognize that this was sexual assault and it was a crime,” she said, “As crazy as this sounds, I also didn’t want to ruin his life.”\n
Fast forward to today and Hogan still wonders about how things could have been different if she filed a report. But, “It’s been so long that there’s not any evidence,” she said, “It’s just word of mouth.”\n
Right now, she’s also in a different place in her life. “I almost feel like I don't need to go there. I've closed that chapter. I’ve moved on to a more healthier part of my life and that’s just the way it is,” she said."},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Pamela","lastname":"Guest","occupation":"Casting director and SAG AFTRA actress and board member","age":"67 years old","rape":"Pamela Guest, a 67-year-old survivor from Michigan, was raped by a director and Oscar-winning composer who used an alias in the early 1970s, while auditioning in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for what she thought would be a role in one of his movies. \n
Throughout her five years at the University of Michigan, she lived in the dorms and saw an announcement for auditions for a feature film. The one requirement: an actress with comedic experience.\n
Guest went to the pay phone at the dorms she lived in, called the number on the card and a woman answered. She gave her directions to a location on the outskirts of Ann Arbor and assigned an audition time. “I thought, I'm just going to go because I've never been on a real movie audition before,” she said, “I was very nervous.”\n
Guest, who is nearsighted, recalls not being able to wear lenses that particular day because she burnt her corneas. “So, I wore the glasses,” she said, “But I was concerned about that.” \n
She walked to the door and knocked. The woman walked her in to the nondescript condo and had Guest give her her coat, purse and belongings. “She then had to leave,” she said, “Then, the director came down the stairs and it was kind of strange looking guy. [He was] very thin with very bad teeth.”\n
They proceeded to walk upstairs to the audition room. There were a couple of bedrooms but one was the audition space with a camera and a mattress on the floor. “We all had mattresses on the floor then. So I didn't really think anything about it. I just didn't even really take it in,” said Guest. “I was so nervous to audition and I didn't have the material… because she told me that they would give the material when you got there so you didn’t have to memorize any of that.”\n
He bragged about how he wrote the Maxwell House Coffee jingle, had a lot of money and that one of the Beatles was investing in his movie.\n
“He asked me a little bit about myself, he was fiddling with the camera and at a certain point he said, ‘Can you work without your glasses because they're causing a glare,’” she said. “He took them from me and then everything is a blur cause I really cannot see.”\n
She had to hold the crinkled script very close to be able to read it. “Many people had had their fingers on this script…. I thought that was strange. I thought his teeth were really strange and I thought it was really weird that somebody who had such bad teeth was supposedly making so much money,” she said.“So, there were these little things that I wish I had listened to. Maybe that was a sign to get out of there, but I didn’t really know enough to know that that wasn’t right.”\n
Guest wanted the job so she went along with it. “I remember thinking there would be another actor there, somebody to read with me. There wasn't, he was going to read with me,” she said. He was very supportive of her performance but then he told her to take her clothes off for a love scene.\n
“I said that I didn't feel comfortable doing that but that I would be fine on the set,” she said, “‘I had done a love scene [for another film], but we had our underwear on and you know, I was under the covers. I was very comfortable,’ and he said, ‘Well, that's not how we do it in the real world.’”\n
He got aggressive and said that if she wasn’t willing to take her clothes off she could forget the part.\n
“So I did and then I'm reading and holding the script in front of my eyes because that's what I needed to be able to see and then I hear his zipper coming down,” Guest said, “I said, ‘What are you doing? Don't do that,’ and he said, ‘Well, I have to know that you'll be comfortable when the other actor naked.’”\n
At that point she said she wanted to go home. He had taken her clothes and glasses so she didn’t know where they were. She also didn’t know where her coat, purse, keys and other belongings were.\n
“Eventually, he pushed me down in the bed and that’s when my life changed, and not in a good way,” she said. “I was protesting, I was trying to not let him do this, but then I had the classic freeze response.” \n
“I was not able to fight [the perpetrator] and was completely vulnerable,” she said. “I understand that I was probably conditioned to [react that way] because my dad used to beat me when I was really little.”\n
“What I did do, which I have always done when uncomfortable, is I cried and I got really hysterical,” she said. “He then pulled out of me, got on my back [and continued to sodomize her] and then [afterward] proceeded to act like nothing had happened. Like, ‘Wow, that was great and you were wonderful and you're such a talented actress and you know, why don’t you get dressed and I'll be right back.’”\n
The composer was Joseph Brooks, who won the 1978 Oscar for Best Music and Original Song for the title tune from “You Light Up My Life.” \n
Police said Brooks killed himself in 2011 while awaiting trial on charges of drugging and raping numerous actresses in a series of casting-couch rapes. Like Guest, he led the victims to believe that he was auditioning them for roles in his movies. He was indicted in June 2009 in Manhattan and faced more than 90 counts of rape, sexual abuse assault and other charges.\n
Guest was not listed in police records as one of his victims because he had given her a fake name during her “audition.” She said she only came to realize his true identity many years later, almost five decades after the abuse.\n
“If he had not been dead when I found out, I don’t know that I ever would have talked about it,” she said, recalling decades she spent in silence about the assault. “Speak up and get it out of you… And what you want your life to be will finally be.”"},
{"gradID":null,"firstname":"Viktoria","lastname":"Gillon","occupation":"Founder and CEO of The Crowned Journey Foundation","age":"25 years old","rape":"Viktoria Gillon was 17 years old when she was raped by a date in Orange County, around 2010. \n
“We went to the dance, had fun, came back, went to an after-party but we both weren’t drinking, and then we wanted to go to Del Taco,” she said. \n
From where they were, he had to turn right to get to the main street but instead he drove left to a cul-de-sac. “He parked the car, threw me in the back seat and I was trapped. He was choking me, I was screaming and trying to get away, but I couldn’t,” she said. “I actually thought it going to die. I couldn't breathe and I had bruises from head to toe the next day. It was terrible.” \n
Gillon didn’t immediately tell her family but she wishes she had. They knew that something had happened because of the way that she was acting, but it wasn’t until six months later, when she wrote them a letter, that they found out.\n
“It was very apparent in that moment when I came home that they certainly were feeling the same pain, if not worse, just seeing their baby girl go through that,” she said.\n
But although they have been extremely supportive throughout, and it felt like a weight was lifted off Gillon’s shoulders when they found out, it also made everything worse. “I wasn't in the mindset of wanting help. I was being destructive at that point,” she said. “[Eventually] I went to therapy and things got a lot better.”\n
She said a police officer urged her not to file a report. “‘It wasn't worth it because it would drag me through the mud--not him--because it was just my word at that point.”\n
Later she wishes she had reported the attack.\n
“I think I was afraid of what would happen, what he would say or what you would possibly do again,” Gillon said. “I can remember when it was all done in the car. He was like, ‘If you tell anyone about this, I will hurt you and your family.’ So, it's like, gosh, first of all I was brutally raped and then he told me that… So I was scared and I didn't want anything to happen to me again and I didn't want my parents to know because it was just scary.”\n
“I was 17 when it happened, so it's been a while but stuff still comes up and it can be really hard,” she said.\n
Recently, she has been considering filing a report.\n
Gillon, who was Miss National Orange Show 2016, has also used her public platform to raise awareness about sexual assault."}];