The reality of abuse is ugly, violent and sometimes - drunk.
Interview by Preslava Angareva
Edited by Xenia Caramete & Preslava Angareva
Shot by Xenia Caramete, Preslava Angareva, Erza Elezaj
Edited by Xenia Caramete & Preslava Angareva
Shot by Xenia Caramete, Preslava Angareva, Erza Elezaj
Cynthia Sanchez, a brave survivor of domestic violence, was kind enough to let us into her world and shared her story: “He proposed to me drunk, but I didn’t want to see it. He was very toxic, he wanted things to be done his way.”
Abusers always apologize when they see they’re losing control; they make shallow promises for the sake of regaining the sense of ownership they once felt over the victim. “I left him multiple times. I went to my mom’s house, but he called the police on us and got very aggressive.” “He went to church, and behaved like a saint, but at home, he was the devil.” “He beat me on daily occasions, but I didn’t dare to tell anyone."
"The day before my son’s birthday, I tried to leave him again, and when he tried to stop me, he covered my mouth, and I couldn’t
breathe, I got flashbacks from a very similar previous encounter and I got so scared so I started hitting him so he would let me go; he fought back and my daughter called the police, this sent us both to jail. I left him at the beginning of the pandemic – it was
February 2020, when I went to a shelter, they were very discrete. It’s a hard road, but at least it’s a road to keep yourself onto because if you fall off, you’re always going to be stuck on the starting point.”
Now close your eyes and count to 60. By the time you open them, about 20 people in the United States would have experienced physical abuse from their intimate partners.
Violence doesn't have gender identity, age, ethnicity, or race, but what it does have is a lifelong effect upon its victims. Violence is the language of predators, who hide behind the appearance of a person and attack the human aspect of mankind. What can society do to solve this seemingly insoluble issue? What are the gaps in the system that need to be fixed, and how can we minimize these acts of violence?
‘’I feel like those flashbacks are going to haunt me forever. It has been three full years. I just can’t get over it; it never stops. My brain feels like it’s always on a red alarm, searching if anyone is abusing me or doing things similar to my sexual assault.’’
What counts as sexual violence – any sexual activity where consent is not given, or when it’s given under pressure. It can happen anywhere, at any point in one's life, either directly or indirectly, which further establishes the broad range of violent acts that constitute abuse.
Sexual violence can be done to anyone by anyone, but for the most part, it is usually someone close to the victim – an intimate partner, a friend, a co-worker, a member of the family, etc. ‘’As a child, I've been a victim of sexual abuse for years, it started when I was in elementary school and ended when I was 14 or 15. My abuser was my acquired uncle, who had been my aunt's boyfriend for over 20 years.’’
All right, another counting exercise. This time, one minute and 8 seconds. By the time you reach the last number, a person in the U.S. has been sexually assaulted. Every sixty-eight seconds. The average number of victims of sexual assault and rape aged 12 and over in the United States per year is 463,634.
Sexual violence affects millions of people every day, However, a large amount of cases are not reported by victims due to various reasons, and are therefore not accurately depicted in yearly reports. Additionally, a big concern for people who have been subject to rape is getting the proper forensic evidence collected on time, whether they wish to press charges or not. Valena Beety, professor of law and deputy director of the Academy for Justice, delves deeper on this, "There are sexual assault nurse practitioners, who again, are specifically trained for how to work with survivors when they come into the emergency room. And that's huge. They play a huge role in supporting those survivors. And they also gather any physical evidence which again can be something very difficult for a survivor to go through. However, these nurses are specially trained, so that if there is any kind of DNA evidence that can be gathered, it will then be put into a rape kit, and then that rape kit can be tested."
However, "Now, we do have a history of having backlogs in the United States of rape kits where they aren't necessarily tested as quickly as they should. But there's also been a turnaround where some really well known offices, like there's an office in Detroit, prosecutor's offices that have led the change in saying - 'No, we really need to keep up with these rape kits and test them. Because they're important evidence and they are important cases.'
So if it's an active case, that's moving forward. Cause part of this goes back to so many of these survivors who aren't ultimately served by the criminal legal system. Few of the assaults end up with charges and then even fewer end up with convictions. So if there's not an active charge, it's less likely that the rape kit will be tested."
Abusers always apologize when they see they’re losing control; they make shallow promises for the sake of regaining the sense of ownership they once felt over the victim. “I left him multiple times. I went to my mom’s house, but he called the police on us and got very aggressive.” “He went to church, and behaved like a saint, but at home, he was the devil.” “He beat me on daily occasions, but I didn’t dare to tell anyone."
"The day before my son’s birthday, I tried to leave him again, and when he tried to stop me, he covered my mouth, and I couldn’t
breathe, I got flashbacks from a very similar previous encounter and I got so scared so I started hitting him so he would let me go; he fought back and my daughter called the police, this sent us both to jail. I left him at the beginning of the pandemic – it was
February 2020, when I went to a shelter, they were very discrete. It’s a hard road, but at least it’s a road to keep yourself onto because if you fall off, you’re always going to be stuck on the starting point.”
Now close your eyes and count to 60. By the time you open them, about 20 people in the United States would have experienced physical abuse from their intimate partners.
Violence doesn't have gender identity, age, ethnicity, or race, but what it does have is a lifelong effect upon its victims. Violence is the language of predators, who hide behind the appearance of a person and attack the human aspect of mankind. What can society do to solve this seemingly insoluble issue? What are the gaps in the system that need to be fixed, and how can we minimize these acts of violence?
‘’I feel like those flashbacks are going to haunt me forever. It has been three full years. I just can’t get over it; it never stops. My brain feels like it’s always on a red alarm, searching if anyone is abusing me or doing things similar to my sexual assault.’’
What counts as sexual violence – any sexual activity where consent is not given, or when it’s given under pressure. It can happen anywhere, at any point in one's life, either directly or indirectly, which further establishes the broad range of violent acts that constitute abuse.
Sexual violence can be done to anyone by anyone, but for the most part, it is usually someone close to the victim – an intimate partner, a friend, a co-worker, a member of the family, etc. ‘’As a child, I've been a victim of sexual abuse for years, it started when I was in elementary school and ended when I was 14 or 15. My abuser was my acquired uncle, who had been my aunt's boyfriend for over 20 years.’’
All right, another counting exercise. This time, one minute and 8 seconds. By the time you reach the last number, a person in the U.S. has been sexually assaulted. Every sixty-eight seconds. The average number of victims of sexual assault and rape aged 12 and over in the United States per year is 463,634.
Sexual violence affects millions of people every day, However, a large amount of cases are not reported by victims due to various reasons, and are therefore not accurately depicted in yearly reports. Additionally, a big concern for people who have been subject to rape is getting the proper forensic evidence collected on time, whether they wish to press charges or not. Valena Beety, professor of law and deputy director of the Academy for Justice, delves deeper on this, "There are sexual assault nurse practitioners, who again, are specifically trained for how to work with survivors when they come into the emergency room. And that's huge. They play a huge role in supporting those survivors. And they also gather any physical evidence which again can be something very difficult for a survivor to go through. However, these nurses are specially trained, so that if there is any kind of DNA evidence that can be gathered, it will then be put into a rape kit, and then that rape kit can be tested."
However, "Now, we do have a history of having backlogs in the United States of rape kits where they aren't necessarily tested as quickly as they should. But there's also been a turnaround where some really well known offices, like there's an office in Detroit, prosecutor's offices that have led the change in saying - 'No, we really need to keep up with these rape kits and test them. Because they're important evidence and they are important cases.'
So if it's an active case, that's moving forward. Cause part of this goes back to so many of these survivors who aren't ultimately served by the criminal legal system. Few of the assaults end up with charges and then even fewer end up with convictions. So if there's not an active charge, it's less likely that the rape kit will be tested."
Data visualization by Xenia Caramete
As we mentioned earlier, sexual assault symptoms can manifest both in the physical but also in the online space. In order for us to showcase that, we extracted 14.557 comments from 53 videos posted on YouTube which we we found by searching for ‘domestic violence’. The most used word amongst these comments was ‘man’ (with a frequency of 3447), followed by ‘woman’ (which appeared 3376 times). The co-occurrence word network shows that these two terms are usually used together in the same phrase. The next noun that appears the most is ‘violence’, which is placed near ‘domestic’, ‘victim’ and ‘abuser’. In the same word family, we see other words related to the problem - ‘child’ (with a frequency of 888) and ‘mother’ (frequency of 320). All of these words directly refer to the main components of the phenomenon and mention the two parties involved - the ‘victim’ and the ‘abuser’. Another large subgraph contains opinions on how people see this social problem by using terms such as ‘people think’, ‘people see’, ‘people want’, ‘people say’. Other words that are correlated draft the attention to physical abuse, for example, the 'beat-wife-husband' triad, or the relief people express online, ‘thank-GOD’. Another tangential discussion reflected in the network is about how they should get ‘help’ from the police and how the ‘law’ should ‘protect’ ‘victims’.
We got to talk to Pauline Arrillaga, Professor of Practice and Director of the Southwest Health Reporting Initiative at the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who shared some insight about the media coverage of complex topics such as sexual and domestic violence: “I think journalists have to really keep in mind. Do no harm. We are not here to do more harm to someone who has already been harmed. So I think that we need to be very, very clear about who we are as journalists. What our goal with the story is. Where the story will run and how widely it may be seen or read." She added, "We need to be very sensitive. In the way in which we're asking our questions, the expectations that we have of the people that we're interviewing. Some people find it healing to share their stories. It is therapeutic in some ways, but for some people - maybe they're not quite ready to do that. So we as journalists really need to kind of allow them to guide us in terms of how they share their stories. So we need to be sensitive."
"Certainly we don't wanna sensationalize and we don't wanna do anything to retraumatize and I'm gonna share one example - I worked for the Associated Press. A story that I was working on as an editor was actually around PTSD in somebody from the military and this person had really faced a lot of trauma. And I asked our reporter to go back several times and make sure that our interview subject understood what the Associated Press was, how far and wide that story was gonna go. Whether he was truly comfortable sharing as much as he had with us, because we were very, very concerned about retraumatizing him or having that story appear on print."
"And then he sees it and, you know, that's sort of a downward spiral."
Using our privilege as journalists, we can shine light on another topic which seems to stay in the shadows, particularly when it comes to women of color - abortion rights and the effect of the new policies upon rape survivors. "And as you all probably know, some states have exceptions in cases of rape and some states do not. So I think we're gonna start seeing more and more cases of children, young women who are being raped or who have unfortunately faced incest. And they're now gonna be further traumatized because they may not have access to abortion."
As previously mentioned, sexual assault is not linear and often comes with additional traumatic experiences, "’To be a sexual assault victim. To fear for your life because you’re in public. To face misogyny. As a trans girl who is privileged to have passed throughout childhood because of lucky genetics, I do get it, but everyone is constantly excluding me from every conversation. Girls will tell me that I don’t really know what it’s like, to be paranoid about men.’’
As you could have seen by now, sexual violence, as well as abuse in general, is far more common than most people think. As mentioned above, many cases don’t get reported, but the numbers are still very high – 1 out of 4 women from the US is a victim of attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, and for men 1 out of every 26. For sexual assault in general, the ratio looks even worse – over half of the women had experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, and almost 1 in 3 men experience it as well. 55% -a disturbing percentage because behind it is the most common place where the crime occurs – home. Home is supposed to be a sacred personal space for a human being and getting assaulted can almost feel like someone broke into your home to steal, but multiplied by, let’s say - a 100 times, victims feel invaded, used, with their dignity stolen away.
‘
"Since being assaulted in 2021, I struggled to even think about anything sexual for months and months. I would immediately feel anxious and vulnerable and ashamed.’’ There are long-term and short-term consequences of sexual violence. Physical injuries -bruises, abdominal pain, infections, etc. are only a small part of the physical side of abuse. More difficult to repair is the psychological harm – depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Victims of sexual violence can become isolated, preventing them from going back to school, working, and pursuing their social lives, as well as their relationships. After-effects can also be chronic - PTSD, reproductive issues, sexual health issues, etc. Sadly, sexual violence can lead to unhealthy behavioral patterns as well – excessive drinking, smoking, drug abuse, and engaging in unsafe sexual activities. "I have always had night terrors but after my rape, they got worse. This morning, my alarm went off in the middle of one and it snapped me out of it. I was just screaming and crying; I didn't even want to go to work, I almost called out sick. I didn't though and all day I've felt lingering anxiety.’’
Let’s count yet again to 60. By the time you finish, around the United States, 13 phone calls will have been made with an attempt to reach the domestic violence hotline. This is almost 20,000 calls per day.
Brooke Fulton – Director of Sexual Violence initiatives at Arizona Coalition to end sexual and domestic violence (ACESDV) gave us more insight into the work that the organization she’s part of. Sexual violence is scarily common in college - every 1 in 5 women experience sexual assault in their college career, or in other words 20%. Sexual violence is both community and public health issue. Around 85% of survivors have known their aggressor in advance.
ACESDV has two response teams – a domestic and a sexual violence one. Each of them does a lot of training and attends numerous webinars. There are two 40-hour trainings - a sharing-experience one and a sexual-violence-and-core-advocacy one. They can be held both in-person and virtually. Some of the other training include reproductive justice, working with male survivors, working with survivors with disabilities, etc. As for the rape crisis center the organization has – structurally it does not mirror the shelter system which includes housing people, but it works 24/7 and there is also a crisis hotline through which anybody can call and request a forensic exam.
Victims can also receive medications to prevent sexually-transmitted infections or pregnancy. Every step of taking action after such a vile act can be stressful and traumatizing, but healing is not an overnight process, and every survivor should know that what happened is not their fault and that there is always help offered. But a predator can really be anyone, so we find ourselves in need of a better educational system that teaches people from a young age about consent, sexual education, emotional learning, about how people should reach out for help in certain situations, this list can go on and on.
Another important thing is creating a positive environment – safety at school, policies in the workplace, acknowledging the risks that are present in a community, creating a good support system for the survivors, and treating them appropriately.
Lori Jump, chief executive officer at ‘’StrongHearts Native Helpline’’, leading expert on sexual violence, prevention, and support, as well as a member of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, told us more about indigenous people, who are survivors of domestic or sexual violence. Currently, in the United States, there are 547 tribal nations. Statistics from 2016 by the National Institute of justice are the most recent ones, who show that 56% of American Indians and Alaskan Natives are victims of sexual, and in most cases – 96% of them to be exact, the aggressor is someone outside of the community. The Native helpline can offer help to anyone who’s the victim of violence, regardless of gender.
One of the major problems with tribes is their lack of jurisdiction. If a non-native person goes to a reservation and commits sexual assault, the victim most likely doesn’t have the jurisdiction to charge him criminally. People from the tribes are dependent on the federal government, and about 75% of sexual assault cases that are reported to the federals aren’t prosecuted. “Less attention is paid to a woman of color than a white woman. I think that that is a problem that only journalists can solve. We, our face, my face has to be just as important. And I think the news and journalists, have failed us in that respect. I would really want my people to know that they're not alone.” Therefore, organizations such as StrongHearts are crucial in survivor support.
And last but definitely not least, we were fortunate enough to interview Pamela Morrison, a community relations officer for the Phoenix Rescue Mission. She told us about the importance of the work that they do, and how they try to help anyone from the community who’s experienced any kind of life-controlling issue – addiction, domestic and sexual violence, human trafficking, etc. They connect people to the services they need, their long-term program having changed the lives of many. It has given them the opportunity to get their future back into their own hands and to change the shape of reality. The largest population of people seeking help from them consists of men. There is a facility that can hold up to 360 men, and right now - 225 are in residential recovery. The women’s campus has a capacity of 185 women and children.
Most women that are homeless are victims of assault. There are cases of trauma dating back as far as childhood. Unless that trauma is resolved and the victims get the proper help, it can become an obstacle in leading a normal life. Therefore, the organization tries to help people heal from their past experiences and to move forward. It also protects them from their abusers and helps them take legal action, despite how scary the process may be. So, every person who’s experiencing any kind of abuse should remember that there are ways of seeking help, and even if monstrous people do exist, the kind, loving ones, who will do their best to help, also exist.
"Certainly we don't wanna sensationalize and we don't wanna do anything to retraumatize and I'm gonna share one example - I worked for the Associated Press. A story that I was working on as an editor was actually around PTSD in somebody from the military and this person had really faced a lot of trauma. And I asked our reporter to go back several times and make sure that our interview subject understood what the Associated Press was, how far and wide that story was gonna go. Whether he was truly comfortable sharing as much as he had with us, because we were very, very concerned about retraumatizing him or having that story appear on print."
"And then he sees it and, you know, that's sort of a downward spiral."
Using our privilege as journalists, we can shine light on another topic which seems to stay in the shadows, particularly when it comes to women of color - abortion rights and the effect of the new policies upon rape survivors. "And as you all probably know, some states have exceptions in cases of rape and some states do not. So I think we're gonna start seeing more and more cases of children, young women who are being raped or who have unfortunately faced incest. And they're now gonna be further traumatized because they may not have access to abortion."
As previously mentioned, sexual assault is not linear and often comes with additional traumatic experiences, "’To be a sexual assault victim. To fear for your life because you’re in public. To face misogyny. As a trans girl who is privileged to have passed throughout childhood because of lucky genetics, I do get it, but everyone is constantly excluding me from every conversation. Girls will tell me that I don’t really know what it’s like, to be paranoid about men.’’
As you could have seen by now, sexual violence, as well as abuse in general, is far more common than most people think. As mentioned above, many cases don’t get reported, but the numbers are still very high – 1 out of 4 women from the US is a victim of attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, and for men 1 out of every 26. For sexual assault in general, the ratio looks even worse – over half of the women had experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, and almost 1 in 3 men experience it as well. 55% -a disturbing percentage because behind it is the most common place where the crime occurs – home. Home is supposed to be a sacred personal space for a human being and getting assaulted can almost feel like someone broke into your home to steal, but multiplied by, let’s say - a 100 times, victims feel invaded, used, with their dignity stolen away.
‘
"Since being assaulted in 2021, I struggled to even think about anything sexual for months and months. I would immediately feel anxious and vulnerable and ashamed.’’ There are long-term and short-term consequences of sexual violence. Physical injuries -bruises, abdominal pain, infections, etc. are only a small part of the physical side of abuse. More difficult to repair is the psychological harm – depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Victims of sexual violence can become isolated, preventing them from going back to school, working, and pursuing their social lives, as well as their relationships. After-effects can also be chronic - PTSD, reproductive issues, sexual health issues, etc. Sadly, sexual violence can lead to unhealthy behavioral patterns as well – excessive drinking, smoking, drug abuse, and engaging in unsafe sexual activities. "I have always had night terrors but after my rape, they got worse. This morning, my alarm went off in the middle of one and it snapped me out of it. I was just screaming and crying; I didn't even want to go to work, I almost called out sick. I didn't though and all day I've felt lingering anxiety.’’
Let’s count yet again to 60. By the time you finish, around the United States, 13 phone calls will have been made with an attempt to reach the domestic violence hotline. This is almost 20,000 calls per day.
Brooke Fulton – Director of Sexual Violence initiatives at Arizona Coalition to end sexual and domestic violence (ACESDV) gave us more insight into the work that the organization she’s part of. Sexual violence is scarily common in college - every 1 in 5 women experience sexual assault in their college career, or in other words 20%. Sexual violence is both community and public health issue. Around 85% of survivors have known their aggressor in advance.
ACESDV has two response teams – a domestic and a sexual violence one. Each of them does a lot of training and attends numerous webinars. There are two 40-hour trainings - a sharing-experience one and a sexual-violence-and-core-advocacy one. They can be held both in-person and virtually. Some of the other training include reproductive justice, working with male survivors, working with survivors with disabilities, etc. As for the rape crisis center the organization has – structurally it does not mirror the shelter system which includes housing people, but it works 24/7 and there is also a crisis hotline through which anybody can call and request a forensic exam.
Victims can also receive medications to prevent sexually-transmitted infections or pregnancy. Every step of taking action after such a vile act can be stressful and traumatizing, but healing is not an overnight process, and every survivor should know that what happened is not their fault and that there is always help offered. But a predator can really be anyone, so we find ourselves in need of a better educational system that teaches people from a young age about consent, sexual education, emotional learning, about how people should reach out for help in certain situations, this list can go on and on.
Another important thing is creating a positive environment – safety at school, policies in the workplace, acknowledging the risks that are present in a community, creating a good support system for the survivors, and treating them appropriately.
Lori Jump, chief executive officer at ‘’StrongHearts Native Helpline’’, leading expert on sexual violence, prevention, and support, as well as a member of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians, told us more about indigenous people, who are survivors of domestic or sexual violence. Currently, in the United States, there are 547 tribal nations. Statistics from 2016 by the National Institute of justice are the most recent ones, who show that 56% of American Indians and Alaskan Natives are victims of sexual, and in most cases – 96% of them to be exact, the aggressor is someone outside of the community. The Native helpline can offer help to anyone who’s the victim of violence, regardless of gender.
One of the major problems with tribes is their lack of jurisdiction. If a non-native person goes to a reservation and commits sexual assault, the victim most likely doesn’t have the jurisdiction to charge him criminally. People from the tribes are dependent on the federal government, and about 75% of sexual assault cases that are reported to the federals aren’t prosecuted. “Less attention is paid to a woman of color than a white woman. I think that that is a problem that only journalists can solve. We, our face, my face has to be just as important. And I think the news and journalists, have failed us in that respect. I would really want my people to know that they're not alone.” Therefore, organizations such as StrongHearts are crucial in survivor support.
And last but definitely not least, we were fortunate enough to interview Pamela Morrison, a community relations officer for the Phoenix Rescue Mission. She told us about the importance of the work that they do, and how they try to help anyone from the community who’s experienced any kind of life-controlling issue – addiction, domestic and sexual violence, human trafficking, etc. They connect people to the services they need, their long-term program having changed the lives of many. It has given them the opportunity to get their future back into their own hands and to change the shape of reality. The largest population of people seeking help from them consists of men. There is a facility that can hold up to 360 men, and right now - 225 are in residential recovery. The women’s campus has a capacity of 185 women and children.
Most women that are homeless are victims of assault. There are cases of trauma dating back as far as childhood. Unless that trauma is resolved and the victims get the proper help, it can become an obstacle in leading a normal life. Therefore, the organization tries to help people heal from their past experiences and to move forward. It also protects them from their abusers and helps them take legal action, despite how scary the process may be. So, every person who’s experiencing any kind of abuse should remember that there are ways of seeking help, and even if monstrous people do exist, the kind, loving ones, who will do their best to help, also exist.
Written by Preslava Angareva & Maya Bojinova
Infographics & visualization by Xenia Caramete
Blog design by Preslava Angareva
Interviews by Preslava Angareva, Maya Bojinova, Dara Sapundzhieva & Erza Elezaj
Infographics & visualization by Xenia Caramete
Blog design by Preslava Angareva
Interviews by Preslava Angareva, Maya Bojinova, Dara Sapundzhieva & Erza Elezaj