120 Babies

I've done a couple interviews in the past day regarding sexual assault. I am coming out publicly about my experience because of this woman's story.  It is similar to my own and I wish it wasn't. After 26 years, something should have changed in our justice system to make it more equitable for victims of sexual violence. 

I've referred to my work at McGill as a student with the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students' Society (SACOMSS), in these interviews. I am proud of our achievements as students. Just in case this is misquoted, the person who led the team that founded the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students' Society is Sylvia DiOrio. Sylvia acted as the coordinator for its first year. I co-coordinated it with Dot Wojakowski in 1992-1993.

The alleged victim in a rape case involving three former McGill University players said she is angry with the Crown's decision to drop the criminal charges.

The system is set up against victims of sexual violence and favours the assailant, especially in a gang rape scenario. This crown received an email saying it was consensual. When it was me, the woman who found me said I was lucid and knew what was going on. I could not walk. I had vomit all over me. But I was lucid. I knew what was happening.

One of the things that attracted me, as a parent, to this school was your commitment to resolving gender justice issues.  Engaging with the White Ribbon Campaign is one example of the great work that you are doing.

Ending sexual violence, especially violence against women, is heavy emotional lifting for people your age. There’s a lot to consider at a time many of you are beginning to understand your own sexuality.

Plus, it is topical. It seems like every couple weeks we hear about a public figure with multiple counts of sexual assault alleged against him. The revelations about Jian Ghomeshi were just the tip of the iceberg.

I am here today because I wanted to speak with you about something that is very important to me. December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. It is also the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, the day when a man, walked into L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal and murdered 14 women.

You might hear your grandparents talk about remembering what they were doing when President Kennedy was shot, or when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, with crystal clear images of the moment they heard the news.

December 6 is like that for me.

I was 20 when it happened, ending my second attempt at my first semester at McGill University in Montreal. It was a Wednesday and it was snowing, I believe. It always seems to snow in Montreal at that time of the year. The sun had set and it was dark.

I was working at L’Auberge Montreal Central, a cheap hotel behind the bus station. Not exactly the greatest neighbourhood in Montreal, but I had a job as a night receptionist. I could study while I worked for most of the time.

My boyfriend Frank, and his roommate Pat came to visit me. I was crazy about Frank. He brought a jar of his grandmother’s tomato and pasta soup. We were going to watch the hockey game together. We were students and didn’t have TVs at home.

Our regularly scheduling viewing was interrupted and we couldn’t watch hockey. A report came across CBC TV news saying that a gunman had opened fire on female students at a Montreal university. News organizations weren’t reporting which university for a while. It could have been McGill, UQAM, or Concordia; I knew from the pictures it wasn’t McGill.  It happened on the other side of Mount Royal.

We heard dribbles and drabs of information, and eventually a full image was formed. A young man walked into L’ecole Polytechnique de Montreal with a semi-automatic weapon, separated the men from the women and before opening fire on the classroom of female engineering students he screamed, "I hate feminists."

His name was Marc Lepine. In less than 10 minutes, he executed 14 women and injured 10 more; then he killed himself.

I was in shock. I was numb, raw, and incredulous… Then I started weeping. Knowing me, I was enraged as well. It was a blur.

Honestly, I don’t remember how Frank and Pat reacted. I’m pretty sure Pat left at that point because I was emotional. I phoned my roommates to ask them if they heard the bad news. They had. They told me that their parents called as soon as the news of the shooting hit, not knowing where this happened. Their parents were worried that it could have been one of us.

Indeed, any one of my friends could have been taking a class in the McGill engineering building if Lepine chose my school over the Polytechnique.  They had big classrooms – it’s where I took the Bible and Western Literature. 

It could have been one of us.

Eventually, a Montreal police officer read the names of the murdered women to reporters who gathered outside the Polytechnique. All of them were about my age. My roommate was in a choir with Anne-Marie Edward, I believe (could be wrong). She’d be just 46 today.

I told you earlier that it was my second attempt at my first year of university. I left McGill at the end of 1988 after being sexually assaulted. It was a very high-profile crime – one that was written about in all the newspapers and shown on TV stations locally, nationally and internationally, because it was a gang rape in a fraternity.

You’d think that after going through what I did, I might have been a bit more mature or cynical when I heard the news. That it wouldn’t have shocked me like it did. I could have told anyone that there were – still are – grave inequities for women in society.

But the Montreal Massacre tore the last bit of innocence from me because it could have been one of us.

These women were targeted just like I was – like so many victims of sexual violence. They were convenient – an opportunity to exploit.

The difference was that I was still alive. I survived.

In months to follow, my friends and me worked through our feelings. We cried. We were angry. We were fearful. Some of us took action.

The next year at school, a woman named Sylvia approached me because I was an arts rep at McGill Student Council. She asked if I could help her and a team of others create a sexual assault centre at McGill, as a students’ society – like student council – service. She didn’t know anything about my story. All she knew was that I was one of the young feminist representatives on council and I could help her politically.

I said yes, and eventually I told her my story. She told me she came up with the plan for the centre after learning about my rape. It had been in the works since 1989.

In 1991, we opened the Sexual Assault Centre of McGill Students Society, the first sexual assault centre on a campus in Canada. We offered crisis counselling and support groups run by social work students. A law professor oversaw our legal clinic. We had teams of peer educators talk to residences and fraternities about ending rape culture and about consent. I co-coordinated the centre in 1992 and 1993 with a team of brilliant young feminists.

I’m happy to report that it is still there.

It has been 25 years since the Montreal Massacre. There has been some social change and it is due to the grassroots work of feminists in communities across Canada working to end violence against women, one case at a time.

It’s thanks to women like Billie-Jo, Jasmine’s mom, who is a social worker, who worked in a shelter last year.

Also, it’s thanks to my friend Attiya who ran the December 6 Fund to help women escape domestic violence. She’s the one who is doing the documentary A Better Man. I believe you saw the trailer.

It’s  due to the White Ribbon Campaign and the conversation this organization has inspired among men. It’s working. While working on Alex Mazer’s campaign this fall, I had two separate conversations about ending rape culture with men, in the space of 24 hours. They are as committed as I am to a peaceful resolution.

Still, once every six days, an intimate partner kills a woman in Canada. Two-thirds of Canadian women say they have experienced some sort of sexual assault. And two thirds of those women will experience a form of sexual violence before they turn 24. Finally, we cannot forget that more than 1,200 indigenous women are either murdered or missing in our country, yet our government is doing nothing to help.

It’s up to us -- every person in this room -- to make change happen.

I carry a heavy load with me. I know the pain, shame and trauma of being raped too well. I became too old when I was too young because women – women who could have just as easily been me – were murdered.

There is a lot more work to be done because I never want any of you to experience the shame, pain and violence of being assaulted. What you are learning here is just a start, and I hope that you will continue to support and work to end gender-based violence.

Take a deep breath dear reader.

I am serious. This is not an easy story to hear.

This post might make you uncomfortable. It contains descriptions of acts of violence allegedly perpetrated against me.  Violence isn’t pretty. Plus, this is a longer than usual post.

You might believe that I have disclosed too much personal information including details of my family relationships that some family members prefer that I keep tightly wrapped.

Stop this now reading if that is you. Please.

  I was gang raped by three men after my women’s rugby initiation at a party thrown at a local frat house. I do not remember much of the details – drinking a punch with Alcool will do that to you. I was covered in vomit and physically incapacitated while three men assaulted me and about eight others watched.

Details about that night appear like snapshots in my mind. I remember they laughed when I asked them not to put a bottle in my vagina in whatever sloppy way that I iterated it. Someone wanted to shave me. It was funny if I said no.

Three men assaulted me, and about eight others watched. At least that is what I was told by the police. A team member found me, and she then told my coach. Fun and games ended for the boys. Somehow they lifted me up and took me back to my apartment, where I appeared at my door covered in vomit, telling my male roommate, “I think I was raped.”

In the days following, I did everything wrong if you want to collect physical evidence against the perpetrator of an assault. I took a shower – probably more than one – and went to the police days after this happened. Luckily, I had some friends who supported me through the process including team members. Well, all but the team member who found me. You see, her boyfriend was in the fraternity. She told the police that I was lucid when she found me.

News about the assaults broke about two weeks after they happened.  It was quite the spectacle. My life was a spectacle. Women’s groups decried the actions. (Thank you.) Investigative reporters wanted to solve the mystery of what really happened. Many wonderful individuals offered me emotional and practical support when I needed it.

I learned the power of the media the hard way, regardless. Stories about the assault were on every front page, in national publications, and on television and radio. (I am so grateful that the web as we know it now did not exist.) Reporters interviewed anyone and everyone they could to fill in the details. They telephoned the doctor who examined me at his home. I offered several interviews to local media sources in an attempt to manage my personal reputation. Some reports were better than others.

The personal stakes are high if you go to the police with a sexual assault complaint; the media does its best ensure that it remains that way. The physical assault is over, but the speculation and opinion by media based in public interest and the public’s right to know can be as traumatic as the rape itself.

I relived the assault every day in the media and on campus. Many people knew that I was the victim even though my name was not published. Even if they didn’t, I grew paranoid enough to believe they did.

My life was completely upset and I was re-traumatized daily by the media. Now in my mid-40s, I can say that I am mostly okay with it, and believe it or not, I don’t think about it every day.

But then sometimes it whacks you on the head, hard.

For example, in 2011, I worked in the same building as one of the assailants. Twenty something years later … I would see that man once a week, waiting for the same elevators or grabbing a soft drink at the building’s café.  It shocked me to reencounter him after so many years. I hoped that he had crawled under a rock and lived a solitary life. Clearly he didn’t. Oh, and I was told that another one of the assailants is now a lawyer living and working in the United States. My boss was not as sympathetic as I’d hoped especially for the head of a national church. I wasn’t being threatened, but I felt unsafe.

The trauma of sexual assault of this nature is not a one-time event in the victim’s life. In a case like the Steubenville rape, we can be assured this has ruptured the community. The population of the town is approximately 18,500. People know each other in towns like that. Parents who were friends may no longer be friends. People feel forced to take sides out of loyalty to the victim or the assailant.

Worse: it is also possible that the community may remain complacent.

Let’s not forget that national media outlets published the name of the Steubenville victim on Monday. She will be forever harassed, her life parsed by “the experts…” She will be pitied by others. She will feel as though she is under scrutiny all the time for the rest of her life.

Imagine if she chooses to be sexual with someone again? Will that be a scandal? What if she drinks again? What if she wears flared jeans on a Tuesday because her peach-coloured skinny crops are in the wash?

Do not under-estimate what will be discussed, by whom and for how long.

She will bear an enormous amount of guilt, I suspect, as well. I know that I did. In my own family, this assault created an even deeper divide between my father and stepmother. Family members told me that I just needed “to get over it.”

Everyone wants to move forward with his or her lives. Living with the emotional and mental health issues resulting from an assault makes it difficult.

Plus, there is often guilt about coming forward with the allegations in the first place.

There’s much ado about members of the media lamenting the destiny of the young Steubenville assailants. Let’s be clear, they are voicing what is being said in communities everywhere. It happened in my day. I was a young woman from Northern Ontario of no particular pedigree making allegations against young men from an illustrious fraternity. I was trash without as strong of family support: the assailants came from good and established families, and they had promising futures.

The media retold stories offered by other members of the fraternity. These were new and important details in the case, so everyone concerned had to know through media reporting. I heard and/ or read that I was (more or less) a whore just looking for some action. It is complete crap of course, but if you hear something often enough, you begin to believe it.

I began volunteering with Alex in July. It started with a canvass -- one of his volunteers came to my door. I looked down at a postcard and said, "Hey! I've met this guy before." I had -- seven years prior in the backyard of mutual friends when Alex and his family moved to Toronto. The mutual friends moved away; I saw Alex and his wife in the neighbourhood, but didn't reconnect. He was almost a stranger to me except that we once had a beer in the same backyard. 

To be honest, my partner and I weren't really thinking about our ward race at that point. We were consumed with the antics of the mayoral candidates, much like other Torontonians. I was disappointed with Ward 18's current councillor's vote on many issues, but I was resigned to vote for her again because we need more women in politics. I knew people who knew and liked her. I can't say I trusted her, but she was a better option than the other candidates I had seen so far. Then I met Alex at my door -- he'd come up behind the canvasser to speak with me. He recognized me vaguely, but he still had to pitch me. 

We talked about transit, better budgeting and engaging the community in a new decision-making process. He brought up the topic of inequality -- something I'd never heard the incumbent councillor discuss in the ward in spite of her position with TCHC. He was intelligent, sincere and clearly ready for leadership. He was running as an independent regardless of his work with the provincial and federal Liberals. 

I was sold. I gave him my card and offered to help with his communications. The rest is history.

I wish I could say that it was hard for me to choose a straight, white, middle-class man over a woman who came to Canada with her family as an immigrant from Portugal. The truth is, it wasn't. 

Alex presented a smart, egalitarian platform that I could get behind. I still had no idea what Ana Bailao stands for. I'm not sure I do now. Yes, she is pro-labour. She voted positively on most environmental issues except transportation (arguably the most critical of them all).  While her office had returned all my emails (often with a stock letter), her work didn't satisfy me. (Her EA did, for what it is worth. He's an excellent constituency representative.) She voted to remove the Vehicle Registration Tax, reduce transit service and funding, and in favour of the Scarborough subway. She voted in favour of Mayor Ford's budgets which reduced programs at recreation centres. She had done nothing in my ward about improving cycling conditions on main arteries; she didn't even petition the city to fix the Lansdowne/College/Dundas intersection after Jenna Morrison was killed in 2011. Cheri Di Novo, the Parkdale MPP, took action immediately. She voted 41% of the time with Rob Ford in 2013 -- his most controversial year in office.