Sexual assault: the trauma that doesn’t go away
Editor’s note: Christine Roman-Lantzy has spent nearly 50 years helping kids with vision problems, even though their eye exams are normal. She developed a test that is used to measure vision problems that originate in the brain, rather than the eyes, which was newly validated by research. She oversees a staff of five specialists in…
Editor’s note: Christine Roman-Lantzy has spent nearly 50 years helping kids with vision problems, even though their eye exams are normal. She developed a test that is used to measure vision problems that originate in the brain, rather than the eyes, which was newly validated by research. She oversees a staff of five specialists in child developmental disabilities at the Children’s Home of Pittsburgh, where she assesses kids with the vision disorder, which is called cerebral/cortical visual impairment.
Christine was also a rape victim. The recent headlines surrounding the the rape investigation at Cornell University triggered her memories of that terrible day in 1971, just as it has for countless other woman who have been sexually abused.
In 1971, I was working as a maid at an island resort in Michigan. It was a summer job I pursued between freshman and sophomore years of college. I was thrilled to be spending my summer making money, being independent and, oh, following a boyfriend to his family’s summer residence on the island. Each day seemed like I won the lottery being young, employed and near the man with whom I imagined spending the rest of my life.
I was in love and I was independent.
My workdays started very early at the hotel where I joined my female coworkers who, like me, not only worked in the hotel but lived in dorm quarters at the back of the building. The hotel was a summer business that enlisted many seasonal men and women to fill the jobs that kept the family-owned boutique hotel running. The crew of housekeeping “girls” worked in pairs cleaning, changing bedding, and doing the washing of the hotel linens. Our essential tasks were completed by early afternoon with one person staying on site to fulfill any guest requests for additional towels or clean water glasses.
Being open in the afternoons meant long bicycle rides around the island, swims in Lake Michigan, and bonfires in the evening. I was happy and free. Until I wasn’t.
It was a July afternoon, and I was the person on call in the hotel. Around 3:30, the front desk person reached out to me to deliver fresh towels to a room on the second-floor. I gathered two bath towels, washcloths and a bathmat and went to the guest room associated with the request. I knocked on the door and moments later, a man wearing only a towel, and without having a moment to process the situation, pulled me into the room, placed his hand over my mouth and slammed me down on the bed.
I remember everything about this man and the event remains crystal clear in my memory. His hands were cold and sweaty as he pinned me to the same bed I had made earlier that day. He began to tell me about how he had been watching me when I was polishing the brass railing of the lobby staircase. He said wanted me to be part of a body painting and photography business on the island. He said the business had lots of beautiful girls, and he wanted me to work for him. Following his unstable narrative, it was imperative that he “try me out” as a kind of perverted audition for the job, he said.
He then raped me and I knew in the moments after that his hands on my throat were meant to end my life. In some freakish light of clarity I decided to talk to him as though his requests of me were reasonable. I believe my previously traumatic life events armed me with a sense of self-preservation that even I did not know I held in reserve.
I told the man that I would love to come work for him, but I also realized that if the proprietor of the hotel knew I was in the room with a man, she would fire me on the spot. I told him I really needed to be paid for my work at the hotel and as such, needed to leave the room immediately before anyone found out I was operating outside the rules of my job. I was fully aware that I had to make my need to leave sound logical and urgent rather than suggest he was volatile or show that I was afraid.
He finally relinquished to my pleading not to be fired, but told me that if I didn’t meet with him at a certain time and place that evening, he would kill me. I assured him that he could count on me and as I pulled myself together and moved assertively to the door, he unlocked it, shoved a $20 bill in my hand, and closed the door as I escaped.
Relief was short-lived.
I quickly made my way to my dorm room only to encounter two of my fellow maids in the hallway. Though I thought I was hiding my secret; my friends saw nothing but terror in my face. I told them. They told the hotel owner. She told the police. The police came. For the remainder of my life, I will not forget what happened next.
The police brought the man down the very stairs where he previously had been stalking me. In front of anyone who cared to gawk, they asked him a series of questions with me standing alone in front of him. With tears in his eyes, the rapist denied ever seeing me and stated that he could not understand why I would say such things about a total stranger. His watery eyes seared through me, and I was now more terrified than I was while alone with him in the room. He was told by the police to leave the island. No charges were brought, no one followed up to see if he left, and no sought medical attention for me.
I remember calling my mother to come bring me home. I told her in the best way I could about the incident, and her response was for me to “stop acting like a baby, stay there and earn the money for college.” I tried reaching to my boyfriend on the island for comfort but within days, he left our relationship because he “could not help but wonder what I did to make this man attracted to me.” One day, in the employee dining room, a male coworker put $5 in front of me on the table and asked, “I only have $5; what can I get for that?”
I ended up leaving the island and returning to my college town to finish out that summer. But the consequences have lived with me the rest of my life. I am grateful for the Women’s Movement and the increased horror at the way boys are socialized to perpetuate violence against women.
But considering the reoccurrence of events such as Cornell crimes, I also recognize that society has not yet valued equity over elitism. And for me and all the women who have suffered sexual abuse, we are forced to relive the trauma every time an outrageous event against women is considered to have ‘two-sides to the story.’
But even more than individual trauma, there is a despair that can only be felt by those who care to see the quiet desperation of women who will not be daunted as they embrace the cost of their gender. The stories of men failing to take responsibility for the actions of other men places me and others in the realization that collectively, we are again standing at the bottom of that staircase with the brass railing, with all the feeling of horror and abandonment that my fellow women hold in the darkest part of their hearts.