MANSFIELD — As the controversy surrounding the confirmation of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has heightened the past few weeks, so has the anxiety of people who have experienced trauma by sexual assault.
Locally, mental health professionals have noticed a significant increase in survivors triggered by the recent news coverage into reliving the fear and pain of their own attacks. As a result, a support group for survivors, allies, partners and friends will be held in the Community Room of the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library on Thursday, Oct. 11 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Dr. Dennis Marikis, a psychologist in Mansfield with more than 30 years of experience, has experienced many of his patients in recent weeks working through long-repressed trauma that many times had never been addressed.
“It’s like it was buried or gone, or not evident to them that these events occurred,” Marikis said. “It’s been stressful for them dealing with trauma that unfortunately, depending on the age of the person, was a culturally accepted perspective that these events could occur. Women in their 40s and 50s accepted this as a consequence of dating.”
According to a report from NBC News on Sept. 28, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) announced that the number of calls to its National Sexual Assault hotline surged by 201 percent on Sept. 27 – the day Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh testified before the Senate. During her testimony, Dr. Ford detailed allegations that she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh when they were both teenagers in 1982.
“We often see an uptick when sexual assault is in the news,” RAINN spokeswoman Sara McGovern said in a statement. “For example, (that) weekend, from Friday to Sunday we saw a 57 percent increase compared to an average Friday to Sunday. Since Dr. Ford has come forward with her allegations, we have seen a 45.6 percent uptick compared to the same time period in 2017.”
Not only have sexual assault survivors had to relive the physical trauma of their attack, but the emotional trauma that comes afterwards from not being believed. Cindy Fowler, a licensed mental health therapist with 30 years of experience, said this emotional trauma can be triggered every time someone mocks, belittles, blames or expresses disbelief of a survivor.
“They are experiencing the humiliation, helplessness, self-doubt and shame from a culture that denies their value,” Fowler said.
Fowler has seen it all before. As a teenager in the 1960s, she witnessed the beginning of the women’s movement. In a mirroring of current events, she watched as Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee against Judge Clarence Thomas in 1991, alleging that he had sexually assaulted her. Thomas was also later confirmed as a Supreme Court justice.
“Over and over, women have been fighting this fight,” Fowler said. “I can’t bear to watch it tumbling down around me.”
REPRESSING PAIN
Watching the hearings unfold on Sept. 27, Dr. Marikis noted the order of the hearings may have played a role in uncovering deep emotional trauma for sexual assault survivors. As Dr. Ford spoke, Marikis said survivors may have first feel a fluctuation of emotions they might not be able to understand.
“That’s how the brain works, the primitive brain can be preverbal in its remembrance of things,” Marikis said. “When she talked about that journey in this horrific process, she also experienced it. People experience it on an emotional, visceral level they can’t even put words to.”
Marikis described the reaction as similar to getting a “gut feeling” about something. Your brain has a primitive response first, and a cognitive awareness second.
“The cognitive process comes later because sometimes it’s been so repressed,” Marikis said. “Then you start remembering events more readily.”
As the brain responds to the trauma, there may be a distortion of information, but Marikis noted the clarity with which Dr. Ford spoke about her experience was “remarkable.” As the brain becomes more aware in processing the trauma, Marikis said, it becomes like a picture: you can see the event and experience it visually as you receive snapshots of the event or experience sensory triggers.
“And it can come in waves,” Marikis said. “One person who had a trauma experience could smell Old Spice cologne and remember the connections.”
Marikis noted it is not unusual for the memory of a trauma to fade into the background of a person’s memory.
“The brain is doing that because it wants to protect you from those experiences, but unfortunately it also inhibits remembrance, which we believe is a protectant, too,” Marikis said. “You want to be protected from potential risk, but you don’t want to be constantly reminded.”
When the hearing’s focused moved on to Kavanaugh, Marikis said survivors may then experience feelings of anger and validation.
“It’s the fight or flight perspective, when it kicks in you want to do something,” he said. “And when you’re able to put a cognitive frame around it, it goes from fear to anger, and often the hurt and realization that this happened to me, too.”
WHY DIDN’T SHE REPORT IT?
According to the National Sexual Violence Research Center, rape is the most under-reported crime. Approximately 63 percent of sexual assaults are not reported to police, and yet one in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives. In addition, the prevalence of false reporting is extremely low – between 2 and 10 percent.
So what motivates a person not to report their sexual assault?
“Because they’re treated like shit,” Fowler said. “Do I need to elaborate?”
Marikis agreed, noting that even the president resorted to mocking Dr. Ford at a campaign rally in Mississippi on Oct. 2.
“You hear disrespecting responses at a level that is remarkable,” Marikis said. “I’ve been doing this over 30 years and still even today, there’s a sense women are more objectified and cause the events that occur. I was working with a teenager who asked me, ‘What did I do to cause this?’
“Calling some of the people that come forward as ‘crazy’ – who would want to talk about such issues?” Marikis continued. “It takes great courage to do that because our society is still pretty sexist about such issues. You think we’ve made great advances, but we haven’t.”
Fowler also noted the fact that Dr. Ford has received “unending” death threats since coming forward. Even after Kavanuagh’s swearing in, Ford still does not feel safe enough to live in her own house.
“Many people I talk to are people that wouldn’t talk to others, even in their own family,” Fowler said. “And then as soon as the negative response to the person being courageous enough to give their story is treated like we’re seeing Dr. Ford being treated, I know what so many of my clients are going through right now.
“The first thing is they’re reliving their abuse,” Fowler continued. “They’re having the experience of the physical trauma, but then they’re reliving the emotional trauma of being dismissed either as unbelievable, as manipulative, as poor, as vengeful. Nowhere in there is there peace and comfort. Nowhere.”
#METOO
Sexual assault has been a topic of national conversation for over a year now, since The New York Times and The New Yorker reported in October 2017 that dozens of women accused film producer Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse over a period of 30 years.
In the wake of that Pulitzer prize-winning story, the #MeToo hashtag started spreading virally on social media in an attempt to demonstrate the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace. The hashtag was used half a million times in one day after its creation.
However, the beginning of the #MeToo movement was a different kind of conversation surrounding sexual assault – one that was much less traumatizing to survivors.
“With the #MeToo movement it opened the door to talk about those situations more readily, people in power oppressing women,” Marikis explained. “In the Weinstein situation they can talk about sexual issues in terms of their adult experience, and you see the shift where they come to cognitive awareness pretty quickly in that situation.”
The experiences sexual assault survivors are going through in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearings are much more personally defined, Marikis said. The emotions almost catch a survivor by surprise because they are often buried with traumatic adolescent memories.
“Adults are aware of what has gone on and they feel slighted and angry, but they have an adult perspective,” Marikis said. “When they deal with an adolescent perspective it’s a different model altogether. I have a few folks who have had both experiences occur, and they make the connection. There’s a vulnerability there; they become more connected to the early life experiences.”
Fowler believes the #MeToo movement was different because it had the power of celebrity.
“If Angelina Jolie had been in front of the judiciary committee, that would have been different,” she said. “The #MeToo movement had a lot of credibility because of the very known women that were having something to say, and this doesn’t have the same thing. What it does have is the angry men.”
Even then, Fowler said, it’s harder to penetrate the psyche and convince others to believe sexual assault survivors in an era where facts are often dismissed.
“Even bringing up something about reporting (sexual assault) or the statistics on reporting, that’s just dismissed,” she said. “And also, being educated is being dismissed. I personally find that difficult because I really had to work hard from where I started to get my education, and then to have that not just dismissed but ridiculed.”
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Feeling helpless to the struggles that sexual assault survivors were going through around her, Fowler decided to organize a support group for survivors, allies, partners and friends in the Community Room of the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library on Thursday at 11 a.m. The purpose is to recognize mutual values and strengths.
“This is a time for people who want to talk about something to be able to in a safe environment, and to then create a more ongoing dialogue,” Fowler said. “There’s always more safety in numbers, and there is a validation of your humanness from someone else. Just saying ‘I believe you’ can be very powerful.”
Fowler believes men will play a significant part in changing the culture surrounding sexual assault – not ones who perpetuate the crime, but ones who stand up for its survivors.
“Men need to take a lot of responsibility,” Fowler said. “If someone said ‘she deserved it’ in front of my husband, that wouldn’t go unchallenged. If I challenge it, that becomes a hostile environment sometimes. But the truth is, men may listen to other men. They need to take some responsibility for the mythology that women lie and manipulate.”
Marikis supported the idea of a meet-up including survivors and allies. This, he said, was the silver lining in the struggles that sexual assault survivors have had to endure the past few weeks: opening up a conversation about sexual assault that can, in turn, become healing.
“It’s hard to say what works for everybody, but talking about what you know and remember is an importance piece,” Marikis said. “Having somebody to listen with a sense of empathy and understanding is key. And having support to do that is really important.
“You don’t have to be Dr. Ford and do what she did, but to be able to have a voice is key because I think that’s what gets taken in this process – a voice to address the effect of this in their lives.”
