An Ugly Truth

 One day Dinah, the daughter Leah had given Jacob, went to visit some of the women in that country. Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite who was chieftain there, saw her and raped her. Genesis 34:1-2 (The Message)

I was listening to NPR this morning and a story about a story in the New York Magazine was highlighted. The story is entitled ‘I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen and Noreen Malone was interviewed and is one of the authors of the story. Accompanying the story is this photography:

Over the last year or two sexual assault has been in the news: the terrifying situation in the US Military, the dangerous reality on college campuses, sexual slavery all over the world and the Bill Cosby story. Being a large, white, male who came of age in a time when a lot of what we know is wrong now was not only tolerated but in some ways expected I have been challenged to see the hard reality that I never really saw before.

Here are some statistics just to put this whole conversation into stark perspective:  

• 44% of victims are under age 18
• 80% are under age 30
• Every 107 seconds, another sexual assault occurs
• There is an average of 293,000 instances (victims age 12 or older) of sexual assault each year
• 68% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police
• 98% of rapists will never spend a day in jail
• Approximately 4/5 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victim - 47% of rapists are a friend or acquaintance
• 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her life time.
• 17.7 million American women have been victims of attempted or completed rape.
• 9 of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003.

·         About 3% of American men — or 1 in 33 — have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

• From 1995-2010, 9% of rape and sexual assault victims were male.
• 2.78 million men in the U.S. have been victims of sexual assault or rape.
• Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

I don’t have a lot to say right now…I am trying to keep from crying…I am trying to figure out how we as a nation have allowed this to become such a huge problem…I am trying to find a way to get my footing as I think about all the women that I know and how 1 out of 6 of them have been victims of sexual assault…I am trying to think about what I have done in my life and to reflect on the ways I might have unknowingly contributed to an environment where this reality might have been allowed…I am trying to find the words to offer a sincere and heartfelt confession to God and the universe for this terrible social, spiritual, cultural and physical sin and the sin of silence, the sin of ignorance, the sin of apathy, and the sin of letting this go on.

I hope and pray that with all that has been coming to light and with all that we are learning and with all that we are horrified about change will come.

Dear God, forgive me my complacency. Forgive me my lack of attention. Forgive me for whatever I might have done or failed to do that somehow contributed to the terrible place we find ourselves. Comfort those who are the victims of sexual assault. Give them strength and healing. Be with those who assault others, help them understand the terrible thing they do and to find a way to change. Amen.