By Faith
In the days leading up to my pressing charges, I found myself creating a vivid series of events of what it would be like.
I pictured myself striding, knowingly if not completely confidently, through the police precinct with a best friend on each shoulder, walking slightly behind me as silent pillars of support. I imagined stopping at a desk, where a slightly overweight woman with a nurturing and concerned-looking face would ask me how she could help.
“I’d like to press charges,” I’d say in a clear, matter-of-fact voice. From there, I’d be ushered to a private oasis, with carefully chosen pillows, lighting, and artwork, to share my story with people trained to receive others’ most terrifying memories.
That was not quite it. In fact, that was not it at all.
I did walk in with a friend. I did tell a receptionist of sorts my intent to file charges after curtly being asked why I was there. When she pressed further, I squeaked out a “rape” before she asked me to sit and called for someone to come speak to me.
The man that came out was in street clothes, and the casualness of his dress extended to his mannerism. In the lobby, he began asking questions that felt out of place in a public, open area. I immediately felt the guard that I had worked so hard to lower begin to shoot back up again as I glanced around at the people within earshot, who had never been apart of the scene I had imagined. Thrown off, but committed to getting back on track, I asked for privacy.
I was taken to a side room off of the lobby where he continued to ask me questions about the “gentleman.”
“Gentleman?” I repeated this back to him like I do with my students when they’ve given me an incorrect answer, as if hearing it over again is enough for them to realize their mistake and change it. And though the trick worked on this man just as well as it does on a teenager, as he timidly tried again, I realized that there was no erasing the error that hung in the air, so starkly out of place to the situation that had brought me there. If he could choose this word, could he possibly understand the savage actions that this “gentleman” had done?
I answered that man’s questions to the best of my ability. A woman followed to get my written statement. My friend waiting outside, who later heard her in the lobby expressing her disbelief that “she doesn’t even know his address,” confirmed the skepticism I sensed in her voice while we spoke.
With my initial documents filed, I was warned that the next stop would be the Special Victims Unit, where I would be forced to tell my story over and over. I wondered if they thought that warning me was in some way a favor that I might thank them for later. I wanted to tell them that it had taken everything inside of me just to walk through their doors today. I had all but used up my courage to get to them, trusting that once I made it, I’d be surrounded by people who would support me in my search for justice. Instead, I nodded, and told them I understood.
I was then taken to the Special Victims Unit by cop car. Those pillows I had imagined initially had been replaced by bars, and as I looked out from between them, I wondered why, in so many ways, I felt like the person who had done something wrong.