Why Am I Doing This?

The other day I was interviewed by a journalist who wanted to know more about my story. I have become wary of publicity — it hasn’t really done me any good so far — but I was cautiously interested in what this reporter wanted to write about. She’s been following my blog and seemed sincerely curious about my experience. I revealed a lot to her over the two hours that we spent on the phone, and throughout our conversation she came across as attentive and respectful.

Yet, after the call ended, I found that I was feeling unsettled. I told myself that it was understandable that I’d feel uneasy and vulnerable. I’d just told a complete stranger about the most difficult moments of my life. But, after stewing on it for awhile, I realized that there was more to my discomfort than just that.

I kept thinking over and over about some of the very probing questions that she had asked me. Do you have evidence to prove what he did to you? Did you ever think about saving some of the threatening texts so that you could report him later? Some people might ask: why didn’t you just leave? On the face of them, these were all reasonable questions. But I was left wondering if she actually believes me.

I mentioned this to my husband when he asked how the interview had gone. In response, he reminded me that the people who know me and are close to me know the truth about what happened. Does it matter if there are people out there who don’t?

He does have a point; a lot of friends, family, and colleagues know the truth. Their support has been, and continues to be, invaluable to me.

However, as I’ve sorted through the events of the last 5 years, I have come to realize that one factor contributing to why I was so vulnerable to my abuser’s manipulations was my over-investment, at the time, in what other people thought of me. A weakness that I have come to identify in myself is that I’ve often focused too much on the opinions of people who really should not have mattered.

In the process of my recovery, I’ve learned not to value the opinions of others as much as I once did. How I view and value myself is much more important. I know the painful truth about what happened to me better than anyone. I lived through it, and I’ve spent a long time in therapy processing and accepting it. Today, I (mostly) feel secure in who I am and what I’ve gone through.

So in these respects it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter if the journalist, or any stranger reading her story, believes me or not.

Yet, if this is true, why did I agree to talk to her at all?

The answer is that I’m not telling any journalist, or you through this blog, about what happened to me because I’m hoping to convince anyone that I’m telling the truth or that I’m not a bad person. I strongly believe that my story is much more important than what other people think of me.

The bigger picture is that abuse, rape, and violence remain an unacceptably common experience for far too many women and girls. Whether you like it or not, my story should highlight that no woman is safe. In my job as a psychiatrist I heard a lot of terrible stories from patients from very different backgrounds, and I know that no woman is immune. If I, as a supposedly well-respected and highly paid doctor with decades of training and an Ivy League CV can be trapped like this, then so can you. This is not just a problem for other women. While the #MeToo movement has pushed the conversation further into the public sphere, the problem is far from fixed. If anything, the coronavirus pandemic is now making things worse, as many women are trapped at home with their abusers.

My story is a cautionary tale, and I’m telling it as loudly as I can because I am just one survivor of many. The specific man who abused me has gotten away with abusing, raping, and terrorizing multiple women over many years. Despite attempts by his victims to ask for help, he remains relatively unscathed and free to do it again.

I’ve now listened to multiple women’s accounts of what this man did to them, and it is awful to realize how many opportunities were missed that could have stopped his pandemic of abuse. Several women who have reported his rapes and serious crimes to the police and other authority figures were dismissed, disbelieved, and blamed. Unfortunately, this scenario is far from unique — lots of abusers get away with what they’ve done and are free to keep doing it. Systems intended to protect victims are failing and, in some cases, even supporting the abusers.

A lot of women don’t talk about the trauma that they live through, and I understand why. Having experienced it myself and knowing what other women have gone through, I know why they can’t speak out. Some are terrified for their safety or fearful of other very serious consequences, some are paralyzed by shame, and nearly all worry that they won’t be believed. There are lots of reasons why speaking out is not fun, and sometimes legitimately dangerous. Taking the huge risk to tell people the most horrible things that have happened to you and then not being believed sucks.

I am choosing to tell my story because I am now at a place in my life where I can speak out. It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work to get here. I’ve been through nearly three years of therapy — something that many in my position never get the opportunity to benefit from. My privilege has enabled me to be supported, safe, and well. I am alive, determined, and there are some things I want to say:

My abuser should be in jail, his victims should be believed, and the systems that have enabled his abuse should be held accountable.

I have no idea if telling my story will help to accomplish any of these things, but I do know that it won’t if I stay silent.

That’s why I’m doing this.