Why Didn't You Scream?

Carol:

This week, Part 1 of those promised bonus episodes.

Blind Rage - Phyllis’ story – brought up so many issues surrounding sexual assault, race, investigations, reporting – I could go and on.

Those issues resonate today.

I wish I could say Phyllis’ lifelong efforts to help sexual assault victims were 100 percent successful. But I can’t.

I mean, come on, the collective “we” is still asking alleged victims why they “didn’t scream.”

What a stupid question.

It was a question Phyllis Cottle and Ohio prosecutors were painfully aware was “out there” – and it’s a question that was asked in 2023 in a New York Courtroom.

Donald Trump’s lawyer – in a hostile cross examination– asked E. Jean Carroll why she didn’t scream when Trump was allegedly sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman.

“I was in too much of a panic to scream,” she responded. “You can’t beat me up for not screaming.”

I know – politics. It colors everything today. But today I’m asking you to try to look beyond politics, try to look at this case dispassionately.

If you can say with absolute certainty what you would do while panicked, or terrified, you’re fooling yourself. The truth is, you don’t know what you would do to survive, and I pray you never find out.

“Why questions” like: Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you lock your doors? Why didn’t you kick him in the nuts,” – “why questions” are extremely damaging. “Why questions” are a major reason why so many women don’t report rape.

According to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization – only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police.

That means more than two out of three sexual assaults go unreported. Two out of three.

Phyllis Cottle could have been one of those women in 1984. She suspected people – including police – wouldn’t believe her, or would blame her.

Phyllis – who was abducted at knifepoint, by a stranger - who raped her repeatedly – seriously considered “putting the ordeal behind her” if only her attacker had, quote, “just raped me.”

To clarify - if Phyllis’ attacker had not stabbed her, blinded her, and tried to kill her – Phyllis may have just gone home, buried what happened to her and “gotten on with her life.”

Here’s Phyllis:

Phyllis:

I didn't feel that I had actually been hurt, and I honestly don't know if I would have went to the police.

Carol:

Oh really?

Phyllis:

At that point in time. That was something I would deal with later, because he kept telling me, he said, "If you do what you're told, you'll be home by supper." And he really hadn't given me any reason to think otherwise until he tried to kill me.

Carol:

But why wouldn't you have gone to the police? Was it just the thought at the time, or do you think you would have changed your mind afterwards?

Phyllis:

Well, I don't know. I really don't know.

Carol:

I can take a guess at “why.” It’s all in that word “why.”

Because every time someone asks a victim of sexual assault a question that begins with “why” – it translates to “you’re to blame” or worse, “you’re lying.”

Phyllis’ attacker was an amateur boxer. Fit. Muscular. Strong.

He hit her in the head with a heavy backpack, then carjacked her at knifepoint in broad daylight. He threatened her family.

Phyllis initially fought, screamed, beeped the horn, but when confronted with a knife, she decided to stop fighting, so she could survive.

And still – still – even Phyllis knew some people would not understand her decision to stop fighting, to “do as she was told.” She knew that some people would think her weak, or crazy, or a whack job for not fighting to the death. That she was somehow partly to blame.

It’s why Phyllis prepped for trial day and night. Going over and over painful details of her attack until she felt sure she could withstand cross-examination.

Here’s her daughter, Dianne describing how her mom felt when she took the stand.

Dianne:

She said it did take her a couple of minutes to collect her thoughts, take a deep breath, and put him out of her mind. Because she said that was the only way that she would probably be able to keep herself composed enough to answer questions because she didn't want to come across as some crazy lady. She goes, "Because I needed the jury to see a strong woman who was ready to give details. And who was ready to put this man behind bars." She goes, "I couldn't come off sounding flaky."

Carol:

I don't remember her ever breaking down in the courtroom. I was there.

Dianne:

I think there was one day she might have had some tears. But she never got uncomposed. The crackly voice, couple of tears. But again, she took that deep breath, composed herself, and got through it. Because she, in her mind, knew that was the only way people would take her seriously and get him behind bars. She needed him to be found guilty come hell or high water.

Carol:

I’m Carol Costello. This is Blind Rage: Bonus Episode 1: WHY DIDN’T YOU SCREAM?

Summit County, Ohio prosecutor Sherri Walsh never wants anyone to ask a rape victim a question that starts with “why” ever again.

She’s made it her life’s mission to change the way we respond to sexual assault.

Sherri:

One of the big concerns that we have as prosecutors, and that I have personally, is far too women do not report sexual assaults. In fact, it's only around 17%. It is the least reported crime in the country. And one of the reasons for that is the response that victims have received over the years. The response has not always been as positive as it should be. Sometimes that's not intentional. People just don't know what to say and people say the wrong things. And they end up saying things that are hurtful, things that cause victims to feel more blame than they already feel, more embarrassment, shame that had happened to them.

Carol:

So that's still happening now, even after Me Too, that women are still ashamed to come and report a crime that was committed against them?

Sherri:

Women continue to be ashamed when they are victims of sexual assault, and they continue to blame themselves. A lot of victims in general blame themselves, and maybe more so with sexual assaults. That just tends to be a natural response to victims, because there are always things that you in hindsight can think about and say to yourself, "I should have done this instead," or, "I wish I had done this instead." It's really easy to go back and second guess.

Carol:

Walsh wants us to eliminate the word “why” from conversations surrounding rape. She’s created “Start by Believing,” a campaign to change the way the “collective we” respond to sexual assault.

All of the questions victims have about themselves – all of those “what-if” questions they beat themselves up with are made worse when others use that word, “why.”

And that's reinforced too because people will question you. It's like, "Why didn't you just do that?"

Sherri:

Asking why questions is one of the big things that we are training on with Start by Believing. We are saying to people: do not ask why questions. And I know we maybe are curious, and if we're talking to a victim, we want to know why certain things happen. And sometimes I think people ask why questions because other women want to think, “Well, it would never happen to me because I wouldn't have done what she did.” And maybe it makes you as a female feel safer if you could figure out what they did wrong, that you wouldn't have done wrong. But asking why questions, such as, "Well, why were you out that late? Why were you walking home alone? Why didn't you have your door locked? Why did you drink that much? If you hadn't been drunk, then this wouldn't have happened. Or if you hadn't done this, this wouldn't have happened." And people actually say those things to victims, and people that even sometimes are well-meaning people say those things because they just don't know and they just–

Carol:

It’s there for the grace, go I.

Sherri:

Right.

Carol:

I also don't think that most people who have not had a crime committed against them don't know what terror feels like.

Sherri:

If you have not been a victim, you're right, the terror that you feel, and I've been there, so maybe it's a little easier for me to talk about that, you don't maybe always react the way you think you would react…

Carol:

Walsh knows how terror feels.

I’m going to read you part of an article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“In 1986 - Akron hired Walsh as an assistant city prosecutor. The job shocked her. One week she read police reports about a serial rapist who attacked college girls in the daylight. He confronted them with a knife, duct-taped their eyes shut, placed sunglasses on them, led them to his car, then raped them. Ten women had been attacked.”

Sherri Walsh nearly became victim No. 11.

She was 25 years old on Feb. 21, 1986. She had parked her car on North Portage Path by Highland Square in Akron. It was 8 a.m., snowing like crazy. An eerie feeling came over her when a man walked past, his face buried under a hood. She cleaned off her car, got in and closed the door. He jumped in the driver's seat with a knife.

Carol:

Can you describe that for us. What's that like to be just terrified? Because I don't think most people realize what that feels like.

Sherri:

The best way I could describe what happened to me when I was attacked, and I remember saying it to people and not really understanding why I felt that way or why that happened until I went to some advanced training as a prosecutor, the way that trauma impacts your brain and the way you could shut down and go to other places. But I described to somebody when I was being attacked, I was in the driver's seat of my car and the man had a knife and he had me around the throat and I felt like I was actually in the air looking down at something happening to somebody else. You're in a different place. Thankfully I didn't freeze. And I actually was kicking and hitting and I was able to get away. But I remember just such a weird feeling, like all of a sudden I was floating or...

Carol:

So it was happening to someone else.

Sherri:

Yeah.

Carol:

This couldn't possibly be happening to me.

Sherri:

You're just so terrified. It is really hard to describe unless you've been there. It was just really terrifying.

Carol:

Because I think when people ask the why questions, they kind of leave that part out, and what that does to you physically and mentally and psychologically, when you're going through that, especially if someone has a knife and is strangling you.

Sherri:

Right.

Carol:

You could die.

Sherri:

Well, and I had people say to me, "Why didn't you start beeping the horn of your car?" I was in the driver's seat. And I remember saying, "Well, actually I didn't really think of that. You just can't think real clearly. I had certainly people ask me why I didn't have my car door locked. I had somebody say to me, "I bet you wish you had locked your car because if you had it wouldn't have happened."

Carol:

Come on!

Sherri:

And I remember thinking, yeah, you're right. I certainly do wish that I had locked my door, and I already had run that scenario through my head a bunch of times, telling myself if my car door was locked, the whole thing wouldn't have happened, if the car door was locked.

Carol:

So you're blaming yourself.

Sherri:

Yeah, you do. You blame yourself. I blame myself, frankly, for what I was wearing. I had a bright blue dress. It was my favorite dress. I was an assistant prosecutor. I was getting ready to go to work. I was late. If I had been to work on time, I wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was rushing and I had a winter coat on and I didn't button it, and you saw this bright blue dress and I felt like it made me stand out. It made me more of a target. I never wore the dress again. There's all these things that run through your mind, like what if or I wish I had done this different. Now, I was very happy about the fact that I was able to fight and that he ran off and I didn't end up getting stabbed. But the terror that you feel when something like that happens, it was way worse than I thought it would be.

Carol:

Did you feel people believed you?

Carol:

The one thing that was positive for me is the guy who attacked me was a serial rapist, and I was the 11th female. So nobody questioned whether it really happened to me. Certainly they questioned what I was doing and all of that. But I had the advantage as a victim of being attacked by a stranger. I think victims who are attacked by strangers have an easier time. They're not doubted as much as people who are attacked by somebody that they know.

Carol:

See, that makes me sad because you say that's an advantage, which I know there's no better word to use, but it just makes me kind of sick.

Sherri:

Yeah.

Carol:

The saddest part – most people are attacked – not by strangers, but by someone they know.

Sherri:

That's right. And I think that yes, only 14% of victims are attacked by a stranger, and the rest are all attacked by somebody that they know or an intimate partner. Yeah.

Carol:

How important is it for the survivor to feel part of the team investigating his or her case?

Sherri:

We have seen with our survivors varying responses. For some of them, they really want to be part of this and they have waited a long time to have somebody properly investigate their case, or they've waited a long time to feel that they're getting justice and that something is happening to the perpetrator.

With other victims, they don't want to be any part of it. Too many years have passed, they feel like they've gotten past it. They don't want to relive it. They don't want to go through the court process. Sometimes the victims are even hostile about being contacted.

So that I think has been one of the very challenging parts, is making that initial contact with the victim and not knowing, are they going to be happy to hear from us? Are they going to be mad? Are they going to be traumatized? And so we've seen varying responses. We ended up having really good responses on the case that we just went to trial with, the four victims. But they also kind of got to meet each other and they were able to get some support that way too.

Carol:

So I would, I'm assuming here, that there are trust issues with police and the way police will treat the victim.

Sherri:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol:

And the trust issues probably are exacerbated if the victim is Black.

Sherri:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol:

Why is that?

Sherri:

I think that based upon some of the past experiences that victims have had with police officers when they reported it, they are going to have some trust issues. It's really going to be dependent a lot on the response they got when they first reported it, or the response they got when they told anybody about it. If you are a victim and you tell your best friend and they don't give you a good response, you certainly aren't going to expect to get a better response from law enforcement. But I think that there's going to be a mistrust, maybe more so in the Black community, with law enforcement, whether you're a victim of a sexual assault or any other crime. And that's just an additional barrier.

Carol:

Walsh says sexual assault survivors typically receive more negative reactions from loved ones than they do from law enforcement.

If your family member, or best friend doesn’t believe you, you’re not likely to run to the police – and tell a complete stranger what happened to you.

I’m not letting police off the hook – they also treat survivors with skepticism. Either on purpose or inadvertently through the language they use.

If detectives go into investigations believing the victim they are much more likely to conduct a thorough investigation.

Prosecutor Walsh learned that first-hand too.

The Akron detective assigned to her case was Chris Contos, the same detective who investigated Phyllis Cottle’s case.

Carol:

What made Chris Contos different?

Sherri:

Chris Contos just naturally has a calming effect. And I'm sure his personality... he's more just kind of a relaxed type of personality. But you could also see in somebody's facial expressions, you could see in their eyes and the look on their face that they're compassionate, that they don't seem disinterested or uncaring. Just looking at him and talking with him, I knew when I was attacked and he was interviewing me, I knew that he felt really bad. I knew that it made him sad to see how upset that I was. And he was very patient. I know, just from my own experience, when you're trying to like explain something really traumatic that has happened to you, it's just not always that easy to do.

And sometimes there's an expectation when people interview you that you're just going to chronologically say, "This is how it started," and go step by step by step. And your brain is just kind of mixed up because you've just gone through a really horrible trauma.

He was very patient. He could see that I was frustrated when I was forgetting things he was asking for, descriptions on what he was wearing. And I wasn't entirely sure. And I just was still trying to process the fact that I'm dressed up and I'm leaving to go to work and some mad man with a knife, tries to... grabs me by the throat, jerks up in the car door. And you just don't expect that to happen.

But I remember detective Contos just assuring me, "This is normal. It's okay. You aren't going to remember everything right now. You just went through a horrible trauma," putting a notebook and a pen on my end table in my apartment and saying, "Here's what I want you to do: Over the next couple days. You're going to probably remember things. And every time you remember something, grab that pen and write it down on a piece of paper," he said, "and then we'll meet again in a week and we'll go over it again. And you could show me different things that you remembered. You don't have to know everything right now. And it just made me feel relaxed.

And maybe part of my problem, too, is I'm working at a prosecutor's office and I'm a lawyer. So I have this expectation in my own mind that I should be doing a really good job of explaining what happened, but, yet, the terror is still there and I'm not making a lot of sense. And I'm thinking, how would I not remember this or that? I'm smart. I work in law enforcement. But it didn't matter. I was still a victim and I was still experiencing a lot of trauma.

Carol:

It all goes back to terror – and how most people, thank God! – don’t know what that does to you.

Sherri:

And that, I think, was one of the things that surprised me the most is: I was not abducted and I was not raped. And I did have a number of people tell me how lucky I was. And that's another thing we try to train. Don't ever tell a victim they're lucky because they don't feel lucky. But I acknowledged and I realized that I was luckier than some of the other women because I escaped.

But what surprised me is that I was so traumatized and so terrified, probably for a year. I mean, I couldn't... and in my own mind, I wouldn't have thought that it would affect me that strongly because I wasn't raped. I had some bruises, my throat hurt from being... those were all gone within a week. But just the fear you have that you can't trust anybody. And for me to walk anywhere and be looking around... and the first month or so was the worst because he had not been caught.

And detective CONTOS did, as kindly as possible, telling me that he thought this guy might've been pre-planning victims. And I was the first person to get a good look at his face. And they had some concerns that he might come back. And that did not help when it came to the trauma.

But I had thought that once he got caught, I would be normal. Like, "Okay, he's locked up. I don't have to worry." And, and I felt really great for a day when he got caught. And then the next day then you start thinking, well, there's more of them out there. There'll be somebody else that's going to do the same thing. And so there was a lot to deal with that I would not have thought would have been so rough.

Carol:

Walsh has used her experience to fight for victims of sexual assault.

She’s determined to change the way society talks to and about rape victims. It’s not about those ‘why questions,’ it’s about believing.

As Walsh says: If your reaction to survivors of sexual assault comes from a place of belief and support rather than doubt or blame, victims will be more likely to seek help and report what happened to them.

In short, she says: start by believing.

NEXT WEEK: GOD TRAUMA AND THE LAW

Larry:

I decided I was going to re-enter my profession with a new sense of meaning, purpose. With a new sense of vocation, and with a new sense of what this profession is all about. It's about relationships. It's about service. It's not all about me. I was re-entering my marriage with a new sense of meaning and purpose to this beautiful woman here.