Telling Your Story

When I was asked by the detective on my case to write down a statement about what happened the night of Janurary 29, 2006. To this day I have started over many times, worked at it, rewrote and created this blog, but I have never written what happened. I have wrote poems, I have drawn pictures, I have told close friends and family members, but I have not written it down. It is as though I have no words to describe what happened. The woman in the link, Geneva Overholser, the editor of The Register un Iowa, and was looking over press coverage of a rape. She felt that by withholding the names of victims the press did more than protect their privacy; it also compounded their stigma. She urged victims of rape to speak out and identify themselves.

''As long as rape is deemed unspeakable - and is therefore not fully and honestly spoken of - the public outrage will be muted as well,'' she wrote.

A woman reading Overholser's statement decided to speak out and do just what Overholser asked, her name was Nancy Ziegenmeyer.

Before her attack, Ziegenmeyer said, she gave little thought to rape. By going public, she said, she hoped to draw attention to the issue and perhaps to prevent others' being raped. ''I come from a small Midwestern town, and this only happened in places like Los Angeles or Dallas or New York or Chicago,'' she said. ''I was from Iowa. I had never given it a thought. But now I'm going to do my damnedest to keep it from happening to another woman.''

The series that Zregenmeyer worked on detailed not just the rape itself, but her subsequent experiences with the hospital, the police and prosecutors, the accused, and the criminal justice system.

It examined topics like her frustration with the courts, how she told her three young children of her ordeal and even how it affected her sexual relationship with her husband. ''When we made love, he was very careful,'' she told The Register. ''He held me. If I cringed, he always asked - he still asks - was he doing something that reminded me of the attack.''

The series was not somuch attacked then uniformly praised, not just in in urban areas like Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Davenport, but in towns and villages throughout the state.

''As awful a story as it was, it shows us it is more than just a story; a real person was raped,'' one reader, Peggy Blazek of Des Moines, wrote in one of more than 40 letters on the series printed in the newspaper. ''Nancy's willingness to tell us what happened and The Register's agreeing to print it are important events.''

Another reader, James E. Smith of Sioux Center, declared, ''The disgusting and degrading details of Nancy Ziegenmeyer's rape have no place in a family newspaper the caliber of The Register.'' But he added, ''Unfortunately, we have to face such violent crimes at a very personal level before we are aroused to action and commitment.

Many readers wrote directly to Ziegenmeyer or Schorer to tell their own long-suppressed secrets. One letter to Ziegenmeyer came from a 26-year-old Des Moines woman who said she had been raped eleven years earlier and, she said, had yet to find a boyfriend. Previously, the woman said, she had told only one person of her ordeal.

''I am in awe of your strength and courage,'' the woman wrote. ''I hope that you are the first link in the chain of recovery. I think I never really believed that other people like me existed. Rape victims never have a name or face. You are helping me to find mine.''

Ziegenmeyer thought that people would be outraged about her coming forward with such and intimate detailed crime and was surprised by the positive reaction.

''Most people believe that rape only happens to someone else and didn't really realize that a victim is an actual person,'' she said. ''Jane made me a very ordinary, everyday wife, mother and person, and the public said, 'This person could very well have been me.' They had a face and a name to go with the faceless and nameless stories.

Overholser said the publication of the series was attributable in part to what she called called the ''Nixon in China syndrome,'' the ability of those appearing to have the greatest stake in the status quo to effect change. Ziegenmeyer's story, she noted, not only was reported and written by a woman but also was published in a newspaper edited by a woman.

If anything, she said, it was the men, both on the paper and in its readership, who proved the most skittish. ''Since the great majority of men are not inclined to rape, they are less inclined to think about it, and may be more discomfitted when brought face to face with it,'' she said.

Overholser, who was a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, where her column was reprinted on the Op-Ed page, became the chief news executive of The Register late in 1988. She said The Register would continue to leave rape victims unidentified, but was considering asking them if they are willing to be identified. What she called the ''overwhelmingly positive'' reaction to the series suggested, she said, was how dramatically attitudes towards rape have changed. ''Americans are ready to look at this crime, not in a way that judges the victim. Indeed, if they're looking at her, they're judging her as a hero.''

Ziegenmeyer expressed concerns about the way her story was published, the truth was diulted and toned down. Overholser said, ''You can easily strip the story of its power if your squeamishness overcomes you.'' At the same time, she added, she was convinced that the most detailed account was also the least offensive, and also the most true, as she explained in a column that accompanied the first part of the series.

''I concluded that were I to meet Ziegenmeyer's courage with my timidity, shy away from offending readers, and render her story more palatable, I would be compounding the injustice,'' she wrote.

I, like the women above, found the exact detail of what happenes during a rape is extremely difficult to publish. What words are appropriate to use when are name is to be kept hidden? What obscenities can be described and shared to the general public? The words to describe the experience, the fear, the anger, the betrayal, the pain, and especially the truth are not taught to anyone. I do not believe there are the right words in the English language and perhaps any language to describe the scene.

If I could I would shout it out loud. My voice would be so loud, time would stop, people would stop what they were doing and listen, free from biases and misunderstandings - and the right words will comeout and finally I will say the right words for everyone to understand and to get it off my chest - I was raped.

My case is over and it happened without my statement. I do not ever have to write in detail what happed, but I hope someday I can and I wont be afraid of the words as they come to life on the page.



Ziegenmyer is on the left and Overholser is on the Right

The article I got my information from, mostly cut and paste, is A Name, A Face and A Rape: Iowa Victim Tells Her Story, written by David Margolick, Special to the New York Time, March 25, 1990