Rape is... - Herald Review

DOCUMENTARY TALLIES TRAUMA, INJUSTICE OF RAPE
By Margery Eagan, Boston Herald, April 7, 2002

"Do you know what rape feels like? Do you know what it feels like to have your howl silenced by a fist? What it feels like to be rushed into, pressed down on, and opened by a knife...To cry out...to be stamped out...and have everyone else look away?"

The above is part of the chilling poetry from "Rape is...," a raw, jolting, but powerful new documentary by the Academy Award-winning Cambridge Documentary Films. Its first public screening is tonight at 7 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

"I turned around to grab my bag out of the car, and the next thing I knew, there was a man there. He had his hand over my mouth and he put a gun to my side. He kept repeating...he was going to blow my head off." Those are the words, spoken plainly, yet haltingly, by Kathy Girod, 37, one of the many rape survivors who tells her story.

"I remember hearing him undo his buckle, his belt buckle. I remember smelling soap..." Then he said, "You know what to do."

"Rape is..." by Margaret Lazarus and Renner Wunderlich, comes at a time when the rape of children and teenagers by Catholic priests is daily in the news; when advocates against sexual violence have called for a declaration of a statewide emergency against the "epidemic"; when victims' rights lawyer Wendy Murphy of New England School of Law--pointing to prosecution and sentencing rates that have not improved significantly in 30 years--is pushing for total reform of rape law.

She wants a so-called Victims' Miranda Rights adopted. "To teach victims they have privacy rights before they are violated," she says, "to take away the two things women fear" in reporting the crime: blame and shame.

"Rape is..." features Richard Ridlon, raped repeatedly by an uncle beginning at age 8. But neither his aunt, brothers, sisters or even his mother and father believed him. And so it went on.

It features poet Salamishah Tillet, whose words capture the horror and confusion of the crime, as well as its lingering effects. "In front of you, behind you, on top of you...in you. Crushing...annihilating...killing." And when you think the crying and screaming have finally stopped, you realize nothing has. "From nowhere, from no one, it keeps on."

"Rape is..." reminds viewers of what these women already know, of what the priest scandal has so dramatically revealed, that sexual violence thrives because too many believe that it is some rare and alien occurrence perpetrated by scary looking, trench-coated men.

Instead, rape is an everyday evil perpetrated by the trusted stepfather, who also reads bedtime storeies and takes the kids to see the Red Sox; by the charismatic priest, who also delivers stirring homilies and cares compassionately for the poor; by the helpful neighbor, or handsome friend, tall and blond and blue-eyed, quick with a smile and a joke, quick to help with groceries, and quick to offer teenaged Suzie or Johnnie a last-minute ride to school.

In an interview Friday, Girod, now a researcher at a major cancer facility, said she appeared in "Rape is..." in part to put a face and a voice to countless rape victims too scared or shattered to speak out. It has taken her a long time, too, she said.

She also said that the man who attacked her 15 years ago was never prosecuted or even arrested, though she saw him several times around her town and called police. Sometimes they were great, she said. Sometimes they dismissed her, doubted her.

One officer, when she reported seeing the man, asker her how she could possibly know who he was: Wasn't it dark that night? Another all but mocked her when she could not give an exact description of the gun: its color, its heaviness, how it felt against the back of her head. "It could've been a fake gun," the police officer said.

Another time her rapist recognized her in a store, she said. "He walked by and saw me, and laughed."