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Some came to listen. Some came to support. Some came to begin the healing process.
But most importantly, the nearly 250 members of the University of Maine community gathered on the mall Thursday night came to reclaim the night.
“[Take Back the Night] is a powerful event to reclaim what is rightfully ours,” said Summer Sunderland, a graduate assistant for the Safe Campus Project. “Our right to decide what happens to our bodies and our right to have freedom to make the choices we want to make. We are here to reclaim our right to the night.”
The annual Take Back the Night rally and march was held in front of Fogler Library Thursday, April 18, in conjunction with other events commemorating Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The purpose of the rally was, according to its mission statement, to empower individuals to end violence directed toward women, educate people about sexual violence and to allow women’s voices to be heard.
Kim Miller kicked off the event through song as people gathered and talked with friends and put on sashes that read “Rape Free Zone.” Sunderland was the first to speak and bring the crowd together.
“I’d like to thank everyone for coming out on this oh-so-typical spring day in Maine,” she said. “I know it’s chilly, but I promise it will be worth standing out in the cold.”
Sunderland spoke about some of the social conditions that lead to sexual violence and shared some statistics about, what she described as, an epidemic of violence. One in three women and one in seven men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, she said, and 85 percent of these assaults are committed by someone the victim knows.
“Society still wants us to think it is strangers doing the raping,” Sunderland said. “We, women in particular, are taught to live in fear and to fear the night . . . What kind of life is it to live in fear and to live locked in the prisons of our own homes, which is where the majority of the violence is happening anyway. This is not a life of freedom, and it is not okay to live like this.”
The challenge of the evening was for everyone to unite to share experiences and begin to try and alter the social condition that allows the violence to continue.
“We stand as individuals telling our stories, but we stand as a group making a political statement,” said Sharon Barker, the director of the Women’s Resource Center.
“It’s time to end the silence, stop the violence and take back what is rightfully ours. It is time to take back the night,” Sunderland said in conclusion.
Kathy Walker, the director of Rape Response Services in Bangor, followed Sunderland and discussed the many levels on which the problem of sexual assault exists. The Take Back the Night mission statement says that a first step to ending the violence is to recognize these many levels, which include not only gender, but also race, class and sexual orientation.
“Rape is everyone’s issue,” Walker said. “It is not a women’s issue. It is not a men’s issue. It is everyone’s issue.”
Walker also commended the work that men at the university have done to raise awareness about the problem of sexual violence, especially thanking Beta Theta Pi fraternity for their support in the Sleep Out and Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity for their work with the Brothers Engaged Against Rape program.
Elizabeth Allen, a rape victim advocate, spoke on behalf of the untold number of women and men that have been affected by sexual violence.
“I’m here for my friend Barb who was raped by her father,” Allen said. “I’m here for my friend Sandra who, in high school, was raped by five of the most popular guys in school outside at a party. I am here for the countless numbers of survivors I have worked with as a rape victim advocate.”
The microphone was then open to the survivors that wished to tell their stories.
“If any of you have heard [survivors speak] you know it is a powerful, powerful thing to hear and for the people to do as well,” Sunderland said.
Many women and men chose to share their experiences with the crowd. One woman had been raped at 5 years old by her baby sitter another at age 7 by a cousin. Some girls spoke about being assaulted as children by uncles and stepfathers, while others recalled rapes that occurred at parties during college.
“My intention was not to speak tonight because I am still coursing with fear right now,” said one survivor, who had been raped a year and a half ago.
“For me it was a relationship,” another survivor said. “It lasted a year. I was raped once a week by my boyfriend. I learned to cover the bruises and I learned to lie to my parents.”
Many of the survivors, although visibly shaken and many in tears as they spoke, recognized the importance of talking about their experiences as a vital part of the healing process. They each encouraged others that had yet to tell anyone about their assault to someone to take that vital step in their healing.
“The longer you keep it inside, the worse it is for your physical and spiritual well-being,” a survivor said.
For some, the night’s rally was the first time they had spoken about their rape in public, for others Take Back the Night was an event that they took part in every year.
“[Talking at Take Back the Night] was a first step to becoming a survivor rather than just someone hiding from it and suffering every day because of it,” a survivor said.
Many of the women who spoke fought back tears and apologized for their emotions, but Barker promised them that apologies were not necessary.
“The power of your tears and the power of your stories, all it does is convey your courage to other people here,” Barker said.
“It was definitely hard to speak, but silence is what allows the perpetrators to get away with it,” a survivor said. “Audre Lourde said ‘Your silence will not protect you.’ I think this is a pretty apt summary of this event.”
Barker summed up the words of the survivors.
“The statistics seem a little unreal when you think about it,” she said. “Think about it. Look around you. When you hear the stories and see the individuals come forward and share what happened to them you know that it is true.”
Finally, the march set off from the mall down College Avenue and back to Memorial Union. Along the way some cars honked in support of the rally. One driver mocked the chants of the group.
At the beginning of the evening Sunderland said that through united voices we could end the violence, and as the march progressed women chanted together the mission of the evening.
They yelled, “Women unite. Take back the night.”
