My Turn: Rising, I'M One

By Dr. Maureen Longworth
Juneau Empire
February 22, 2013

http://juneauempire.com/opinion/2013-02-22/my-turn-rising-im-one#.UVmRDJPksy4

Editor’s note: This column was inspired by the One Billion Rising rally and flash mob at the state office building atrium on Feb. 14, and was submitted by the author.

It was me.

“It could be anyone,” she said today. “One out of three women is raped or beaten in her lifetime in our world today.”

I was one.

My soul still screams.

I remain forever one who was raped by one of the hims who do the raping.

“It could be anyone,” she said.

But it was me.

It was my heart crushed by the weight of him pushing against my chest.

It was my voice unheard pleading, “No, please no.”

It was my beliefs shattered by this priest, my teacher, who violated me and my Church, robbing me of all spiritual connection to my rich religious past.

It was my vocation to be a nun, and serve God, stolen by him, replaced with emptiness.

It was my twenty-first birthday forever unmentionable in all the questionings, “What did you do for your birthday.” The special twenty-first birthday I only realized later he had calculated in advance would be the night, the night I would be of age, the night to invite me to his room to hear his poetry.

It could have been anyone. But it was ME!!!

I looked around the room. One of every eight women was weeping as she spoke. Other ones out of threes, I thought. Or mothers or sisters of the ones.

“One Billion Rising,” this movement against rape, against violence of women, this movement is called. I’m one out of a billion rising and I’m one out of three raped.

Please go to onebillionrising.org for more info on global happenings on this important issue.

• Dr. Maureen Longworth is a board certified family physician with advanced training in domestic violence care. She collaborated with AWARE to provide training for Bartlett Hospital staff and to require mandatory safety and violence screening of Bartlett patients which is in place today.