Ad Campaign Coincides with Return to School

By Monica Polanco
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Monday, July 21, 2003
Page B1

Bridget Kelly is standing in the field where a stranger raped her and shot her three times last year, then left her for dead.

Kelly looks at the camera.

"I would give anything for it not to have happened, but it has and that's my reality," the 26-year-old Killeen resident says. "The first step of becoming a survivor is to talk about it. You find out that there's this little secret club that you never wanted to be a part of, but once you're there, you're glad that you're not alone."

The camera slowly pans away, revealing a toll-free number, (800) 656-HOPE, for a national sexual assault hotline and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault's Web site, www.taasa.org. The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault is a nonprofit organization based in Austin that works on behalf of rape victims.

Kelly is one of six women who shared their stories of being raped as part of the association's effort to encourage people to talk about rape and ask for help. The advocacy group, which received a $2 million grant from the Texas attorney general's office, ran the ads on TV and on radio stations throughout Texas in April, sexual assault awareness month.

The ads will run in August to coincide with the start of school. The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault focused its campaign on teens and Latinos because its research showed those groups are least informed about sexual assault. The theme is "Speak up. Speak out."

"First and foremost, it means to speak up and ask for the help that you need through counseling or even starting with a friend or someone that you can connect with," Kelly said. "Know that you'll never be able to go back to how you were before you were raped, but you'll be OK and be able to move on and still have happiness."

The group is not the only nonprofit running ads to increase public awareness. The Texas Council on Family Violence, for example, also received $2 million as part of a program administered by the attorney general's office that awards grants to organizations that help victims.

The Legislature voted in 2001 to earmark $22 million out of the Texas Crime Victims Compensation Fund for such programs, and 175 groups were chosen to share in the money. The crime fund helps victims pay out-of-pocket expenses that arise as a result of a crime.

Texas Association Against Sexual Assault hotline operators received three times as many phone calls in April as they did last year, said spokesman Chris Lippincott.

Traffic to the group's Web site increased more than 105 percent since the beginning of the year. Member agencies have also reported higher call volumes and stories about rape survivors who cited the public awareness campaign in deciding to come forward.

"This has just been tremendous for us to see these types of results," Lippincott said. "We've got these nice, big numbers, which are very valuable and tell us a lot about the need for this information. . . . We also have these very human qualitative results of people coming forward."

On June 21, 2002, a man kicked in Kelly's apartment door, pointed a gun at her and ordered her to her car. He forced her to withdraw money from an ATM, then drove her to a field, raped her and shot her three times. Kelly staggered 200 yards to the nearest home at 3:41 a.m. The homeowner, an Army retiree, called an ambulance.

Kelly declined to identify her assailant, saying she feared it would give him "fame and notoriety." Last year, he pleaded guilty in Bell County to charges of aggravated sexual assault, attempted murder, kidnapping and robbery. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years.

Kelly, the daughter of a newspaper columnist for the Omaha World-Herald who wrote about his daughter's rape, said people who have been raped should not feel stigmatized. After the columns ran, Kelly received letters from other survivors who thanked her for speaking out.

The letters and the support from her family encouraged Kelly to participate in the ads.

"Through reading these letters from other survivors . . . my eyes have been opened to just how many people out there are suffering silently who didn't know maybe about all the programs that are out there."