Rape awareness campaign targets young adults
by ANGELA K. BROWN
Associated Press

September. 04, 2003

DENTON, Texas - Conversation turned to sex during an evening at Lisa Federer's boyfriend's apartment.

"I told him `no,' but he went ahead and did it," said Federer, 21, a graduate student at the University of North Texas in Denton. "He held me down and raped me."

She, along with other rape victims, are telling their stories as part of a back-to-school message for The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault's "Speak Up, Speak Out" campaign.

About 80 percent of rape victims are under age 30, and people age 16-24 are three times more at risk of sexual assault than any other group, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).

The group is running television ads in English and Spanish in Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Houston through the first week of September, and radio ads are running in 15 mid-size cities.

Ads in student newspaper and posters on college and high school campuses across Texas tell victims' stories. Federer and other rape victims are speaking at student orientations at 11 universities, including SMU in Dallas, where all freshmen are required to attend.

Another rape survivor who tells her story is Bridget Kelly, a Killeen teacher abducted last year from her apartment, robbed, raped in a field and shot three times. Bleeding and in pain, she made her way 200 yards to a house, where she got help.

"I would give anything for it not to have happened, but it has, and that's my reality," Kelly, 25, says in the television ad. "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. We derive strength from each other, and to connect like that is such a feeling of comfort."

The ads, which list the toll-free phone number for the national sexual assault hotline, urge victims to talk about their ordeal.

After Federer was attacked, she didn't go to police and wasn't able to talk about it for a year because she kept blaming herself. But after telling some friends, she realized what happened to her was rape.

Federer won't say how old she was when she was attacked, but she said she understands the confusion and shame a teen or young woman feels after she's been raped. She now volunteers with Friends of the Family, a Denton crisis center, to help other victims like her.

Those in charge of the sexual assault awareness campaign found many victims willing to use their names, said Annette Burrhus-Clay, executive director of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault.

"The fact that you have survivors willing to put their names out there says, `I'm not responsible for what happened to me. This is their (attackers') shame - not mine,'" Burrhus-Clay said.

About 248,000 sex crimes - 87,000 rapes, 70,000 attempted rapes and 91,000 sexual assaults - were committed against women and men over age 12 last year, according to RAINN, the nation's largest anti-sexual assault organization. Nearly 70 percent of rape victims know their attackers, according to RAINN.

In 1999, less than a third of rape victims went to police, but that number rose to nearly 54 percent last year, according to RAINN, citing U.S. Department of Justice data.

People who don't report rapes say they fear they won't be believed, that nothing will be done to the attacker or that it's too personal, RAINN spokeswoman Jamie Zuieback said.

RAINN plans to use the Texas program as a model for a national campaign to encourage rape victims to report the crime. The Texas campaign is funded through a $2 million, two-year grant from the state attorney general's office.

"We need to continue to reinforce that rape is the most violent crime someone will live to talk about," Zuieback said.

The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, founded in 1982 and based in Austin, is a non-profit educational and advocacy organization with 70 member crisis centers statewide.

ON THE NET
Texas Association Against Sexual Assault: http://www.taasa.org
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network: http://www.rainn.org