Thursdays in Black

I’m pretty sure that Donald Trump is not E. Jean Carroll’s type either.

Only the least educated among us doesn’t yet know that rape is not about sex.  It’s about power.  Rape is a weapon.

It happened in the Bible and it happens today in cars and hotel rooms and refugee camps and alleys and dorm rooms and department store dressing rooms.  75.2% of all rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows.

So keep this in mind: most assaults are not the classic movie versions of rape where a stranger with a knife is hiding under your bed or in your closet.

We who have daughters who go to parties have taught them never to drink from a cup they haven’t poured themselves or from a cup they left sitting on a counter while they turned their backs. 6% of all rapes are perpetrated by more than one person that the victim cannot remember.

And what strikes me as especially ironic is the fact that the person accused by E. Jean Carroll of an assault in the 1990s (and she wasn’t the only one)  famously accused the Exonerated Five of assaulting a stranger in Central Park in 1989.  He called for the death penalty for those boys who had nothing to do with that attack.  But in the meantime he was – allegedly – assaulting acquaintances and perhaps even his spouse.

I like wearing black anyway, but when I wear black on Thursdays, I’m remembering my siblings who have been assaulted and know that many people will never believe us.  Say a little prayer today for women.  Most of the women you know have been assaulted in some minor or huge way.

The World Council of Churches invite us to wear black on Thursdays to be in solidarity with those who have been victims of sexual assault.