From violence, voices emerge

Reported cases of violence against women at Portland State have increased during the last year. In the second installment in a three-part series, three different women on campus describe their experiences either witnessing others suffer physical or sexual violence or suffering it themselves.

The military woman

When Susan Johnson, a former staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, witnessed women in the military being harassed verbally and sexually, she felt agitated to say the least.

“I can’t even articulate how frustrating it is,” she said.

Johnson, a political science major at PSU, described the military as “claustrophobic,” adding that bases sometimes felt unbelievably tiny.

“You keep facing your attacker,” she said. “You are locked. You can’t leave. You can’t escape.”

On more than one occasion, Johnson was the victim of an attempted assault. In one incident during her military career, a drunk man tried to enter her room—Johnson was able to fight him off.

Johnson, who was born and raised in Boston, described herself as tough, assertive and able to deflect regular harassment with ease. Other women she knew weren’t as thick-skinned and would crumble under the pressure—and sometimes she crumbled, too.

“It was a little bit easier for me,” she said, “but it did happen. And I do have certain stigmas and issues as a result.”

Johnson, who joined the military when she was 18, wasn’t sure at first what to make of the abuse she was witnessing.

“Until recently, I didn’t really think [harassment] was abnormal,” she said. “It really becomes a norm.”

According to a 2011 Pew Research Center study, the number of women on active duty in the U.S. military has increased sevenfold since 1973, from 2 to 14 percent. The number of female commissioned officers has quadrupled, from 4 to 16 percent.

Despite these increases, women remain the clear minority in the military.

“It’s hard,” said Johnson, who described a high-stakes situation that left no time to decompress, adding that isolation and stress coupled with relatively easy access to liquor magnified what she described as a cultural norm.

“It’s a cyclical, systematic issue, women being objectified,” Johnson said, “but it intensifies in this hyper-masculine setting.”

Post-traumatic stress disorder from sexual assault—not just the realities of war—cripples thousands of women leaving the military, Johnson explained.

Indeed, according to a study led by Dr. Shira Maguen, a psychologist at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 31 percent of women diagnosed with PTSD reported experiencing military sexual trauma, compared to 1 percent of male veterans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs defines MST as “sexual assault or repeated, threatening sexual harassment that occurred while the veteran was in the military.”

“It’s a drastic problem,” Johnson said.

The woman facing domestic violence

“I still have nightmares about it,” said Jen Parker, a student
at Portland State majoring in psychology and French. “I still see him throwing my body down the stairs and seeing me lifeless at the bottom.”

Last Halloween, Parker and her now ex-boyfriend were at a party at a friend’s apartment. Parker, who was pregnant at the time, was feeling ill and refused to smoke marijuana with him. The argument escalated and he pushed her down a flight of stairs. She broke several bones and suffered a miscarriage because of the assault.

“I don’t remember the fall. I remember waking up with my friends around me asking if I was OK. The emotions I remember are sadness, confusion, anger,” Parker said.

The incident was the culmination of an emotionally abusive relationship. All the while, she struggled for years with mental illness.

“He kept telling me my disorders were not real and that I needed to go back to the mental hospital because that is where I belonged,” Parker said. “I belonged in the mental hospital in a padded room.”

At first, Parker stayed quiet. When she first brought the attack to light, she found little sympathy.

“It seemed like no one wanted to listen to me except the Women’s Resource Center [at PSU],” Parker said. She began volunteering with the center, embarking on a tumultuous healing process that continues to this day.

“I coped using my therapy program, Portland Dialectical Behavior Therapy,” Parker said. But in the months that followed, Parker did not tell her family about the attack.

“My mother had a heart attack earlier this year, so I decided to not tell them and cope on my own,” she said.

Then she paused, reconsidering her words.

“I was never truly alone in this. I told my therapist immediately,” Parker explained. “And my fiance has been hugely supportive.”

Parker is on the cusp of transferring to a university in Quebec to be closer to her fiance.

“I stopped blaming myself for [the attack] and accepted it,” Parker said. “It really can happen to anyone, at any point in time, at any location.”

Women assaulting women

Eleven years ago, Rae Nichelle-Peres was raped.

After the third drink on a night out with a female friend and the friend’s female partner, she began to feel disoriented.

“By the time we got back to my friend’s house, I was feeling even more discombobulated,” Nichelle-Peres said. Within moments, the two women—the friend and her partner—pinned her down and began raping her with a sex toy.

“I was mentally aware of what was going on around me, but I had little to no physical control. I had never been drugged before,” Nichelle-Peres said.

“I wanted so badly to scream out…but I was so groggy,” she said. The next morning, the two women took Nichelle-Peres to her vehicle; she never saw them again.

Nichelle-Peres never reported that rape, out of fear. She believes that if the incident occurred today, she would have the strength to speak up.

“At the time, I thought no one would ever believe [those] women raped me. I can’t believe women would even do such a thing,” Nichelle-Peres said.

“I didn’t think I would be taken seriously,” she added. Eleven years ago, she was unsure of herself and of life.

“And I wasn’t out to my parents at the time.” Nichelle-Peres is lesbian.

Countless times, Nichelle-Peres has been verbally harassed with homophobic slurs and threats. In one case, she was followed by four people on motorcycles who surrounded her and yelled “Die, you fucking dyke!” At a gas station, the attendant kicked her vehicle and used the same slur to violently demand she leave the premises.

In public restrooms—including in the one on the first floor of Smith Memorial Student Union—Nichelle-Peres has faced homophobic taunts and threats, almost entirely from fellow women.

“Verbal harassment is a form of violence,” she said.

“I faced harassment as early as the third grade,” she said. “Kids used to push me into the boys bathrooms and the boys would urinate on me.”

The constant violence and harassment took a toll on her self-image.

“For many, many years, I felt like the stereotypical angry butch lesbian that everyone so often labeled me as,” Nichelle-Peres said. “I was angry all the time. I didn’t have that many avenues to which I could turn…for venting.”

Nichelle-Peres now suffers from generalized anxiety disorder; television and movie scenes related to rape can trigger an intense reaction.

“I tend to break out in a cold sweat, become short of breath and feel a sense of doom,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be completely healed, per se, but I will say that it has made me learn more about myself.” She added that finding a support group with the WRC has contributed to that process.

And though her story of rape and harassment defies gender expectations, she cautioned against stereotypes.

“Woman are just as capable [of committing sexual violence] as men.”

This story is the second in a three-part series exploring violence against women at PSU, which concludes next week. The names of some sources have been altered to safeguard their privacy.