Peace Corps Volunteers Speak Once More: Support the Peace Corps Equity Act

I had an amazing Peace Corps experience  I love my country of service and was very proud of the work I did with youth in my community. But as too many others I dealt with my fair share of hardships during my service. The work volunteers do in the field and their stories make Peace Corps what it is today. Leaving Peru and my community was the hardest thing I will ever have to do. But even as we return home there is more work to be done. As female PCVs we are honored to serve as role models and diplomats for the young women in our communities. Female empowerment is one of the most important on going themes throughout our services. Now as returned Peace Corps Volunteers it is our responsibility to bring that message home into our own laws. Peace Corps is in a unique position to demonstrate leadership and progressive attitudes because the world is watching.

"Every time a volunteer receives a compassionate response after he or she becomes the Victim of  a crime someone is listening. Every time a rapist is convicted someone is listening. When we stop teaching women how not to get raped and start empowering men to become leaders and role models there are 77 Peace Corps countries listening. There is still a lot of work to be done in riding the world of sexual assault but a start is standing strong with the survivors and making sure they get the army of help that they need to recover. The world is listening". 

In 2011,  the Kate Busey Volunteer Protection Act was passed after it became aware to the public to Peace Corps response to volunteers who become victims of crimes. The advocacy group First Action Response was formed by Casey Fraiser, she along with others were the driving force behind a much needed change. As a result of these efforts many volunteers have seen and felt an improved response from Peace Corps. Volunteers now receive the legal and mental health services they need to start rebuilding their lives. Without these efforts I would not be the same without these efforts. Still there is more work to be done.

Now more than ever the voices of survivors and those who sit with  them while they heal  need to work together to pass the Peace Corps Equity Act, introduced to the senate this past Thursday.

Did you know that there is a ban placed on Peace Corps Volunteers who wish to obtain an abortion even in cases of rape and life endangerment?  I did not either. I found out the hard way after I was assaulted again this past year in November  I had feared pregnancy and if I was going to get an abortion I would have to pay for that on my own. Thankfully my results came back negative and I will not have to make that choice.

Unfortunately there have and will be women who have been put in this position and the results came back decidedly differently. Many do not understand the tole that is put on returned peace corps volunteers. We receive a small readjustment allowance 250 dollars per month served. Out of service I was jobless, traumatized  and otherwise in shock. I needed the money to secure housing and other living expenses. Transitioning out of peace corps I was living at poverty level. How could I have paid for an abortion? I was barely functional and depressed. It seemed hopeless  Having an abortion was the last thing I wanted. Motherhood has always been a dream of mine but not like this.

Thankfully, that things have improved.  AND I WANT ANYONE TO KNOW WHO IS AT THIS MOMENT IN THAT DARK AND SCARY PLACE; I KNOW YOU CANNOT SEE IT AND  YOU MAY NOT EVEN BELIEVE IT BUT RECOVERY IS POSSIBLE. IT WILL NOT BE LIKE THIS FOREVER.

Know that your future is still bright. The unknown and rebuilding is scary but possible. The one thing congress can do to ease the burden for survivors transitioning out of service is not determining their futures for them. Give us the power of choice by passing the Peace Corps Equity Act lifting the ban on allowing Peace Corps Volunteers abortions when they become victims of sexual violence is crucial in improving Peace Corps response to survivors. While lots of progress have been made asking survivors to pay for their own abortions is UNACCEPTABLE. Now more than ever is the time to come together and make a better stronger Peace Corps.

If you are a survivor and are in need of support please reach-out and get the help you deserve. Contact the Peace Corps Office of Victim advocacy and First Response Action and join the movement for a world without sexual assault and rape. And when you are ready share your story. Peace Corps Response to sexual Assault and rape can only improve with you.

Please take the time to contact your representatives today.. Follow the link below for more information.
Speak everyone has a story

Survivor Resources:
RAINNGet help now.
http://www.firstresponseaction.org/
Peace Cops Office of Victiams Advocacy: 202.409.2704 or victimadvocate@peacecorps.gov

Disclamer: This blog is the reflection of my views and experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer and does not reflect the views of the United States Peace Corps

US media take on rape a survivor and promising students convicted of rape: What story did they really tell?

US media take on rape a survivor and promising students convicted of rape: What story did they really tell?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/18/steubenville-misplaced-sympathy-jane-doe-rapists?CMP=twt_gu

It’s been a few months since I lasted posted and so much has changed. I completed my Peace Corps Service and I have wondered back to America.  I felt compelled to say something about the recent coverage in the US media. This only shows that we in America still have much to learn on response and supporting survivors here at home. The US media grieved the loss of promising futures of would be basketball stars. It goes to show how little most know of the impact rape has on survivors. Why are we not grieving with this courageous young woman who stood up and fought back and continued to do so despite the media coverage? 

I wonder if the media knows what they are doing, saying, implying when they are grieving for the men who rape instead of the life and futures they steal from their victims. Only a survivor knows the depth of the pain such an unspeakable act can do.

It is more than just sex; it is more than just a physical act. It is an attack on the soul, your future, and your beliefs. It is as if someone reached inside of you and broke something you did not think could be broken.

Survivors face life long challenges: Blaming themselves, others finding fault or reason in their action, a loss of feeling innocent and pure. A loss of the person a normal you once knew. It is a pain and memories that never seem to go away, a loss of safety, faith. And yet for whom do ABC and MSNBC grieve for?

Are we saddened by the futures lost by murders, child abusers, etc.? If you were to ask a woman what her greatest fears were ¨rape´´ would be one of those. Some might even suggests that death would be easier.

I remember how sad I felt once I realized I could die when I was being raped,  The sand dunes of Ica would be the last thing I saw. I would never see my nieces, my brothers, my sisters, my nieces, and my father. I had no idea how to get away when it would end. My JFK tote bag ¨anyone can serve everyone should try was tossed away. I pleaded with my attacker to stop, not to kill me, not to rape me. I did not get away because my attacker showed me kindness or sympathy that CNN or other media outlets showed these convicted rapists. I got away because something was keeping me calm within the chaos. I held out for a future. A hope that my road did not end...I could find one, I could make one.

Rapists hold no regard or respect for the futures of their victims. They seek to destroy them. Yet when this woman stood up and fought for her own future, her own healing...who does the media feel sad for?

Survivors are the keepers of dreams and futures. They hold on....even when they wish it had ended that day, even when the wake from a horrific nightmare, even when others blame them, even when they have yet to see a future or where to go...they hold on and fight back.

Survivors are modern day superheroes overcoming the impossible. I commend the young women who fight back, I grieve for them, I know their pain, I hope for them, and I am inspired by them. The boys who did this chose this, they chose the consequences. We should not be grieving for them. We should be grateful and hope that the day you become a victim that you can find justice and you will be believed and that others hope and dream for you even when you cannot.

I hope that if you are a survivor that you do not give up on your quest your own healing. Things do get better....just hold on.....speak out and be unfolding. You are the light in darkness a beacon for others. You are amazing.

Finding Normal in Peru

¿Que cosa?

October came and went with its normal ups and downs. I had been thinking about the 18th long before the day actually came. One year is seemed like it would be so much time and yet so little. When I was raped I did not know there was another side to this. That there would be life and I would have to learn how to function in the world as I knew it to be true today. Truth  could change at any moment for better or worse. You could be going down one path and tragedy could strike, at this moment someone is suffering at the hands of others, at this moment someone else is being violated and his or her life will change forever.

But in that moment a choice is made. The only choice a survivor can make because it is the only one she has left, to live. But it is much like waking up after a natural disaster. The world that you once lived in has changed forever. You spend so much time trying to find the little pieces that you lost, bewildered by the destruction.  You spend a lot of time lost and feeling angry that humanity could behave in such a way. Your faith that people were good shaken, your faith that you are safe and protected and that bad and horrible things like war, rape, and murder would never find its way to you. But the truth it was always there living amongst the world except now you can see it. When I look at the sunsets, they fill the sky with magic that seems to find its way into your soul. Yet with my new eyes I cannot help but see the tiny shades of grey and clouds on the horizon and I wonder if that is such a horrible way to see the world? Allowing yourself to see the grey and find a way to be at peace with it, allowing it to be a part of this world a part of me.

I was sitting on the beach in Hunchanco on a vacation watching the sunset on a nearly deserted beach and I remember watching the colors as if I had seen them for the first time. Underneath the shades of orange and rose were these tiny shades of grey. I wondered if without it everything else would remain the same would the colors remain as vibrant without it. Would it tell the same story?

Looking at everything in front of me with the realization that everything about our lives is so fragile.. I wondered if it mattered, why we get up every day knowing that things could wash away so easily.

Who I was before this, my life in Ica all the projects left unfinished and the faces of kids I would never see again. I thought about how unfair life just really is. I went for a walk watching my footsteps watching the waves wash them away. I grew sad and angry and I cried. How could I hate and love a country so much. How could I still love Ica?  How could I still today struggle with letting my life my amazing host brothers and sister, my newfews, and friends, and the faces of young children. 

I wondered if my life really stopped that day as I thought it did? Yes I would be faced with tasks that may have at the time or even to outsiders to seem impossible. Trial nightmares, feeling violated by gossip and Peruvian media, little white lies I would or do tell my host family or socias about having the flu when really I am in bed because I feel paralyzed by pain that they could never understand. Desperately wanting them to know the truth about what I was really traveling for, not for training but for trial, not because I am sick but because I was desperately seeking relief from the fear and the flash backs. I was lost in little lies I kept telling. It took me weeks to tell my host family my real name. Because I did not want them to find the articles about how a helpless white girl got raped in the back of a moto.

 I felt lost in a service that did not feel like my own. It was my name my story but until recently I had not really shared the truth. But then I would have to accept the truth and all the shades of grey that would form my story my Peace Corps service.

That there would be no going back but I could keep moving because every step no matter if it is washed away unseen by future passerbyers carried me here to this moment. To this sunset, to who I have become today. So I decided I would keep moving because that is my only option evil would have to co-exist in my world, I would have to accept that things could change again and hard days were ahead but so were the good so were the sunsets with their ever changing shades. 

I am accepting that at this moment someone is be hurt by the hand of another but more important than that I know she will take her pain and carry it with her, but she will keep moving and her new story will take on a life of so many colors and it will be more powerful than the forces that silenced her.

One year and one month later I am still learning still writing this story. There are days when I am still reminded and it feels ever so present. But I know I am still living; still recovering but the 18th of October for me was not the end of something. 

This year I was reminded of all of the good there is in the world and hope for my own future that one day I will find all of the pieces and find a way to put them back together. This year on the 18th I was granted peace because I would have plenty of other days to dwell on what happen in that moto and the events after but not on the 18th. This day I would find peace would see a future before me that was not there. I would remind myself of my success, being here, my youth groups, my vocational training project that now is fully funded! The friends I have made, the relationship I still have with my host sister and family in ica. Going back numerous times, Camps, and things that have nothing to do with violation. All remind me that I am so much more than one event. That I am most happy in front of a classroom. I was reminded of all the people who rushed to my aid PCVs, Suni, Carmen, and Jorge, and my family in the states, How even a year later they are still here and never left my side. I am not leaving you probably the most powerful and most truthful words I can remember that day from my program assistant Miriam and they remain true in this moment. 

My Peace Corps service was not what I wanted or what I deserved. No one signs up to serve their county and expects to be brutally raped. The moment he was inside of me he took something that I never knew did not exist, nor do I have the words to explain what that is. My Peace Corps Service I will remember many thing the children from the cemetery I worked with, a little boy who never listened to me in class but after he would stay an hour to help me clean and we would shoot paper airplanes. My host family in Ica, my family in Chiclayo, my amazing socias and friends. I will remember the day I got raped but I will not be defined by that. Instead I will remember the day I returned April 4th the day my attacker was sentenced to 28 years....I will remember that his life stopped not mine. I am allowed to feel joy and happiness. I am allowed to be more than just a survivor......but a kick ass Peace Corps Youth Development Volunteer who loves her job and loves Peru. A ´passionate advocate against sexual violence but an advocate for accessible university education for underserved youth, an aunt, a sister, a daughter, friend, and so much more.