Shattering the walls of silence

It took Jimmanee Spears years to see that being sexually abused was not her fault.\nSpears, a senior from Indianapolis, has since drawn from her experiences to help others. She is an organizer on the Take Back the Night planning committee.\nTake Back the Night, which kicks off 7 p.m. today with a candlelight vigil at Showalter Fountain, is an annual rally and march to fight rape and sexual abuse. There is also a speak-out, during which anyone can get up in front of a crowd and talk.\nSpears is a member of what she calls a "community of organizers" for the event.\nShe said sexual abuse has influenced her life continuously to this day.\n"We don't make correlations between our own experiences and where we direct our energies," Spears said. "It certainly shaped the person I am, my views of the world and society. It's taken a long time to get to that realization. A lot of who I am stems from being a survivor of sexual abuse."\nWith that knowledge, she knows she will pursue a career as a lobbyist for a nonprofit organization that deals with women's rights, more specifically with reproductive rights. She has spent time working for Planned Parenthood and is in the Individualized Major Program, focusing on women, politics and public policy.\nGraduate student Julie Thomas, the chairwoman of the Take Back the Night planning committee, said, "Jimmanee's dedication to activism puts most other students to shame. She is tirelessly dedicated to all issues relating to women's rights."\nJean Robinson, dean of the Office for Women's Affairs, said Spears is able to combine activism with creative ways of thinking about social problems.\nWhen asked why she got involved with Take Back the Night, Spears replied rhetorically: "Why didn't I get involved?"\nSpears said, "The silence that surrounds sexual abuse is truly unacceptable in our society. Take Back the Night does break the silence. You go and realize, 'Wow -- there are really this many who are upset,' and then you go to the speak-out and hear real stories. It's a real eye-opener, a real renewal for us survivors.\n"This is an issue that honestly touches everyone's life. I have yet to have a circle of friends where something hasn't happened to one of us at some time in our lives," she added.\nSpears had several traumatic experiences during her adolescence. When she was in the seventh grade, she was raped.\n"I was a cheerleader," she said. "A football player would always put his hand up my skirt. I froze. It was very uncomfortable, but what are you going to do? What are you going to say? One day after school, I got cornered in the gym and was raped by this guy. I didn't tell anyone."\nSoon after, another girl -- an unpopular girl -- accused the same football player of raping her. "Nobody believed this girl and people made fun of her. 'Why would a star football player, the most popular guy in school, do it to her?' they'd say. She dropped the charges," Spears said.\nOne of her biggest regrets is not coming forward. \n"I didn't say anything. I wish I could go back and do differently," Spears added. "I regret not having the strength to come forward and say, 'He did this to me, too.' I do carry a lot of guilt about that. It's not the rape that upsets me the most but letting him get away with it, letting her down -- that hurts me the most. I probably even made fun of her myself, to cover up. That's a heavy thing to carry around, to know you just didn't say anything."\nWhen she was 15, Spears was the victim of someone making unwanted physical advances. Even though she had been raped, this incident sparked even more anger than the previous one.\n"I carried so much anger and guilt as myself," Spears said. "In my own situation, I couldn't find my voice to push this guy away. I froze like a deer in headlights, walked away, and it took years to realize it wasn't my fault. I had a perception as to how I should have reacted -- I should have beaten the shit out of him, screamed at the top of my lungs, run away. But I froze."\nIt might have taken years to get to this point, but Spears is now enjoying life. "I truly love the person I am now," she said. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I had lots of teen angst, came to college, got depressed, got a great therapist and have been secure and happy with myself since."\nSpears added that society says "Say no," and "Go tell someone," but that it is much easier said than done. She described a "rape culture that we live in," in which women are dehumanized through media and images that lead to a lack of respect.\nTake Back the Night, Spears said, is about "women taking back the night, fighting rape and rape culture." Spears described experiencing the event as exhilarating. She said she has never felt more empowered than when walking down the street, chanting "Women unite, take back the night."\n"It's beyond words, getting up and telling stories," she said. "You realize you're not the only one, that it's not just isolated incidents but a real, perpetual problem."\nSpears said she will feel truly rewarded when the first girl gets up at the speak-out and says she is about to tell her story for the first time. She believes a chain reaction will start for those who won't yet have the courage to speak, prompting them to start their own processes of healing.\nDescribing the overall importance of Take Back the Night, Spears said, "This is such a reminder, every year, that we still have to fight, help people, and do what we can"