The world really is changing when the wife of a presidential candidate can step forward with her story of rape.
An article in WaPo today provides the details of Evelyn Yang’s assault by her gynecologist in 2012. Though Yang had always imagined she would scream and struggle if assaulted, like many women, she reports she froze during the digital rape:
... I remember trying to fix my eyes on a spot on the wall and just trying to avoid seeing his face as he was assaulting me. Just waiting for it to be over.
(This immobility might seem inexplicable, even though a common occurrence. The response can be driven by many reported factors, including an amygdala-created “possum” survival mechanism, an unwillingness to create embarrassment, an unwillingness to shame the rapist, and an unwillingness to be “outed” as a “victim.”)
Afterwards Yang told no one, protective, she says, of her husband’s feelings.
While Yang eventually told her husband, she resolved to keep the traumatic experience a closely guarded secret from the public, and even most of her family, until recently, when she came across a letter from a voter. A woman was writing to tell Andrew Yang that his message about supporting female entrepreneurs had inspired her to press sexual assault charges against one of her company’s investors, CNN reported.
“That was enough for her to make this life-altering move, and that was just so powerful,” Yang said. “I remember reading that letter and others and saying, ‘I feel you. I wish I could reach out to you and tell you I understand. I have my own story.’”
Although she did not go public, months after the assault, Yang learned another woman had a like experience with the doctor and was pressing charges. Yang, too, then went to the DA with her story, kept anonymous, in an effort to bring the man to justice. The former doctor, Robert A. Hadden, eventually agreed to a guilty plea for two of the many alleged rapes, was given no jail time, but lost his medical license and has to register as a Level 1 Sex Offender.
I feel very strongly that violence against women is both a cause and a symptom of most of the problems we face as a nation and as a species. My daughter also suffered through an acquaintance rape in 2012; at the age of 22 she went public with her story, even though many counseled her to keep her secret and not reveal she had been “damaged.”
It is progress indeed to see such a prominent woman helping to dispel the stigma of having been “victimized,” and helping to demonstrate that the only person who is damaged in such a scenario is the rapist.