"sometimes i hear my voice
and it's been here
silent all these years" ~Tori Amos

"It is silence which isolates." - Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

I have joined with Lis of Escaping Hades, Shannon of Welcome to Barbados and Kellie of SOAR (Speaking Out About Rape) to work together to try and 'Unlock the Silence' by sharing our rape experiences with others so that no one has to feel alone. 

We believe that rape will continue as long as survivors are afraid to speak out.  Speakers are available for interviews, online discussions and speaking engagements around the country.  Please contact me via email for further information.

"Rape has long been considered a crime so unspeakable, so shameful to its victims, that they are rendered mute and cloaked in protective anonymity.  In giving language to my experience, I hope I can make rape less 'unspeakable.'  I hope to dispel at least some part of the fear and shame that has made victims mute.  If I can expand the possibility for other survivors to speak, if they so chose, in an environment of informed tolerance and, ultimately, of acceptance, I will feel blessed by the darkness I have known.  The victims of rape must carry their memories with them for the rest of their lives.  They must not also carry the burden of shame and silence."  - Nancy Venerable Raine, After Silence; Rape and My Journey Back

"The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness.  Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable."  - Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery

"Silence has the rusty taste of shame.  The words 'shut up' are the most terrible words I know.  I cannot hear them without feeling cold to the  bone.  The man who raped me spat these words out over and over during the hours of my attack - when I screamed, when I tried to talk him out of what he was doing, when I protested.  It seemed to me that for seven years - until at last I spoke - these words had sunk into my soul and become prophecy.  And it seems to me now that these words, the brutish message of tyrants, preserve the darkness that still covers this pervasive crime.  The real shame, I have learned, is to consent to them."  - Nancy Venerable Raine, After Silence; Rape and My Journey Back

"If the occurence of rape were audible, its decibel level equal to its frequency, it would overpower our days and nights, interrupt our meals, our bedtime stories, howl behind our lovemaking, an insistent jackhammer of distress.  We would demand an end to it.  And if we failed to locate its source, we would condemn the whole structure.  We would refuse to live under such conditions." - Patricia Weaver Francisco, Telling; A Memoir of Rape and Recovery

"'Myths,' said Cassandra Thomas in talking about rape, 'keep us from doing the work we need to do based on truth.'  And one of the myths we live by is that rape doesn't exist.  Not really.  Not like baseball and heart attacks and love affairs and taxes.  No like the things we talk about together in the evening and feel the need to understand.  We don't talk about rape partly because we are bound by superstition.  I couldn't survive it.  I might feel differently about sex. These myths keep women and men from having the conversations that might save our lives, our loves.  In setting down the experiences of my own experience with rape, I am hoping to start a few conversations." - Patricia Weaver Francisco, Telling; A Memoir of Rape and Recovery

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