RIOT received an anonymous statement from a Black woman about her experiences being sexually assaulted as a student and her experience after reporting the sexual violence to the school she attends. RIOT supports all survivors of sexual assault.
Time and time again Black women fight to protect us all from the violent systems that threaten Black life, and are let down by our community. We let our Black sisters down when we perpetrate violence against them and we let them down when we don’t protect them.
This was the case for 19 year old Oluwatoyin Salau who went missing from Tallahassee, Florida, on June 6 after releasing a series of tweets about a recent sexual assault. Her body was later found by police on June 13.
If you are a victim of sexual violence, speak out. If you are aware of resources that may benefit this Black woman, reach out. Black Lives Matter. Black Women Matter.
“I was 17.
My friend had assaulted me while I slept peacefully in his bed. My good friend. My deeply trusted friend.
It was December 2nd, 2019. I decided to report the case to a responsible employee of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Ward Hall by the end of that week. I couldn’t mediate with my abuser. I couldn’t initiate restorative justice with him, because he had went to my close friends to manipulate the story before I had a chance to speak the truth, destabilizing my support system before they could ever know to support me.
It was first of all, a form of retaliation I should have been protected from under federal law, and 2, some nut shit, because I had went out of my way to let this man know before that I had forgiven him. I thought he was truly remorseful, and that forgiveness was the only way to heal myself.
Yeah, fuck that.
But that’s beside the point. So are, at this point, the full details of the assault. I assumed I would get to speak on that in my day in the Title IX hearing.
I mean, that’s what y’all like, right? Women who go through the system? You hate the girls who post their rapists on flyers around campus, you hate women who tell their friends, you hate women who get on Aggie Shaderoom and blast them til Kingdom come. “Where is his due process?” they scream. It’s purely unconstitutional!
My hearing was yesterday, June 3rd, 2020. 6 months and 1 day later. I been hush hush this whole time, but let me tell you my story as a victim going through NCAT’s Sexual Misconduct proceedings, since they say it’s so easy.
1. NCAT says they seek to resolve Title IX cases in 30 days. My case is now in its 181st day and still unresolved. Both statements were handed in by February 5th. Evidence wasn’t sent to the Dean until March 11th, after my mom emailed them & put the fear of GOD in them. It was sitting on a desk the whole time.
2. My mother and I were both told getting a lawyer was unnecessary, even after my abuser got one. Yet it’s your right to get a lawyer, period.
3. Sarah Jefferson, the Assistant Dean, argued why the school wasn’t responsible for the delay, and then after me & my mother shut her down, FINALLY gave me a second hearing date. Needless to say, the whole thing was thrown together.
4. I can’t speak too much on the hearing, but just know that the things Sarah Jefferson had told me and my lawyer were LIESSSSS. (quick NCCASA plug, they might be able provide you free legal representation in a Title IX hearing and NOBODY at the school will tell you that). We prepared things that they never ended up letting us say, and my abuser’s lawyer saw that and stole the floor and RANTED while we were unable to speak or object or rebut.
5. The panel was supposed to ask us questions to clarify. They didn’t. Why? Because the person in charge of coordinating the hearing didn’t GIVE THEM THE REPORT ON TIME. HOW DO YOU JUDGE A HEARING WHEN YOU’VE HAD THE REPORT FOR 10 MINUTES.
6. Needless to say, they couldn’t reach a decision yesterday because they didn’t know what in the fuck was going on. They’re in deliberations now and for up to 5 days. And I want to be the first to say, this whole process is a disgrace to the institution.
I went to an Historicaly Black College or Univercity because I wanted to live in a space where I was cared for as a Black woman. But it is clear that this school does not care about me as a survivor. Love is accountability. If you love your illustrious institution, ask them how they can treat their students like this? How can you protect your students like this? How can you let a sexual abuser walk around campus for months, while your report collects dust on your desk? Every single step of the way, the system has failed me. Every step, there has been complicity. If you can’t see why I feel the absolute need to speak out, I don’t know how to explain it to you at this point.
Which Black lives matter to A&T? You would be remiss to think that this story isn’t still a part of the movement. Divesting from systems that seek to exploit us continuously? Being anti-racist in conjunction with anti-misogynist? Creating spaces of HEALING for survivors first, and then restorative justice, so they don’t feel pressured into seeking justice by enduring another layer of trauma at the hands of the police?
Don’t think this isn’t still a part of the movement, because no lives matter until ALL BLACK ones do. I felt so gross about going public and advocating for myself at first, until I realized the sheer amount of Black women on the frontlines right now. How many of them are you protecting? How many of you are complicit in harming?
In the same way that my abuser excelled in school, I do. In the same way I have a future, he does. Y’all shame survivors when their abuser loses funding, or a job, or a scholarship, yet you turn a blind eye to the survivors dropping out of school every day because of the overwhelming trauma and lack of resources that come with being a survivor on a complacent college campus.
Y’all talk about the abuser’s future endangered because of an accusation, but never the endangered lives of the abused, held narrowly in the balance throughout this entire process. To my point: my abuser and I both have full ride scholarships. They will bring up how hard it will be for him to lose his scholarship if he’s found responsible, but not how hard it was for me to maintain my GPA, while feeling terrorized and unprotected every time I so much as walked out of my room for the day.
I would just like to add: I’ve been in this process for over six months now. Not once did I hear about no damn sexual assault committee.
Where is the transparency in the process?
If survivors have so many resources, how is it that the school is still neglecting us in countless ways?
I want to end by asking this: Do Black women’s lives matter to you, A&T? Do Black survivor’s lives matter to you, A&T? What about the vulnerable lives? What about the one’s that don’t buy into these respectability politics?
Or is it just the lives of our dear, respectable, Cheatham-White scholar, sexual abusers?
Meditate on that.”
