This is Democracy – Episode 27: Sexual Assault

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Intro voices: This is Democracy: a podcast that explored the interracial, inter-generational, and inter-sectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. This week, we’re going to discuss a very sensitive, controversial, difficult but crucially important topic: the topic of sexual assault, which is prevalent in our society now, and a topic of attention but also controversy, obviously. And we have with us, two really important guests. Both of whom have thought deeply about the subject, worked deeply on it, and they’re going to share their experiences and perspectives with us.

Jeremi: We have Hanna Senko. She is a sexual assault survivor, whose case was closed via what the Austin Police Department calls “exceptional clearance,” I think we’ll discuss what that means, I certainly didn’t know what it meant until recently. She now serves as an eloquent and prominent survivor speaker, writer, and advocate, fighting for change in the way we view these issues and changes in the law. Hanna, it’s so nice to have you here.

Hanna: Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be here.

Jeremi: We also have city councilwoman, Alison Alter. She represents District 10, here in Austin, Texas. She is someone who has worked on policy issues for quite a long time. She has a PhD from Harvard in Political Economy, has been active on park and school issues, and most recently, was the leader of the effort in Austin, Texas, to make these issues of sexual assault and the police investigations of them more serious. And passed legislation that she wrote to require the Austin Police Department to have an external audit of how it handles these issues. Alison, it’s nice to have you here.

Alison: Good morning.

Jeremi: So before we turn to our experts, of course, we have Mr. Zachary Suri’s poetry. What’s the title of your poem today, Zachary?

Zachary: “No Safe Place.”

Jeremi: “No Safe Place,” let’s hear it.

Zachary: “I can walk the streets at night, without wondering what each shadow brings. I can sleep through the night without being scared of the sounds out the window, and I don’t have to worry if I will be believed when I dial 911. But I see the fear in the eyes of every sister, every mother, and every wife. The eyes that wonder, “Is there no safe place in this world? Is there no haven for the beaten, no harbor for the abused, the assaulted flailed across the sidewalks of a thousand cities. Is there no place where a woman can walk without fearing the shadow around the corner? Is there no street, no school where being alone is not a danger?

“Where everyone can sleep without fearing the man behind the window shades? And is there no place where violence is not among us all, and a walk through the street at night is a stroll?” And I have wondered what it’s like to be laughing one second, completely powerless the next, to be left alone to rot on the sidewalk, so close to the city, but yet so far from anyone. And though no ounce of my male body will ever know the feeling, it sends shivers down me, just the thought, and I can’t figure out how anyone can find the strength to get up.”

Jeremi: It’s extraordinary, Zachary, how you’ve empathized with so many victims and survivors. What is the– what is your poem really about?

Zachary: Well, it’s about being– how scary it must be to feel vulnerable, to feel alone, and it’s something that I will never have to experience, but it must just be such an overwhelmingly scary and traumatic experience.

Jeremi: Yes, yes. Well, thank you for sharing that with us, Zachary. Hanna, why is this issue so difficult? No one defends the notion of sexual assault. Why do we have so much trouble talking about it and dealing with it as a society?

Hanna: You know there’s a lot of reasons. First of all, the poem was beautiful, so thank you for that. You know, I think we hear a lot about shame that comes from the victims’ and survivors’ position and I will tell you that the shame is real. And it’s one that I think is difficult not only for survivors to speak about, but I think as a culture, we have a difficult time sitting comfortably in the discomfort of these types of conversations. And so, it touches a pretty raw spot, I think for anyone; whether it’s a survivor or a parent or a friend, and really having to sit and listen to pain. I think we’ve gotten really comfortable trying to run far from pain, and so to sit in that comfortably is difficult.

Jeremi: And how have you learned to deal with this personally, if you’re willing to share, and certainly in the context of groups, I’ve seen you speak. You’re very eloquent and articulate about this. How have you learned to do that?

Hanna: Thank you. You know, it’s interesting.  When I started on this journey, I had no intention or idea that I’d be where I am today in this. It really started out as self-exploration. You know, I wanted to understand more about what I went through in my particular situation, understand my case better. There were items– there were assaults that happened many years ago, and at that time, I wasn’t ready to deal with it, and it wasn’t until late 2017 that I decided that I was going to unbury it, if you will.

Really, probably, hoping to fight some of the demons that– you know, I’m still struggling with in that regard. And so, as I started getting information about my own particular case- my police records, my medical records- I quickly realized that I also needed to understand not only my particulars, but the landscape that my case fell in, in the broader context. And it was at that point that the ship kind of sailed: the decision as to whether I was going to be involved, or how I was going to be involved was one that just took its own course. When you start to understand the broader landscape, it’s very troubling, and it’s hard not to get involved. And so through that, there’s been a lot of personal healing in that journey, whether I recognized it or not. But that’s a little bit of how I came to where I am today.

Jeremi: Right, well you’re a very courageous person.

Hanna: Thank you.

Jeremi: Alison, how as a policy maker do you come at these issues?

Alison: As a policy maker, I think it’s really important that we recognize that this is a systemic problem, and we only control a small portion of the levers that we have at our disposal to address it. So when we think about it as a systemic problem, the prevalence of sexual assault is not something that the City of Austin has created; it’s something that’s out there in our culture. It’s something that has been permitted, and there are all sorts of cultural biases that perpetuate it and we don’t have really good policy tools to address that. What we do have an ability to address is how we respond in the situations where we do control. So we can affect how our police, how our staff, interact with victims. We can impact the resources that go into the care of victims that go into how justice is sought, what goes into the due process system. We can impact how we interact with the District Attorney’s office. We can fund programs to help survivors heal.

The broader issues, which I think is part of what Zachary’s poem gets at, is that this is very pervasive. And what is really heartening about Zachary’s poem, as sad as it was, is that we have a 14 year old boy who’s recognizing one of the challenges that we have in this area, which is that this affects people, whether they’ve been a victim or not. And so every woman, and other men and transgender also suffer from sexual assault, but we need to recognize that this is a gender-based crime, and a huge proportion of the victims are women. But it’s not just the victims that are impacted. Every woman, when she goes to her car late at night, has to worry about whether there’s a stranger in the back of her car. You don’t have the luxury of just being carefree all the time. Some people do, but for the most part, this is something that affects everyone, and we have it so deep in our subconscious that we don’t even recognize it.

Jeremi: Why, if it’s so pervasive, Alison, why does it seem it’s so difficult for the police to follow up on this? It seemed to me one of the points your legislation made is that the police in Austin, like the police in many places, were not always following up on this.

Alison: So I think that it’s tempting to take our resolution and say that it was trying to point fingers at particularly the police. It was trying to really get at a broader set of issues and understand, where could we intervene? And try to find constructive ways where if we looked at the set of issues from the perspective of the survivor, how would we set up the system differently? How would we do things in a way that would lead to healing and justice and how would we do that in a way that also maintained due process?

And so I think, when we think about this process, we need to understand that there are different stages all the way along, and there are different places to intervene. In some places, it’s about how many detectives you have? It’s about whether you have a car to go pick up the victim to come talk to you? Other places there are ways that detectives may or may not be trained to speak to survivors that affect not just whether you get to find the perpetrator, but that you get to help that person heal.

There are also situations that the detectives and others are dealing with, that come from these societal biases. So ultimately, if a case goes to trial, it’s going to go before a jury, and if a jury doesn’t understand the difference whether– about consent issues, then it’s very difficult to prove a case of rape. And that comes from a societal, systemic issue, and so some of this is not just what we can do here with our resolution, but also how do we change the conversation. And I think that’s what we’ve been trying to do here in Austin, is admit that we have a problem, change the conversation, say “We have a prevalent situation with violent assault,” and that we can do something about it, and we’re going to do the things that we can do, and that we, as a society, have to stand up and say “This is not something we want to–.”

Jeremi: So it’s really incompetency, from what you’re saying, for leaders of the police, but not just leaders of the police: leaders of the city, leaders of the university, business leaders, and various others, to begin by admitting that there’s an issue there, rather than the opposite, which is our general inclination, back to Hanna’s point, to not want to talk about it, right? To look beyond it. Hanna, you were, in your case, you went through what is called “exceptional clearance,” which seems to me to be part of what Alison’s talking about here. Can you explain to us what that is and your perspective?

Hanna: Sure, so exceptional clearance is a classification that police departments can use for cases, and it essentially needs to meet four criteria. The first criteria is that there’s probable cause. The second is that the suspect is known. The third is that they know where the suspect is located, and the fourth is that they’re unable to make an arrest, for a reason outside of the police department’s control. An example would be that– for that would be if the suspect is no longer alive.

It’s a classification that’s intended to be used rarely, and a recent investigation through news and ProPublica has identified that many cities throughout our nation- Austin being one of them- has been using this exceptional clearance more often than they should. And the problem with that is that it leaves statistics looking as if the police department is doing better in resolving and closing cases than they actually are, in particular, with sexual assault.

Jeremi: And why have they been doing this?

Hanna: That’s not a question I probably can answer. That’s probably one we need to extend to Chief Manley. So, I’ll leave it at that.

Jeremi: It does seem though strange that so many of these cases are not investigated fully, or not fully prosecuted. From your perspective, what is the most difficult part in convincing the police to pursue a case?

Hanna: (sighs) So there’s a lot of components. I think that it all stems from a cultural and systemic issue. I think what we’re facing in Austin is not unique in what many, if not most or all cities in our nation are facing. But I think it also speaks to how big and prevalent of an issue that this really is. And some of the things that you bring up are incredibly important. We’ve heard about the rape kit backlogs, we’ve heard about exceptional clearances, but it’s really understanding that this whole process needs to be dissected, if you will, from start to finish. It involves how much the sex crimes unit is getting staffed, so therefore how thorough of the investigations that they can do and have. And so it’s start to finish. My hope with the resolution is that they can really get in and understand what is working, what isn’t working, so that we can move into solutioning.

Alison: If I might add, I think that Hanna’s point here that this is not a problem unique to Austin is an important one. What is unique to Austin right now is our response where we have said we want to do a very thorough evaluation from start to finish, looking at seven years of data, and really, really trying to take a victim-centered approach and also best-practice centered approach to understand what we’re doing right, what we can be doing better. Without trying to blame anybody in particular, but really trying to say we have a problem on our hands, admit we have a problem, and respond in a way that Austin can ultimately be a leader in how we respond to sexual assault.

Jeremi: And was there a lot of support for doing that, Alison?

Alison: I think in the end it was a unanimous vote, and I was very proud of the council in taking this step. We had the support of the police chief and the support of the district attorney moving forward. We will ultimately not be judged by this resolution as I said on the dais will be judged by the steps that we take as we respond to the information that comes back to us.

Jeremi: But before the end, was this a hard resolution to get forward? Was it hard to get people behind this?

Alison: There was a general recognition that we have a problem. What was more of a challenge was to take the victim-centered approach to do the very thorough evaluation and to really put a lot of weight behind that need to look backward as well as to look forward, and to be able to do that hard, introspective look that we need to do as a city.

Jeremi: Okay. So we have some student questions here. We had some great student questions proposed for this week. Our first question is from Annika Dankwardt.

Annika Dankwardt: Most sexual assault prevention is aimed at telling women how aware they are supposed to be and what to avoid. What steps can we take to get men more involved and try to stop it at the source?

Jeremi: Hanna, do you want to go first on that?

Hanna: Yeah sure. You know in my mind this goes back to a cultural comfort if you will. It is actually a question that I ask myself a lot in the beginning is where are all the men in this discussion? And knowing that 98+% of the perpetrators are men. I’ve always felt that it’s going to be hard to solve this problem without the inclusion and involvement of men to help us. So it’s something that I’m still interested in trying to figure out, but it’s also something that it’s been painfully aware as an advocate to see how much of it is, you know, really women coming together fighting for it. So from a how to, continuing to have the conversations at many levels and just getting more comfortable in being able to dialogue on this topic. And I think it touches on some very sensitive components for both men and women. It makes men have to stare at their actions throughout their life pretty closely, and did they always make the right decision? What falls in the gray line? And that’s uncomfortable, but that’s okay.

Jeremi: It does seem to me, historically, it’s an area where we have made some progress because even just a few years ago people didn’t talk about this at all around men, and now it does seem it’s an issue. Most educated men have had to confront at least at some point. Alison, what do you think about this?

Alison: I think one place that could take more of a leadership role than they’re doing are our universities, and our Greek life in particular. There’s a lot of education that needs to happen, a lot of consequences that could be imposed within a university environment. Some of that can be done by sororities saying, you know, we’re not going to have parties with you unless you’ve had this training. There are levers people can use to get people to have the difficult conversations. I think that one of the challenges we have, and this is pervasive within academia, is that we have people who have no concept, no understanding, no knowledge of the trauma of sexual assault who are asked to make policy about sexual assault on college campuses, and were they to really have a true understanding of the depth of the problem on their campus, and have real tools to be able to address it, we might be able to get better results on our college campuses. The education has to start young.

Jeremi: How do you deal with the fact that, and it’s not just university presidents, business leaders, others, their incentive is not to go into this controversial space but to stay away from it. How do you deal with that?

Alison: I don’t think it was inconsequential that we have a majority female council that decided to move forward with the resolution to take a very deep dive into this issue. As more and more women step into leadership roles, whether it’s in congress, whether it’s at the presidency, wherever it is I think that we will be giving more voice. Now, we’ve had several allies on the council who were male and we need those male voices as we’ve been talking about, but I think that women are now in positions of power and are able to make choices and decisions in policy, and these are our bodies, these are our lives, these are our fears, and I don’t think you’re going to continue to have the same policy choices.

Jeremi: Right. A policy is personnel at some level isn’t it? We have another student question, this one is from Chloe Baker.

Chloe Baker: How should the law and society go about the balance between being sensitive towards all victims and thumbing out false accusations? Moreover, how should false accusations be dealt with?

Jeremi: So this is a question, an excellent question that comes up quite often, questions about due process. It’s an issue obviously where Betsy Devos, the secretary of education, has expressed concerns about people being falsely accused. Hanna, how do you deal with that concern?

Hanna: Yeah, I mean, my opinion is items like the resolution that just got passed will only help with that as we improve the process of how sexual assault is handled in the judicial system, how well– thorough the investigations are, it helps not only victims get justice in the case, but I think it also help ensure that those that are falsely accused that that gets recognized in that process as well. If we’re having comprehensive and thorough investigations the thought is that it would serve both.

Jeremi: Sure, but I guess the concern and maybe the recent Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings just bring this to the fore– I don’t really want to talk about Brett Kavanaugh, but there are a number of cases where you’ll have a he said, she said situation and the concern some have is that we’re moving toward a presumption of the survivor’s voice, not the accused’s voice and how do you respond to that?

Hanna: Yeah, I think we have a long ways to go. With less than a 1% prosecution rate right now and you know, my concern is not so much on the falsely accused, albeit, I think that’s a really important topic because we do not want to swing the pendulum so far that, you know, it’s an imbalance of the other direction, but we’re sitting at less than 1% right now. And it goes back to some of what Allison was mentioning in education, you know, educating what consent really looks like and what it means is an important component of that. I don’t believe that that’s truly understood at all levels, or most levels maybe even, so it’s a complicated question.

Jeremi: Allison, your thoughts on this?

Allison: I think that however we redesign the system, due process has to be a critical component, but in thinking about due process, we have to also remember that these are violent crimes and these are violent crimes that sit with the victims for the rest of their lives and when you don’t go after the perpetrator who did it the first time, they’re likely to do it again. And so we need to get a balance and due process definitely needs to be there, but it is not an excuse for not proceeding to prosecution in more than 1% of the cases. And I think that you can design a system that provides due process that also leads to justice more often.

Jeremi: But what do you think the police should do when there is a case of, there’s no witness and you have two different stories? And, again, the Brett Kavanaugh situation seems to be one of those, right?

Allison: I think there are lots of different stories that we hear with respect to rape, some of them are not as vague as you make out and they’re still not getting prosecuted. So there are certainly times when the facts are not there and you cannot prosecute, but there are a whole lot of cases that seem like we ought to be able to do something more than we’re doing and we’re not doing them. And they’re– those are not so much cases of due process alone, there’s also the victim on the other end of that. And I mean this, due process is a challenge no matter the area of crime, it’s not unique to this situation, what is unique to sexual assault is the prevalence of the victims being female and the ambiguities that society has created over consent when there may not really be those ambiguities.

Jeremi: Right, right and it certainly does seem that over time, both of you were referring to this, there has been a presumption toward the, against the victim’s voice and so, certainly, re-balancing that doesn’t mean we’re destroying due process in any sense. I guess the last question I’d like to ask both of you is what you think young people like Zachary should be told when they go to school. To me, it’s frightening, even though I’ve spent all my adult life on college campuses as a student and a professor to see the statistics and hear the stories that I hear in party settings and all sorts of settings at universities. And I am convinced that even though this is more of a conversation today than it was when it was in college, it’s still not enough of a conversation or it’s not often the correct conversation. So, Hanna, what would you want young people to learn and how would you want them to start the conversation?

Hanna: Yeah, so first of all, I think it’s wonderful that Zachary’s here and just the fact that he’s sitting in this conversation, I think, shows great headway in it. I don’t think shielding our children from the conversation necessarily helps them. It likely creates more confusion, them not understanding, you know maybe, what the truth or what the issues even are. I believe a conversation that’s going to be really important for youth is the conversation of consent and what consent looked like maybe when us older folks grew up will look different than how it does with the younger generation as, you know, they move through dating life and so forth. I think there will be a different light on what’s appropriate and how to have to some of those conversations. And, again, being comfortable in addressing those more upfront versus looking at the subtleties or, you know, perceiving it different than maybe what it was.

Jeremi: A lot of students, in preparation for this podcast and also in other conversations when we have asked this question, what is consent? Is there something you want to say about that?

Hanna: Yeah, I mean, you know, flashing back into my single life here I guess, I think we just need to have, you know, real intentional check ins, you know? And making sure that everyone’s on the same page. I think in the college environment, I think drugs and alcohol are a real concern that needs to be considered in this because consent always can’t be given in those situations. So it’s not easy and there’s every variation that you can think of of, you know complication around different scenarios that make it difficult, but it doesn’t mean we stop trying and we keep having the dialogue and we keep checking in.

Jeremi: That’s great, that’s great.

Hanna: Another component that I think is important in this conversation is our view of masculinity in the culture and what is toxic masculinity versus healthy masculinity I think is really important on many levels, of whether it’s getting men involved in the conversation or how, you know, our children are affected by this concept, or of this landscape I should say. And I think there’s some shifts that need to be made in what we consider masculinity. You know there’s a history of, sometimes of solving problems through violence or getting status through those that have power and control, or even just the concept of status through scoring with the ladies that really needs to change as well. And I think that’s a component that we’re also seeing improvements on generationally, but I think an important item for the dialogue.

Jeremi: That’s great, I like the emphasis on consent as a dialogue, not a one-way conversation.

Hanna: Exactly.

Jeremi: Allison, what are you telling your son and daughter?

Allison: I think that, you know, the consent issue is a really important one as Hanna mentioned, there’s a wonderful video about consent with a tea service that I think provides a really good explanation and example of consent that most people can relate to–

Jeremi: We’ll link that to the podcast, that’s a great idea, we’ll put up the link

Allison: Yeah, that would be great. I think that when your kids get to a certain age, they need to be made aware of some realities of what’s out there and what can happen in types of situations. I learned a lot through this process of putting together this resolution and having an opportunity to talk with survivors and I’ve been one of the lucky ones and haven’t been a victim and I don’t think you really realize the depth of violence that’s out there and how that can impact someone and how it can happen in a split second and it can happen in places that you think are safe and it can happen by somebody that you know and, unfortunately, I think we have to break some of that complacency and make sure that people are aware of their surroundings and the choices that they make.

Jeremi: Sure, Zachary is that a message that you and other young men and women are getting now?

Zachary: I think actually, yeah, I think that’s coming across very loud and clear. I think that a lot of people who are my age really are kind of outraged at some of the stuff that goes on, like, in politics in terms of this issue. Like I remember watching, like, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings with my friends during math class and like–

Jeremi: During math class?

Zachary: Everyone was like– our teacher let us! Everyone was like outraged and really upset that he was getting away with what he did and it was, and people are constantly raising issues of consent and I think it’s an issue that we’ve actually done a really good job educating people.

Jeremi: That’s a wonderful, optimistic note to close on. I do think that conversations like this one, which are certainly more frequent now than they have been ever before in the past and, with men, being a part of these conversations, though, often not leading them and maybe it’s appropriate sometimes that women lead the conversation, but these conversations certainly show progress. We have a long way to go, but I think all of you have helped us to move along that path and to see that there is a pathway forward to a more inclusive and humane society, so Hanna, Allison, Zachary, thank you so much for being with us and please join us and please join us for our next episode of This is Democracy.

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Intro voices: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke and you can find his music at harrisonlemke.com. Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on democracy.

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