Read Amber Light and support Family Services
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This has personal significance to me, not only through experience, but in my writing as well. In the 1970s, I wrote an article about rape for a Catholic family magazine, and it focused on how to talk to children about this particular type of violence. It might seem difficult to believe this now, but at the time, the editorial staff took a chance when they assigned this piece as a result of my query letter. At that time, rape wasn’t something decent people were supposed to talk about.
This April, I’d like to pay homage to the network of rape crisis centers, the first of which opened in the U.S. in San Francisco in 1972. But their number rapidly grew in that decade. Fast forward 20 years, and during the 1990s, while living in Asheville, North Carolina, I volunteered at Buncombe County’s Rape Crisis Center. As an on-call volunteer, my job was to take after hours phone calls and to show up at the hospital to support the woman who’d agreed to go to the emergency room to collect evidence. I will never forget those brave women, some in their teens (they were all women during my time there), the hospital staff, the police, and the dedicated crisis center staff who worked so hard to serve the community, while fighting for funds to keep going. They’re my heroes, and so are those brave enough to report the crime.
I learned some important things from this volunteer experience. First, even today, sexual assault tends to be a hidden crime, and the women and men who experience it often stay silent about the trauma, but fear, anger/rage, and grief tends to resurface at some later time. What had happened to me in my 20s was “street crime,” an assault by a stranger. I’m not minimizing this violent act, but it was an impersonal crime. However, in the majority of rape cases, individuals know their attackers, whether the perpetrators are extended family members, coaches, bosses, or clergy, or often people they socialize with. And that may lead to secrecy, shame, and self-blame. A few of those middle-of-the-night calls I took were from women who were seeking help 10 or 20 years after the assault. Revealing what happened even years later frequently triggered anxiety and fear–and nightmares.
Fast forward another 15 years. I published my novel, AMBER LIGHT, which features 18-year-old Sarah, assaulted and left pregnant by a boy she knew. She stayed silent, too, until finally telling her story to a counselor at a Rape Crisis Center, which started her journey back to hope and healing–and second chances.
Writing AMBER LIGHT gave me a chance to pay homage to the women I’d worked with at the crisis center. You can read AMBER LIGHT for free with Kindle Unlimited, but the e-book and paperback editions are for sale.
During April and May, I’ll donate all proceeds from the sale of AMBER LIGHT to Family Services, a local not-for-profit that manages the crisis lines for several counties in Northeastern Wisconsin.
