Living Monument
The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men.
It therefore provides strong guarantees for the rights of the accused but essentially no guarantees for the rights of the victim. If one set out by design to devise a system for provoking intrusive post-traumatic symptoms, one could not do better than a court of law. Women who have sought justice in the legal system commonly compare this experience to being raped a second time.
Not surprisingly, the result is that most rape victims view the formal social mechanisms of justice as closed to them, and they choose not to make any official report or com-plaint. Studies of rape consistently document this fact. Less than one rape in ten is reported to police. Only 1 percent of rapes are ultimately resolved by arrest and conviction of the offender. Thus, the most common trauma of women remains confined to the sphere of private life, without formal recognitotion or restitution from the community. There is no public monument for rape survivors.
In the task of healing, therefore, each survivor must find her own way to restore her sense of connection with the wider community. We do not know how many succeed in this task. But we do know that the women who recover most successfully are those who discover some meaning in their experience that transcends the limits of personal tragedy.
Most commonly, women find this meaning by joining with others in social action. In their follow-up study of rape survivors, Burgess and Holmstrom discovered that the women who had made the best recoveries were those who had become active in the antirape movement. They became volunteer counselors at rape crisis centers, victim advocates in court, lobbyists for legislative reform. One woman traveled to another country to speak on rape and organize a rape crisis center. In refusing to hide or be silenced, in insisting that rape is a public matter, and in demanding social change, survivors create their own living monument.