Análisis de Parámetros para validar Hipótesis

28. What would you say to a woman who thought she might be pregnant as a result o f a rape?

Found Materials

I am in my office sorting through old files. 1 come across the most amazing find, a set of notes which I must have written when I was telephone counselling at the Rape Crisis Centre. It was a long and complicated call. I must have needed notes to help me keep track. Nothing identifies the caller’s identity - in fact 1 don’t think that 1 ever knew her name. 1 have been working for nearly three years on the evocative presentation of research texts - could I craft something from these notes? Or perhaps my question needs to be should 1 craft something? This closely packed scrawl names no names, but it is nonetheless intimately revelatory. This is an intimate document of the dialogue between the two of us. This is a document of what we negotiated as our joint meaning of her experiences. This tight package of words and doodles is my filtering of her spoken words - my script of her enunciations. * I

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES’ TYPES OF TRAINING

Counselling skills - 98% Issues training - 93%

feminist theory and practice - 52% sexual violence and sexuality - 93% Racism - 55%

I egal discrimination - 50% O ther - 57%

I want a text that presents the doing-ness of rape crisis work. This is a vital position from which to understand the building of this research. If 1 craft a text from these notes it will carry an emotional charge for me which resonates with the doing of Rape Crisis work. In a very important way this is what the training is for. The training helps women to prepare for these moments of listening to a survivor. As a counsellor 1 listened to this woman, I attempted to create a safe space for her to talk of and to her experiences. When we spoke 1 wrote notes because 1 needed a text to help me hold on to what she was saying. 1 had no intention of using these notes for any other purpose. What right do I have to represent this text here? I am not the first researcher/writer to find myself facing this dilemma. Michelle Fine (1992) uses her five-hour conversation with a rape survivor, ‘Altamese Thomas’, whom she saw in her capacity as a volunteer rape counsellor, to structure her arguments about the appropriateness of individualistic ways of coping with sexual violence. When 1 read Fine’s text 1 had a ‘gut feeling' of ethical discomfort. 1 wondered what it would be like for Altamese to stumble across Fine’s words and, perhaps, find herself there.

FORENSIC EVIDENCE

The police surgeon is usually a G P who has received training in the collection of specimens for forensic purposes. The Home Office provides a standard sexual assault examination kit.

1. The doctor obtains permission for the examination, stressing that all information will be made available to the police.

2. A detailed history is taken to include: recent sexual, menstrual and contraceptive histories: the details of the assault; what action the survivor has taken since, e.g. bathing, changing clothes.

3. The survivor stands on a piece of paper and undresses down to her underwear, the paper collects any ‘trace evidence’ which may fall during the process of undressing. 4. The clothes are taken for forensic examination.

5. The upper part of the body is examined, injuries documented and bite m arks swabbed. Particular attention is paid to the mouth, especially in the case of oral penetration, lips and gums may be swabbed.

6. A fluorescent light is used to help locate semen and saliva stains. 7. The underwear is removed, and taken for forensic examination. 8. The breasts are examined.

9. The genitals and anus are visually inspected and then swabs are taken.

10. A speculum is inserted so th at high vaginal swabs can be taken. If the rape occurred more than 48 hours previously an endocerviral swab is taken to try to locate surviving spermatozoa.

11. Combings of head and pubic hair are taken, plus some ‘control specimens' plucked from the head and pubic region.

12. Fingernail scrapings are taken.

13. Two blood samples are taken. These are for blood grouping and DNA analysis. Some police surgeons take additional blood in order to estimate drug or alcohol use.

Adapted from Helen Lacey (1991)

1 will craft something from these found notes of a long past counselling session - but that does not mean that I am comfortable doing so. I will proceed, but 1 will do so ‘in anguish’ (Josselson, 1996, p.70).

The intersections o f form and frailty are haunted places. The solace of good form organizes and warms our frailties; the persistence of our damage empties out form and wears it away. The intersections o f form and frailty are haunted places and duets there are beautiful and horrible, so vivid and so austere.

Judith Hamera(1996, p.205)

1 PRAYED ‘Please God, stop this happening. Just let me die’.

1 just want to be held for it to be appropriate - I just want to be held without having to offer purity.

I don’t feel like a woman anymore. Well suicide would be an off button.

My sister’s anger is like a wall that 1 can’t break through.

I feel like they’re all watching me. Waiting for me to be a ‘victim’. I dream about him and when 1 wake up 1 can smell him in the house. I don’t know how to solve myself anymore.

It’s come into everything.

Parts of that night are always there. Freeze-framed in my mind.

I can still smell him, alcohol, vomit, body odour, a staleness. I can almost taste him.

It makes it worse telling people - it makes him real again. It was an ordinary day. 1 decided to walk home.

I can only react to what he did rather than think about what happened. He said that he would find me again and kill me.

Oh God 1 feel sick.

Somehow I still believe that he will kill me. He won’t be in prison for ever. I can still feel his hand over my mouth.

There’s this fear inside me just growing. I can hear his voice smothering me.

Did I signal to him that I’m a lesbian? Is that why he did it?

They let me look at the forensic pictures. That verified that it was that awful. That was how he saw me.

The photos they just represent pain. They’re not me, they’re not a person. I can't remember what life was like before.

I was just 'a female’ - a vehicle for his rage. 1 can't remember if I was quiet.

1 remember feeling scared, then terror.

It was so physical. 1 bit my tongue, then there was blood in my mouth.

There was light at the end of the tunnel - but I couldn’t see it 1 couldn’t get to it. All the time his smell.

1 remember thinking 'what will 1 say to my mother?’ Nothing is automatic anymore.

When I sit down to eat 1 think of what he did. I’ve lost my body.

It’s not getting any easier.

I'm screaming but I’m not making any sound.

I'm looking for somewhere to get under - like a dog does. It’s a place I’ll never get out of.

1 feel like a sponge that soaked him up. I’m two people now.

I'm totally contaminated now. I’m sordid This wasn’t in my life plan.

He owns the space 1 stand in. 1 keep feeling him here now.

I feel like reacting to this rape is all I’ve ever done. I want to connect to myself but 1 keep connecting to him. I am a powerful woman I can silence his voice.

no need to hear your voice when I can talk about you better than you can speak about yourself. No need to hear your voice. Only tell me about your pain. 1 want to know your story. And then 1 will tell it back to you in a new way. Tell it back to you in such a way that it has become mine, my own. Re-writing you, I write myself anew.

Michelle Fine (1994a, p.70, quoting from bell hooks)

So, let me write about myself. Let me write my pain. Let me write from my margin. Not my comfortable self-ness which everybody sees, the whiteness, the middleclass-ness, the intellectual cleverness, the fluidity of everyday competence. Just why did I become a Rape Crisis counsellor? Why do 1 care so much and work so hard? Is this con/text then, a con? This context shuttles between so many different places. 1 am left breathless. 1 have succumbed to Michelle Fine’s (1992, 1994a & b) charge of ‘ventriloquising’ 1 have choreographed all my significant selves from the text.

****

Dreaming

Small spiders stream from my mouth to cover my body, t alching and scraping I vomit them in protesting mouthfuls.

I suppose I was bom in a pretty standard sort of way. Second child to a thirty­ something and a forty-something. O f course late parenthood felt stranger in the sixties. I longed for a mini-skirted mum like those of my friends.

****

Dreaming

Snowflakes land on my bare arms and settle with perfect gentleness. Everything is cool and clear.

When I tire o f watching I lay back and close my eyes.