It's the number of years that each count of sexual assault, home invasion and stalking amounts to in the sentencing of former Bloomington, IL police officer Jeff Pelo. And while it is, by law, the maximum sentence for this rapist, it is also a statement that the Bloomington community is ready to elevate rape as serious as a murder.
Why, you may ask, do some rapists get four years, and others get 40? Contrary to popular belief, it is not their past records (depending on the case and how many years a previous offense was), but the number of charges against them for this case. Think of it as a recipe (as one of my detectives told me): breaking and entering is x number of years, burgulary carries x years, and rape is not just 10, or 5, or 3 years. Sodomy is x years, vaginal penetration is x years, and so on.
I mention this because as horrible and awfully mean it seems, if survivors knew how important remembering each crime is to having the rapist charged for the longest sentence possible, then it might make the process of remembering, documenting, seeking help just a tiny bit easier. Every cell of your being is fighting to protect yourself from remembering, but if there is one fiber that says, if I can say it to someone I could some day be vindicated, it will help. If you can extract yourself from the equation - as many survivors float over their own history and detatch themselves to deal with the pain and death of who they once were - and think that there may be others and that remembering may greatly affect another person's history, that helps too.
I was all about helping other people because it was too painful to remember me. While it wasn't healthy the way I trampled all over myself, I did good work for others and that I can be proud of. I do even better work now that I've owned my history. What has been taken away must be reconstructed - and never pieced back quite the way it was before - because there is no "going back".
The media talks about scars - it's not just scars, it's finding yourself invisible. Homeless. Displaced. And hating yourself along the way, not because you blame yourself (some may), but because you haven't pulled it together. That pressure we put on ourselves is sponsored in part by "real life heroes" on talk shows (not the survivors, the TV producers) and the myths that one you say it, once the rapist is caught, there is an end. There is never an end. The only thing that ended is the life that rapist took away - the "before". And while we don't dwell in the past, it is sometimes necessary to remember it, to own it, and to share it with others.
Kristy Mills and Jonelle Galuska asked that their names be released to the press. Thousands of survivors, including myself, thank you for being so honest and paving the way for other survivors to shed light on what it's really like in that court room - what it means to be able to give an impact statement - what it means to have your voice heard. Because my case was based on DNA evidence, I could not go public. And if you go back in my blog, you will find my livid posts about the rapist being in the papers every day - while I had to do what goes against everything I am as a survivor - I had to be silent.
No- sentencing is not a day of celebration, it doesn't heal or make the rape go away, but it gets the rapist off the street and protects the rest of us from potentially being their next victim. Because there always is.
