This morning, I received an e-mail from someone that I do not know. I don't believe that she's a volunteer or has any tangible tie here. That really has no significance except that she is a stranger and quite possibly could have stumbled on our site from anywhere. Maybe she's a potential or past client, who knows. Either way, I have never met her and do not know her story.
Her e-mail referred to a testimony that I myself posted on our website. It is the touching story of a client, "Emma," who experienced horrible events and circumstances but still chose to give her unborn child, the result of a rape, the gift of life and further more bless a couple who couldn't have children by placing him for adoption. You can read Emma's entire story here. Have tissues handy, it's a very powerful testimony.
Apparently our e-mail friend this morning had a complaint about the fact that we put a note at the end of the testimony that says, "Less than 3% of unplanned pregnancies are a result of rape." This statement was seen, by the e-mailer, as offensive, led her to believe that we think our client was lying, and as being disrespectful to all victims of sexual assault.
At first, as I read the e-mail, I was furious. So many things ran through my head: Why would I post her testimony if I thought the client was lying? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? How is it that we were able to disrespect EVERY victim of sexual assault by helping someone who was raped? Do people really have so much time on their hands that they sit around and find things like this to write e-mails about? And then the important question...what about this situation upset our e-mailer so much?
I won't spend much time addressing the question raised by our e-mailer except to say this: we of course believe our client or we wouldn't have put her story up on our website and also used it in a mailing that went out to ALL of our donors in December if we didn't. We are actually asked that question a lot, how many unplanned pregnancies are the result of rape, so we chose to answer before being asked. I guarantee that if we had not put that footnote up, I would have received several angry e-mails demanding that we point out the low percentage of pregnancies resulting from rape and probably accusing us of skewing the facts by NOT including that information. None of this was intended to disrespect or discredit women who have been sexually assaulted or even become pregnant as the result of a rape.
What this got me thinking about though, is why it elicited such an emotional response from both of us. What has she been through or seen that caused her to be so upset by what she perceived, however incorrectly, was publicly criticism of a rape victim. What about her e-mail made me so mad that I wanted to track her down on facebook, find out where she lives, and go yell at her (which I would never do but that's just how mad I was). Was it the friends that I've personally know who have been the victims of sexual assault? Or maybe it's the years I've spent working and volunteering at Mercy Ministries where I heard the most horrendous stories of sexual assault, ones you couldn't even think of because they're so disturbing. I saw the damage and carnage left in the wake of sexual assault in ways that I hope most people NEVER see. I even helped edit Mercy's book about sexual assault called Violated.
I saw girls who develop eating disorders just to feel like they had control over something after their assault left them feeling powerless. Weighing 90 or less pounds, coming to Mercy because the hospitals sent them home to die because there was nothing else they could do or their insurance ran out. Girls who cut their arms and even tried to kill themselves because they can't deal with the memories or the pain.
My heart broke that someone would think that I don't have respect for these women and it made me incredibly angry. It also made me realize that I was dealing with a theme that seems to be coming up a lot in my life lately: brokenness. We're all fallen and broken and it is out of that brokenness that we interact with each other. We all come with previous wounds, emotional baggage and a virtual psychological mine field. Hurt people going around hurting other people. It's a pretty vicious cycle and there's only one solution to it--forgiveness.
I hope that eventually she can see that we weren't trying to be hurtful and in fact, try to bring hope and healing to women's lives. I also hope that I can have compassion for her, as well as our clients and the thousands of women impacted by sexual assault.
thanks for letting me get that out. I've been really upset about it all day. Maybe that's why I couldn't get this poster designed today!
