Attend this session and reflect on it as a comment to this post. Relate to psychology of violence. 10pts.
VICTORY OVER VIOLENCE: THE JOYCE BENNER STORY
Joyce Benner will speak at 7 p.m., Tuesday, April 19, in the Ballroom, MAU. This event is sponsored by the Student Organization Speakers Fund and is hosted by the student organization UNI Right to Life.
I attended the speech by Joyce Benner and was surprised by her approach to the topic. I went in thinking she would tell a lot of detail about the rape and the emotional toll it took, but instead she focused a lot on her organizations and the work she does now.
I'm not saying she didn't tell about some of her emotional struggle, but it seemed like she put the majority of the story in the first 1/3 of her speech and then spent the rest talking about the support group foundations and helping women organizations that she is involved in.
Benner revealed the details of her attack in that she knew the man who raped her (a cook at the restaurant where she was a server). She had noticed him giving her some favorable attention which led up to him pushing her into a freezer and making sexual advances until he raped her. She recalls that when he finished, he slapped her and said "See ya around, bitch" and walked away.
Her confusion, shame, guilt, and self-blame were familiar to me as common reactions from rape victims. She was 20 years old and didn't know who to go to. She did speak to police about the incident, but then said that "due to different variables", she did not press charges? I still don't fully understand what that meant.
The huge drama started when 2 months later Benner realized she was pregnant and then was faced with not knowing who the father was. She was in a relationship at the time (although she did not specify if they had engaged in unprotected sex together). I found that to make the emotional situation that much harder. To know you have a child growing inside you and not knowing which man it belongs to must be such a deep conflicting feeling.
She left college very soon after she found out she was pregnant and headed back home to live with her parents. She said her relationship with her boyfriend crumbled because he was unable to deal with the pregnancy as well. Unfortunately, in the short time following the rape until she left, Benner still had to work with the cook at the restaurant, even though she specifically asked that he be moved to a different shift. It seems like there was minimal support for her in the college environment and her only resource was to head home.
Overall, I am impressed that Benner was able to come to the decision to keep the child and love it no matter which man it came from. She focused more on the fact that she was the mother, and that's what mattered. She was going to raise her son and love him regardless of the circumstances that brought him into the world. She did do a paternity test once he was born, but would not tell the audience the result.
She now works with feminism groups helping other women who may have been through similar trauma: rape, sexual assault, violent domestic relationships. I think it is great that she is able to use her own experience to help others. I'm sure she can relate to them on a personal level and that may help them heal.
She also works to raise awareness about child sex trafficking and attempts to prevent those young people from suffering. Her hometown of Toledo, Ohio is #4 in the nation for sex trafficking. One of her surprising facts was that 77% of young girls who are taken into the sex trade end up becoming street hookers because they grow up thinking that is all they are worth and it is the life they know. That is incredibly sad, and I was encouraged to hear that their efforts have returned 600+ children to their families after having been forced into the sex trade.
Benner escaped her rapist and moved far away back to her home, however she still has the reminder of her son. Someone asked if it is a painful reminder seeing her son and thinking of the rapist, but she said she instead focuses on the fact that she is his mother and is raising him with love. He is now 11 years old, so she does not feel he should know the whole truth just yet. I do admire her ability to tell her story and be an advocate for helping other women.
This talk by Joyce Benner was hosted by UNI’s Right to Life and was basically a sermon of anti-abortion but there are some good areas of her story that I can relate to the class. When Joyce went to college, she decided to go far away from her home. Because of this, she had to work 2 jobs to keep up with expenses. When she was 20 years old, one of her jobs was as a server at a restaurant. One night, one of the cooks kept making sexual advances toward her and at the end of the night, took her in the back and raped her. She ended up pregnant and did not know if the pregnancy was due to the rape or her relationship with her boyfriend of the time. She ultimately did not ever tell us who the father of her now 11 year old son is.
One thing I found interesting about her story is that she told us he had fun with it because when he was done he slapped her and said, “See ya round bitch.” This tells me that he felt powerful after the rape. This one slap and sentence is like saying to her that he will continue to have control over her because of what just happened. In a sense, I think his method of control was successful because Joyce never pressed charges against him even though she had the opportunity to. He definitely had power over her in the sense that she was made to feel like it was her fault or that she was asking for it. She mentioned that others at the restaurant thought it was her fault also. Joyce said the rape and entire ordeal made her feel like she had lost a part of herself and she had no coping skills to deal with it. She ended up moving back home. She ended up not only finding strength in herself but helping other abused women find strength. I think this was a very good way of coping with the issues of rape. She worked in a battered women’s shelter and as a legal advisory for human trafficking.
The way that the story was told, it seems the rapist just wanted to demonstrate his power. He probably felt the need to do this as a way of restoring power that he had felt he lost whether it had anything to do with Joyce or not. He probably experienced anxieties due to repeated unexpected failures in his life. Because he made his attempts to sexually entice Joyce (in front of others at the restaurant) he probably felt that he had to gain power to display it to his coworkers and because he feared failure in catching Joyce’s interest which threatened his power.
I think Joyce’s reaction to the rape showed that she did not develop an insecure attachment because of it. She worked to help other women who have been in bad situations and she also is now married. Although the experience was horrible, she did not let it ruin her life. Now she is able to tell others her story and give hope to other women. On a personal note, I feel like of course the talk was about an incident in her life but she REALLY let it be known that it was about her. I think she enjoys talking about herself a little too much. I also think that she let her whole life be defined by the rape and pregnancy which is partly good because she is helping others and feels good about what she is doing. As long as she is happy with what she is doing and she is helping others, I guess that’s all that really matters. She also talked about triggers of the rape that remind her of it. She said her son was not a trigger and that struck me as an amazing strength and regaining of her power.
This talk was not the easiest to relate to this class. Her main point was that you don’t have to abort your pregnancy even if it is due to rape but rape is definitely a violent act of gaining power. While I feel like Joyce may have felt overpowered (psychologically) by her rapist at first, she overcame that and moved on to be a strong individual.