A little more than six years ago, someone I knew raped me. I decided to file a police report and participate in a criminal court process. Someone asked me if I would write down a few thoughts about that experience to share with you as you might be trying to decide for yourself whether or not to do the same.

I can't tell you what the best decision is, only what I know. The most important thing I can tell you is that there are people whose job it is to support you. They are called advocates. It's their job to help you and support you in this process. Use them.

1. Don't expect anything to happen immediately. Everything in the criminal court process moves painfully slow. It took an entire year for my case to go from filing a report to sentencing. It felt really frustrating because I was ready to move on, but the criminal justice system had its own timeline that has nothing to do with helping me feel better.
   
   
2. You have the right to be informed about everything that happens--from conditions of release to when hearings will be held to conditions of sentencing. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean people will automatically call you every time they should. Be proactive in getting what you need and what you want. Advocates can be a huge help with this.
   
   
3. Nothing much important happens at omnibus (pre-trial) hearings. I found it really frustrating to be sitting in on all the hearings and not being able to speak on my own behalf or to have any influence over what happened.
   
   
4. You have the right to give your opinion to the district attorney about any plea agreement presented during the case. What makes plea bargains difficult is that the perpetrator may actually be convicted of charges that do not represent what happened. For example, the perpetrator may get charged with aggravated assault rather than sexual assault. This can feel like your experiences are being misrepresented.
   
   
5. Normal ethics no longer apply. I really struggled with trying to figure out what the "right" thing to do was. I came to the conclusion that I needed to think about what would be most effective and most appropriate instead of what was "right" or what I would do under "normal" circumstances. Nothing about sexual assault feels normal, and there really aren't "right" choices. Only choices that help you feel more safe and more whole, or choices that don't help you feel more safe and more whole.
   
   
6. The prosecuting attorney said the defense lawyer "wouldn't beat up on me too much." I'm not sure what that meant to him, but I felt emotionally mauled by the time I got done on the witness stand. The defense attorney in my case tried to get me to give simple yes or no answers to questions that were more complicated that that. I just had to think through the questions carefully, tell the truth, and not let the attorney mess me up too much. He only really tripped me up once, and I think I made him mad a few times because I did a good job of keeping my composure. In a strange way, I'm proud of that.
   
   
7. Expect that sitting on a witness stand is grueling--more than anyone can prepare you for... but not more than you can handle. You can ask for breaks if you need them. I found it much more difficult to maintain my composure when the attorneys would stop and argue with each other to the judge. I wasn't expecting it would be hard to sit through that. I was on the witness stand for about four hours. It seemed like forever... but it wasn't. When it was done, it was done. It's extremely trying, but you get through it.
   
   
8. Expect that you will have to verbally describe--in sometimes painfully explicit detail--exactly what happened. You will have to say words like penis and breasts and intercourse. Expect that you will have to justify what you did--even simple, every day things that you think are 'normal'. In my case, I had to justify why I didn't sleep with my bedroom door locked, what I wore when I slept, how long I normally slept, how much I had to drink the night before and whether or not the defendant and I had ever been sexually involved. These are some of the parts that felt most victim-blaming to me.
   
   
9. If you get the opportunity to give a victim impact statement (at the sentencing hearing), read it yourself or have someone read it for you. It was the only time during the whole process that no one could take my words away from me and make them into something I didn't mean. My friends who were there told me that no one in the room--not even the judge--was unaffected by what I said. It was my chance to speak and be heard.
   
   
10. Finally, don't expect that going through any of this--even if it ends in a conviction or a guilty plea--will necessarily give you a sense of justice or resolution or closure or make you feel any better or different. I think that was one of the most difficult things for me to understand. I thought that maybe if I went through this whole process and stuck it out as bravely as I could, that maybe it would ameliorate the hurt and hard parts with which I was struggling. Because our criminal justice system is retributional (based on punishment) rather than restorative (moving toward wholeness), it focused on punishing the person who hurt me rather than helping me feel whole.
    
    

Making a police report helped me feel like I did what I could. Even though I felt like I wanted to just roll over and die, I didn't. But I didn't find all the healing I needed from the process, either. Someone hurt me, and I did what I knew how to do to make something right about it. It helped me to know that I did what I could. It felt like society validated the wrongness of my experience, even in spite of my dissatisfaction with the sentence.

If you're trying to decide whether or not to make a police report about your unwanted sexual experience, I wish you all the strength, courage, bravery, love, and persistence in the world. It isn't an easy process. Making a report, even if you're not sure you want to move forward at this time, helps you to keep your options open. If you decide a week or a month or a year from now that you want to try the criminal justice option, having a statement and/or evidence from as close to the incident as possible will improve the odds. Do what you need to do to feel safe and supported. Do whatever will help you feel more whole. Be tenacious, courageous, and above all, be kind to yourself. Now more than ever, you need kindness.

The text on this page was not developed by the University. It is meant to provoke thought and dialogue about what sexual assault survivors have experienced as complainants in criminal cases, however not all survivors who proceed with criminal adjudication experience the same thing and the length of cases vary. If you have questions about filing a criminal complaint we strongly recommend that you contact our office and allow us to put you in contact with Manhattan District Attorney's Office.