From Outrage to Rape

When I began researching for this project, I was overwhelmed by how many women, regardless of their background, had been a victim of sexual assault. I was finding it difficult to pick just one historical example to serve as the inspiration for this poem, so I chose the four stories that stood out the most to me. Each of the documents is laid out in the poem in chronological order with women and girls from different backgrounds to convey that rape has always been about violation and control and that this happens to women and girls despite age, race, socioeconomic background, etc. Finally, I ended this spoken-word poem very intentionally with the story of a case that ended with a conviction to inspire hope and the closing words to let readers know that they are far from alone in this experience.

The first article that inspired this work was a brief story of a ten year old girl in a local Oklahoma newspaper in 1902. Immediately following finding that article, I discovered another account in Tennessee newspaper from 1912 with a fifteen year old girl. In both stories, the rapist escaped and the young girls were traumatized. While it is obviously appalling that two girls who were so young went through this, I also wanted to make it clear that it was not just young girls, and young white girls at that, that are victims of these types of crimes. For those reasons, the stories of Recy Taylor and Betty Jean Owens stood out to me and were incorporated into this spoken-word poem with the stories from the two young girls that I found.

From Outrage to Rape

1902

Ten years old

Susie Taylor was ten years old when she was “outraged” by a masked man

Coming home from school,

Still at the age where imaginations run wild with possibilities and boys are gross.

Too young to fully understand what had happened to her,

But old enough to be terrified and cry.

1912

Hazel Bandy was just fifteen years old when she was “outraged” by someone she thought she could trust.

The media quick to report and pick apart her trauma like vultures,

Abused, friendless, naive, and when she was alone with Fred White, terrified.

The papers made a point to make it clear as water,

Hazel was the helpless gazel and Fred the hungry lion.

Just fifteen when she was arrested for “suspicious conduct” with the man who “outraged” her

And just fifteen years old when the night guard let Fred White escape,

Returning Hazel to her father to be abused, friendless, and now terrified for the rest of her life.

1944

Thirty-two years after Hazel Bandy, Recy Taylor, twenty-four years old, not a child herself, but with a child of her own, was kidnapped and “outraged” by six white men.

Blindfolded and petrified, left in the middle of town to stumble around as if in a dark room,

Even with the support of women’s groups, Black organizations, and the governor himself, the men flew away free, crows onto their next victim.

It was a crime, an injustice, as if one of the sides on the scales of law had been cut.

It was rape.

And yes I said rape because that was what it was,

Because people were finally willing to call it what it was,

As if a switch had been flipped and suddenly there was no more dancing around the word like a ballerina on her tiptoes, calling it an outrage.

But it is also an outrage.

It is an outrage that this happened to so many women, so many young girls,

Still happens to so many women, so many young girls.

1959

College student Betty Jean Owens was out with her friends when four white men took her and raped her.

Nineteen when she was threatened with her life because some suburban white boys wanted to have an “all night party” from hell,

Out on the hunt on a Saturday night, instead of a dance like the Florida A&M students.

But it was 1959 and unlike the stories you’ve heard before, those suburban predators were convicted, openly, arrogantly boasting about their crime,

Like a bunch of demented peacocks showing off their brightly colored feathers.

And with that conviction, the issue of rape was solved, right?

Finally, justice had been served,

Government officials and politicians patting themselves on the back,

A job well done, acting like they had served freshly-made french toast with powdered sugar and fruit and sticky sweet syrup to the defense instead of a stale slice of bread, still edible but not nearly enough to satisfy the history of assault and abuse women have faced.

As if this single conviction is undeniable proof that the system isn’t broken as long as a rapist or two gets put away every once in a while.

As if the system in place doing the one thing is supposed to do in the first place is cause for a Fourth of July party, fireworks and all.

But god forbid a woman come forward that is from anything less than a middle class Christian home, because only morally upstanding Christian girls can get raped, right?

Only they should get justice?

You never know what those other girls were wearing, or what they looked like.

What if they smiled at their assailant? Were walking home alone at night?

Got in trouble with the law or at school? Did drugs? Weren’t virgins?

Didn’t report the crime?

Well, then they had to be asking for it then.

Because the only explanation is they all had something to hide,

It could not possibly be the trauma, the fear, the pain, the shame,

Or simply not knowing what to do

Hoping that someone is brave enough to come forward

So they can finally say, “Hey, me too”.

References

McGuire, Danielle L. “‘It Was like All of Us Had Been Raped’: Sexual Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle.” Journal of American History, vol. 91, no. 3, 2004, p. 906., https://doi.org/10.2307/3662860.

“Young Girl Outraged.” The Guthrie Daily Leader , 18 Apr. 1902, p. 3. Library of Congress, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86063952/1902-04-18/ed-1/seq-3/.

“A Young Girl Outraged by a Show Man.” Carroll County Democrat , 6 Sept. 1912, p. 1. Library of Congress, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89058115/1912-09-06/ed-1/seq-1/#date1=1870&index=1&rows=20&words=Girl+Outraged+Young&searchType=basic&sequence=0&state=&date2=1963&proxtext=young+girl+outraged&y=0&x=0&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1. Accessed 2 May 2022.