Vanderbilt Gang Rape Survivor Reads Letter to Her Rapist

Trigger Warning: This post contains sensitive material about sexual assault.

It’s been three years since three Vanderbilt University boys gang raped an unconscious woman while a fourth looked on, and last week one of the rapists was finally sentenced to prison — he got the minimum sentence for his crime.

At Corey Batey’s sentencing, the survivor, who has remained anonymous in the media, read a powerful statement, one that showed how the horrible attack changed her life entirely. The Tennesseean published the survivor’s statement in full here.

In the beginning of her statement, the survivor talked about how she has relived the attack over and over.

“You will never understand what this has done to me if you aren't standing in my shoes. The humiliation, the pain, the isolation, being reduced to nothing but a piece of flesh right before your eyes, it does something to you that is truly impossible to describe. I also know that it's hard to encapsulate the impact this has had because it is still ongoing. The attack on me didn't end that day because I relive it in every proceeding and experience additional attacks every time I am in court.”

This is particularly impactful because of what the judge said when he sentenced Corey to the minimum 15 years in prison. The Tennessean reports that Judge Monte Watkins said the real punishment for the four convicted rapists is the “life sentence” they face after prison. Because the trial is so high-profile and because the men will be on the sex offender registry for the rest of their lives, Watkins said they will be punished for the rest of their lives, regardless of how long they are incarcerated. But the survivor has a life sentence too. She will never forget how her attackers violated her.

“On June 22nd of 2013, I was a happy, hard-working Vanderbilt student looking forward to my future. I was twenty-one years old. I've seen with my own eyes what I was when Mr. Batey was done with me: a piece of trash, face down in a hallway covered in his urine and palm prints. A photograph he took himself. There are no words to describe the horror of the images from that night and how it feels to watch yourself be dehumanized. Something permanent snapped that day. I felt myself detach from my body. Now, I feel like I'm walking around in the shell of someone else. A part of me went numb, a sense of being a whole person with hopes and dreams about what's possible in the world was now gone. I felt my belief that people are inherently good twist into some cruel joke in an instant. I even blamed myself for believing that people weren't capable of something like this and that the world is a better place than it is, when the truth was that I did nothing wrong. No one should ever have to experience what I have. Mr. Batey is to blame for his actions and his choices.”

Because of social media and the internet, the survivor said this attack will follow her for the rest of her life.

“What happened to me that night has been compounded by the live-streaming, tweeting, and international dissemination of every detail of how I was degraded and humiliated for all posterity. In this age of technology, anyone I ever meet in my personal or professional life can learn I am a rape victim and the details of the case before I've even fully introduced myself to them. There is no way for me to even know if any given person I interact with has done so. This is something I now have to expect for the rest of my life.”

Listening to the details of her attack in court, and hearing Corey's interviews on the news were heart-wrenching for the survivor as she listened to the lies he spread. Reliving the attack, she said, made her feel powerless.

“It is also hard for me to push aside all of the attempts by the defendant to misrepresent himself and disparage my character, because I could stand here for hours talking about the impact of all the lies I've had to sit in this courtroom and listen to. I remember each and everyone of them, and every time it hurt me. It made me angry because I didn't have a voice, and I couldn't say anything. I shouldn't even have to defend myself, and even if I could everything I share about myself here is repeated by the national media. It got so bad that for the last two trials I couldn't even bear to sit in here and listen to it. Part of me does want to stand here for hours and hours and go through every single thing Mr. Batey has done throughout this case, but the truth is that the focus never should have been on me.”

The survivor is right — the focus should not have been on her. Because she was unconscious at the time of her rape, she could not consent to anything. That’s why she asked for Corey to receive the maximum sentence of 25 years. She appealed to the judge using logic that, unfortunately, isn’t held up in our system:

“Any victim should know they would have justice if they went through the process.”

We wish that were the case, but hopefully spreading the survivor’s statement will show that rape can be a life sentence for the survivor too, and it isn’t the attackers we should protect.

Related:  Everything You Need to Know About Consent That You Never Learned in Sex Ed