Candlelight walk sheds light on domestic violence, sexual assault

Rape: Today’s most common violent crime on American college campuses.

Sixty-five people last week sat in the Richmond Salon Room at the University Student Commons to learn more about rape on the Monroe Park campus at VCU’s “Take Back the Night” event. The crowd of mostly teenagers and early 20s white, black and middle-aged women and men listened to speakers before walking with candles through Monroe Park.

“Tonight is about surviving sexual assault. It’s about taking back the night. It’s about being together as a community, not just the VCU community but the Richmond community – and we have quite a history here.”

Thus, D. Gay Cutchin, VCU’s coordinator for sexual assault and domestic violence education, began to share the reason she stood on the stage.

“The reason it’s so important is for us to talk about this on campus,” said Cutchin who has been at VCU 13 years. “I ask those of you who have brothers or sisters that are younger to think about raising awareness to them, because women between ages 16 and 24 experience rape at four times the rate of all women. So, this is a very dangerous time in some ways for college women.”

In her speech, she used statistical data to emphasize her points on raising awareness of sexual assault and clearly pointed out that sexual assault not only affects women but also men.

“There was a study done in Virginia by the Department of Health in 2003 and 12.9 percent of the men they surveyed said they were sexually assaulted, mostly, when they were younger. They were assaulted by men, so it’s something we need to talk to everyone about.”

The coordinator cited two important times when students need to be aware about the dangers of sexual assault.

“One is the first couple of weeks when college first begins,” she said. “Also, from years of doing this work, one of the other times I see that can be vulnerable is right now in the spring when they’re a lot parties and alcohol is involved.”

A major concern, Cutchin said, is when students haven’t come to grips with their past abuse until they arrive on campus.

“Another thing we see at college a lot is providers who were sexually assaulted as children, and they never come to terms or think or even talk about their situation until they’re away from home. So, we get a lot of closure from people in their first year of college.”

Cutchin then talked about the significance and the meaning of “Take Back the Night” for sexually abused students.

Two members of a student group read two poems. The entire group performed an interpretive skit about rape while another one performed an interpretive dance.

A young woman soon walked to the stage to tell her story of surviving sexual assault. She told the audience that from age 5 until she was a young teenager she was sexually abused by her grandfather. And once she had the courage to tell her family what was going on, no one believed her, so she became an outcast.

She recounted turning to drugs as an escape that made her life spin out of control. But recently, she began to pick up the pieces and put her life back together.

“If I could get past this traumatic event, anyone can in due time,” she said.

Near the end of the program, Cutchin asked audience members to march with candles as the survivors walked through Monroe Park.

Soon, 40 people congregated on Cherry Street before walking around the park with lighted candles chanting “What do we want? Stop the violence!” and “When do we want it? Right now!”

All the participants marched back to Cherry Street to converse a few minutes about the candlelight ceremony. Cutchin then reiterated the importance of having this event every year.

“It’s incredibly important, because it’s an issue we don’t talk about,” she said. “I think people are silent too long and we need to create an environment that’s supportive for people to come forward and get help. If we don’t talk about it people aren’t going to come forward.”

Tonya James, a Richmond resident, said she thinks this event is extremely important in bringing awareness to sexual assault issues.

“I believe Take Back the Night is a phenomenal event. I think it should be done more than twice a year,” she said. “Tonight brings just a great awareness to the problem of sexual assaults on college campuses, but also here in the city of Richmond.”

John Roberts, another Richmond resident, said he was touched by the night’s event in more ways than one.

“I came away with a greater awareness tonight from this event. I see now how important it is to solve the problem of sexual assaults on and off campus,” he said. “The young lady’s story about how her grandfather abused her hit me right in the heart. That made me want to come out and march tonight and continue doing work in my community to bring awareness to sexual assault and domestic violence.”

Cutchin pointed out that more men need to spread awareness of sexual assault and domestic violence in their communities.

“We need more men. That’s what’s missing in this movement – men. Men are the ones who are going to end it, not women,” she said. “If you say anything, please say we need the men on our campus that are against this to come forward and work with us side by side to eliminate violence against women on our campus.”