Face-to-Face

I finally got face-to-face with him after two years. Well, it was a Teams meeting, but he heard me this time. That’s for damn certain.

the Ford Showdown finally happened. I caught him at the Committee on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault meeting. His final meeting with that group as the next meeting with be with the new AG. I gave him a fitting send off. 

I made him put down his food, readjust his camera, and sit up straight during the first comment. Someone was on my website spot-checking the record as I spoke, having arrived through a Twitter link. I think he definitely heard me this time.

They aren’t allowed to respond under Nevada’s Open Meeting Law, and he jetted the second I finished my second comment.

I feel like I made a difference today. Aaron Ford will never charge him, obviously, but I feel like the message was received. He is a politician, though, and feigning care and interest is not beyond his skill set. He is truly a professional politician, and I don’t say that kindly.

I don’t know if they will post the videos of these comments. I tried to record the first one, but I fucked up a setting. So you’ll have to read it with the appropriate accents of snark and vitriol with which I delivered it. Use your imagination.

I did get the second video. That was my coercive control speech.

Read the whole fucking thing. Show me a little respect.

My name is Kathleen Light, L-I-G-H-T.

The Attorney General’s Office declined a case in which I was a victim. At least twice.

I had been sexually assaulted on video by my boyfriend, who just happened to be the Deputy Insurance Commissioner at the time.

All I can do is say over and over: It’s on video. That seems to be an issue for some people. I’m supposed to be a good little rape victim and shut up and hide. That I refuse to do. See, we want our victims to feel ashamed and be anonymous so we don’t have to look at and address the systemic and societal issues that have stagnated our beliefs about rape to the point they no longer align with modern law. We still force the victim to answer for her actions, but we never address the actual actions of rape. It’s his actions, not her reaction, that cause sexual assault.

In my case, what I cannot understand is how exactly one can claim that one cannot prove something that happened on video. It is on video.

Were my screams not enough? My begging? I said no 18 times and please stop 14 times. He told me to shut up, don’t be stupid. When I told him to pull it out seven times, referring to the manual penetration he was inflicting upon me, he said, “No, I’m not going to pull it out. I’m going to F you with it,” twice.

For the last two years, while the Attorney General willfully ignored me, well, Mr. Ford had me investigated by counterterrorism for indirect threats. But he ignored my requests to confer on the charging decision per Marsy’s Law, my public records requests, and numerous formal complaints I made addressing those concerns, as well as my massive daily social media campaign against him to get an answer. In fact, the Attorney General’s Office only produced a single public record that disparaged me and was untruthful, unsupported, and had nothing to do with my case, the investigation, or the charging decision.

The problem, I was told by the DA, was that I stayed with my rapist. That is what Steve Wolfson, who first had the case, said: “I can prosecute men who raped prostitutes, but you stayed with him.” Please note, I’ve never been a sex worker, but see, that still isn’t the law. That is my problem with that answer. And the Attorney General’s Office, which received the case at least twice, refuses to speak to me.

Relationships don’t equal consent. Sir Matthew Hale be damned. That has been the law all over the country for at least 30 years.

So that isn’t why this case was declined. So what was the real reason for declination? Is it really because you think I’m a whore, like Steve Wolfson alluded to?

Might it make a difference if you knew I have it in writing, under oath, that there was no consensual non-consent agreement, nor was there an agreement to pain? This was written by my rapist himself.

My rapist has raped other women. He told me he did. I fear there are more victims in the area. He is currently harassing me. I believe he hacked my computer and my phone and leaves weird little messages in documents on my devices that appear out of nowhere, like the entire screenplay to my favorite romantic comedy, with a note written in at the part where the guy tells the girl he loves her. I cannot escape from him.

You are allowing this to happen.

Please, for the love of God, charge him. He has no defense, and all you need is an expert witness on trauma and the balls to do it. I can help you if you let me because I know this case better than anyone else. I’ll be back for a second public comment, where I’ll be explaining coercive control. Our AG got tripped up on that question a couple of weeks ago, and I want to make certain he understands. Because the only shame I am willing to feel is if I give up before I change something for the next woman.

Comment #2

Coercive Control

Given the Attorney General had an issue defining it, I want to explain coercive control to you in very simple terms because I think it is something that is often misunderstood when we talk about sexual assault. And I want a man who could potentially be our governor to finally understand coercive control, as he has wasted eight years not charging rapists due to his willful ignorance on the subject.

I used to tell my rapist, Dave:

“You don’t have to hit a dog with a rolled-up newspaper too many times before the dog stops just because you reach for the paper.”

Eventually, the dog learns.

You have created compliance with no force.

That is an example of coercive control. It is a mental state of abuse.

One person learns that there are consequences for saying no, disagreeing, refusing, or not doing what the other person wants.

Eventually, the threat doesn’t even have to be made.

The victim already knows.

My rapist, Dave, once told me that ropes were kabuki.

He said he didn’t need ropes.

He had complete control over me without them.

If every time you tell someone no, they punish you in some way, you would learn that saying no has a price.

And then you learn what you are willing to accept to avoid that punishment. I used to say pain doesn’t last, and if it does, you get used to it.

And that is what happened in my relationship.

I had already grown up trained into accepting violence and sexual abuse for as long as I can remember.

I am not somebody who reacts to fear of physical harm the way people expect women to react.

I don’t show fear.

That bothered Dave and almost certainly influenced the Attorney General’s decision not to charge him despite the clear video evidence.

But every human being has something that matters to them.

Maybe it is their children.

Money.

Home.

In my case, affection.

Research on coercive control describes it as a pattern, not simply one isolated violent incident, such as the video of my rape. The effects can accumulate over time through repeated intimidation, humiliation, threats, isolation, monitoring, economic control, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. The important thing is the pattern of domination. That pattern is the crime scene.

So,

Why did I stay?

Why did I continue talking to my rapist for months after I reported him? Other than the fact he wasn’t awaiting trial.

If someone has spent months or years, in my case a lifetime, teaching you what happens when you resist, your behavior cannot be understood simply by looking at a single incident. The entire relationship itself is the crime scene.

Somehow, when the violence is sexual, people start treating the relationship as evidence of consent.

I want you to think about that logic for a moment.

I never consented to my ex-husband breaking my ribs or my nose or my shoulder or eye socket.

But nobody looks at those injuries and says:

“Well, she stayed married to him, so she consented to being beaten.”

So apply the same principle to sexual violence.

A relationship does not create permanent consent. That is the law.

New consent doesn’t create retroactive consent because that is a fallacy. Retroactive consent cannot exist. You can’t change something that already happened.

Because we seem to forget, when someone says no, it’s the actions of the other person that create sexual assault.

They either stop immediately, or it’s sexual assault. It’s their action, not the victim’s reaction, that determines rape.

I was injured.

It took approximately two months for me to heal. That injury did not become consensual because I stayed with him.

And that wasn’t the last rape with him in that video. Not by a long shot.

The coercive control surrounding an assault does not make the assault less real.

It explains how compliance was being produced.

Because sometimes the most important evidence of coercion is not what the perpetrator had to do in that moment. It’s what he didn’t have to do.

You don’t have to hit the dog every time.

That is coercive control.

Thank you.