Chapter 1: What content warnings should listeners be aware of?
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Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences and discusses topics that may be upsetting. This season discusses sexual, physical, and psychological violence. Please consume the following episodes with care. For a full content warning, sources, and resources for each individual episode, please visit the episode notes.
Opinions shared by the guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Broken Cycle Media. The podcast and any linked materials should not be misconstrued as a substitution for legal or medical advice. Thank you so much for listening.
I met Cody the third day of school. We were texting all weekend and talking about making plans to hang out on Sunday night. We were watching the movie again and all of a sudden he starts to kiss me. I was like, I don't want to take it any further than this. And he starts to kiss me again. My alarm bells are ringing. Now I'm realizing how vulnerable I actually am.
I'm locked in a very dark and very small room with a guy that I clearly don't know and a school I've only been at for a month. I tried to push him off. And instead of backing off, he moved me so that I was flat with my legs open. And he wedged himself on top of me. And I'm saying out loud, stop. You're hurting me. I don't want this. I didn't want to say the wrong thing.
I didn't want to just get up and run because what if he attacked me? I had no idea. It was divine timing. My roommate was calling me. She was saying that one of our friends was in our room and needed help. I told my roommate the entire story in as much detail as I could. My roommate was like, why don't we go downstairs to the RA and just tell her what happened?
Because I want you to know that you were assaulted. My roommate and I went into the RA office and we asked her if we could talk. I told her as much as I could in between sobs. I told you my story. Now I'm going to bed. And I just showered and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, put my pajamas on and went to sleep.
For many survivors of sexual assault on college campuses, the first step is not reporting. It's deciding whether to tell anyone at all.
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Chapter 2: How does the guest describe their initial encounter with Cody?
Yeah, the next day he had texted me multiple times. I had definitely decided immediately when I left his room that I was never going to speak to him again. And I never have because that is the ultimate betrayal. He completely took advantage of me as a person emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, all the ways. That was the most hurtful thing anybody has ever done to me.
He had texted me multiple times. He was like, hey, I hope I didn't do anything that made you uncomfortable. I haven't heard from you since you left my room. If I did anything to make you uncomfortable, I really want to talk about it. I'm really sorry. Are you okay? He just kept rephrasing that and blowing up my phone. He had called me, I think, seven or eight times within the next 48 hours.
When I didn't respond to him, he reached out to my roommate, I think it was the next morning, and said, hey, have you talked to me? My roommate said no. And he was like, okay, well, I just feel like maybe she's mad at me. Has she said anything to you? I told my roommate, please don't tell him that I told you. I just don't want anybody to know about it.
So she agreed and said, no, she hasn't told me anything. And he goes, if she tells you anything, please tell me, which I thought was super weird because I felt like he was trying to cover his own butt. I encouraged everybody that I knew not to talk to him about me, not to answer any questions.
And every time that he would text me, I felt worse and worse and worse because it just kept reminding me that it was real.
Well, and I imagine that he had access to you and how distressing that is too because you literally live in the same building.
Yeah, he was literally just a staircase under me. He could just come up there. I just knew he was so easily around. I just was trying to de-escalate by being really boring and unappealing and unresponsive.
What was it like for you to make the decision to discuss this with your mom and go to the hospital?
I think that's kind of a decision that nobody is really prepared to have to make, especially since I spent a lot of my life really protected. I never thought that that would happen to me. When I walked away from talking to my RA, I felt like there were some options for me in terms of how I wanted to move forward.
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Chapter 3: What steps do survivors typically take after an assault?
We had said goodnight, as we do every single night. The next day, I had gone to work. I'm also a nurse. I work days. We had checked in a couple of times throughout the day. Nothing. She never made any comments about anything. I had gotten out of work around four o'clock or so that afternoon. She called me and it's not common that she calls. Typically we text and we only talk if we have to.
I said, I'm just driving home. What's up? And she's like, so there was an incident last night. Something happened with Cody. And I was like, OK, like, what do you mean? She said, we're hanging out. We were watching the movie. She said he attacked me. And I'm like, what do you mean attacked you? And she's like, he just attacked me and started like touching me. And it got really inappropriate.
And he bit me and he hurt me. And I was like, did you tell anybody? I'm going to come to see you like we have to tell somebody. She was with her friend roommate at the time as she was talking to me on the phone. She said we went to the are you okay? And she's like, I can't believe that happened. And I'm like, where is he?
She's like, well, he's been trying to text me and reach out to me, but I'm not answering him. And I was like, are you hurt? And she's like, well, I mean, I have some bruising and I have some kind of sore and I'm bleeding a little. I don't even really remember honestly what happened after that, except I just know I had turned around and had started heading her way.
And I told her that I was coming and that I thought we needed to go to the hospital. As a nurse, I know how important it is to have someone look at you immediately. I said, just hang tight and went to her and took her with me to the hospital.
Here's Luna.
My roommate walked me to my mom's car from our dorm room and we went to the hospital. The ride to the hospital was pretty much completely silent. I didn't want to go to the hospital all of a sudden. I think we got like 10 minutes away from it and I started freaking out because if I actually went to the hospital, then it was legitimate that it happened to me.
And I didn't want to accept that at all. I started arguing with my mom about it. I was like, please don't make me go. And my mom was like, you need to go.
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Chapter 4: What is the process for seeking medical care after an assault?
You are injured. You need to get checked out. And if you decide to go to the police, then this is good evidence for you to just to have. I was like, I feel like you're mad at me. And she was like, of course, I'm not mad at you. And then she started crying. And then it was just pretty much silence after that until we got to the hospital.
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We went up to the triage desk and they asked me why I was there and what happened. And it was the first time I said it out loud. I had to go up to the nurse at the front and I told her I was here because I had been sexually assaulted. That was just such a hard thing to say out loud because, again, that denial piece is so big.
The look on the nurse's face was really kind of shocking, too, because she looked like she felt so bad for me, which is not what I wanted. The last thing I wanted was somebody's pity. They checked me in and I didn't even end up waiting that long in the waiting room. It wasn't super busy, thank gosh. They took me into a room. I had this amazing male nurse.
He was only like three weeks off of his new grad orientation. So that was really cool because we had something that we could talk about and he knew that I was a nursing student. He knew where I went to school because my school wasn't very far from the hospital. And that was kind of like a nice distraction. It took my mind off a lot of things for a little bit.
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Chapter 5: How do survivors navigate the Title IX reporting process?
Like, I hope that you're doing well. If you need any support from us, we're here for you. I think in the academic regard of this whole thing, I was really well supported, which is why I think I made it as far as I have now.
Thank goodness for that. It's completely understandable that you would need some time, but I also understand it's easy to get behind. So I imagine it was trying to find a balance of what you needed.
Oh, yeah.
In the determination of hearing report, it was noted that your RA, because they were a mandated reporter, had reported the incident to the Title IX office. When did you actually file the complaint?
The night that I was sitting in the RA's office with her, I did tell her in detail the entire story and she did write it all down. I think I might have told her that she could send it to the dean of students, which was the person that correlates all the Title IX stuff. The night that I was sitting in the ER, that was the night that I decided to go through with the Title IX.
So that's when I myself reached out to the Title IX director, which is the same person that my RA would have emailed. I think I wrote her an email and in the email I said, I was assaulted on your campus on the Sunday, October 15th, and I would like to file some kind of complaint. She wrote back to me the next day and she had said, I want to meet with you.
Please come to my office at your earliest convenience and we can go forward from there.
It says on October 17th, they met with complainant to review relevant policies and procedures, to discuss resources and supportive measures, and to answer any questions that you might have about Title IX. October 17th, 2023 is what they have written down here.
Yep, that makes sense because the 16th I went to the hospital and then the next day I went and I had my meeting with her. I went to that by myself, which was intimidating. I remember going into her office. I'd never really spoken to her before. I didn't really know who she was.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do survivors face when interacting with law enforcement?
They were doing a couple cases before me, but then they announced me, and they told me to come up and say my name for the record, and the judge had a copy of the affidavit that I wrote out.
I know that this is not really how court is supposed to go, but they let my dad come up and stand next to me because I think they honestly just saw the size of me and the look of me and they were like, she's nervous. She needs help. But there was a lot of people in the courtroom. I am forever indebted to this judge.
We walked all the way up to the bench, my dad and I, and he put the sound machine on for the entire courtroom so nobody could hear what we were talking about. And he looked me in the face and he said, I'm so sorry that this happened to you. And I was like, wow, thank you so much. And he was like, I'm absolutely granting this order. I'm ensuring you that now you're going to be safe.
That was crazy. I think he saw right through me. I felt like I was transparent. I think he could just see the hurt in me.
It must have felt so validating.
It really did, especially for a male judge to say that to me. That was the first time that I had a little bit of hope that it was going to be okay. Everything else had been so scary and bleak and unknown before that, but that was my guaranteed safety, so that made me feel so much better. My faith in humanity was restored a little bit.
Here's Luna's parents.
When we went to get the harassment order, the court was not even going to let me stand up there with her because she is not a minor anymore. But luckily, a nice judge was there and he let me stand with her because she has no idea how it works, how court works or what to do or say. And I was able to help her with that.
She was so nervous. What was the judge like?
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Chapter 7: How do survivors cope with ongoing trauma after reporting?
They put us in the back of a police cruiser and I'm like, this is terrible. This is just getting worse by the minute. And then they separated my roommate and I, which was really scary because for some reason I thought that she would be able to be there with me, but they made her stay in the waiting room. There was this female detective.
Immediately when I walked into her office, I don't know if she just didn't want me to be there or if she just didn't want to do anything, but I could tell that her attitude was not very warm and inviting and supportive for somebody like me whose emotions are very raw and I'm very scared and isolated. It had been like a week, so everything was still very new.
She sits me down and it was just the two of us. She's not smiling or anything. And I'm smiling because when I'm nervous, I smile a lot. I'm thinking she thinks I'm nuts because, you know, I'm sitting here to talk about my assault. It literally felt like I was in a movie. She put the little like interrogation light on in her office, like a little lamp.
She turns on her recording device and she's like, I just want you to know that you're being recorded. State your name for the record and spell your name for me. And so I did. And she asked me what happened. And that's the most in detail that I had ever been about the story more than I was with the RA, more than I was with my parents or the nurses and doctors at the hospital.
That and my written statement were probably as detailed as it could possibly get, which is really, really hard when somebody is sitting across from you with their arms crossed at a table waiting for you to finish talking so they can have lunch. She asked me so many questions that I know are standard procedure, but I never realized how they make the victim feel dirty.
She was so hyper fixated on what I was wearing. Not that that even matters, and it really shouldn't. That just set me off on the wrong foot. And you know what I thought was really weird? She was like, what kind of underwear were you wearing? Because I'm like, do you even believe me? If I tell you that my underwear was black, are you going to think I was trying to be seductive?
They have to do this because, you know, it's evidence. But they took my underwear and they took my bra and a little bag, the ones that I was wearing the night that it happened. I had to keep them. She just kind of looked at him like, OK. I would gesture when I was talking about the things that he did to me because I didn't want to say it all out loud.
If I say it out loud, then I give it power because it was only an audio recording. She's like, could you use your words? I'm trying to figure out how to comfortably tell you that I was violated. I don't know what you want me to say. So it was just a really negative experience.
And then when we finished up with all the questioning and the kind of belittling and stuff, she was like, okay, now I have to take a picture of your injuries for the record. And I was like, what do you want me to do? She's like, you need to lift up your bra. So yeah, apparently somewhere out there, there's a picture of my whole chest. So that was humiliating.
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Chapter 8: What support systems are available for survivors on campus?
She had just said, I'm going. And I was like, okay, do you want me there? Do you want us there? And she was like, no, I'm good.
They didn't reach out to interview you for a statement?
Not at all.
Here's Luna.
There was one point where I was heading into the library and the way that the library is set up at my school is there's the first floor and then there's a really big, beautiful staircase and it leads you up to the second floor, which is where all the tutoring is. That's where everybody goes to hang out when they study. I had been going up there with my friends to study for one of our exams.
There's this little like island area off the staircase before you get onto the second floor. Cody was sitting there talking with a female student He saw me and I saw him. We were probably like 10 feet away from each other. In the conditions of the harassment order, he's supposed to get up and leave as soon as he sees me and we're in close proximity. He's not supposed to stick around or anything.
But instead, he stands up and he starts walking towards me, trying to like size me up. I was like, get me out of here now. Thankfully, my friend jumped between us and walked me inside the library. And then I saw Cody packing up his stuff and trying to get out of there as fast as he could. But I don't really know why he did that.
And I think he wanted to talk to me, but I think he thought twice about it. He was not supposed to do that. Then a little while later, this is the same day, I go into the dining hall to have lunch. And he's sitting at the entrance of the dining hall right where I have to walk in. And I see him and I'm like, I don't want to go near him, but I'm hungry. And he had already been eating.
Maybe he'll just take his food and he'll go if he sees me walk in. So I walk in. I walk right past him. I don't look at him. I don't make eye contact with him. I'm expecting him to just get up and leave. And he just sits there and he just stares at me again. And I'm like, what the heck is going on with this guy? So that really freaked me out. So then I left, didn't even eat.
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