Cyra Perry Dougherty - The Anatomy of Silence

A powerful, painful and brilliant collection of stories, the perfect reminder of why we need change and why we need it now.
Rebecca Reid, Journalist and author, Perfect Liars

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To read this book is to fully witness the world we live in, a world where sexual violence can abscond and replicate in part due to our silence. The Anatomy of Silence is a bursting, creative, courageous puncture of that silence, a beacon for something so much more.
Jess Mack, Vice President for Strategy and Communications, Global Health Corps

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A vitally important project for our age. A compelling read that proves how the fusion of art, speaking out, and sharing truth are the keys to transforming a broken culture.
Dr. Jamie Marich, best-selling author of six books on trauma recovery

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This is a book full of details. Of ambivalence. Of uncertainties. Of realities. You will learn something by reading it; mostly you will feel something. Each story bristles with the emergence of a voice: someone telling, often for the first time, an account of what they carry in every cell of their body but you would never know about because their voice was silenced long ago. This powerful collection of voices gather to form a cry: of freedom, grief, joy, and hope.
Emily Click, Assistant Dean for Ministry Studies, Harvard Divinity School

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A pivotal step in combating sexual violence and the apathy and ignorance that is perpetuated by the current political climate. The stories in this book exemplify the courage, wisdom, intuition and strength necessary to use our voices and ask the necessary questions. We should all be so brave.
Suzi Rutti (MSW, LISW-S) Social worker and trauma therapist

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Brutally honest and harrowing from the very first page. A reminder of how far we have comeand how much more theres left to do. Theres so much thats unsaid, unnoticed, and untaught about sexual assault. This book calls an end to it. Now.
Emmie Harrison, Journalist (Metro)

Theres really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

Arundhati Roy

Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences.

Gloria Steinem

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment by successive developments like a laborious mosaic.

Anas Nin

Red Press

The Anatomy of Silence

Copyright 2019 Red Press

All Rights Reserved

This anthology is copyright; all individual works therein are copyright of their respective authors and printed with permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without first obtaining the written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief excerpts in reviews and interviews.

Kresich, Joan. Flying Out of Bed Reprinted with permission from Ms. Magazine Blog. 16 February 2018.

Bowdler, Michelle. The Surprise that Surprises No One Reprinted with permission from WordPeace Literary Journal, Issue 2.3, Summer/Fall 2018.

Marx, Frederick. Mens Work adapted from At Death Do Us Part. Oakland: Warrior Films, August 2018.

Edited by Cyra Perry Dougherty

Cover design Katherine Knotts

Printed in England by TJ International (Cornwall)

Typeset in Bembo

Published by Red Press

ISBN 978 1 912157 105 (Paperback)

ISBN 978 1 912157 112 (Ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Red Press Registered Offices:

6 Courtenay Close, Wareham, Dorset, BH20 4ED, England

www.redpress.co.uk

@redpresspub

#CanYouHearTheSilence

Our book is about the culture of silence surrounding sexual violence.

Our book is unapologetically loud.

The content of this book will be emotionally challenging to read at timesand first and foremost we want you to take care of yourself. But heres the thing: we are writing about the hard stuff so that we can find ways of talking about the hard stuff. We cant talk about ending the culture of silence surrounding sexual violence without talking about the nature of the violence itselfwhether in the form of creative expression, first-person narratives, or aggregated statistics. This book is about making sure we break the silence once and for all. This is a book about changing the culture that perpetuates silencebecause its the silence that allows the violence to thrive, and even to exist in the first place. Talking about it is the first step on the road towards healing.

Do whatever you need to do to read this book. Skip chapters. Dip in and out. Take it one paragraph at a time. Breathe. Talk about it. Write about it. Were in this together.

L A VIOL! LA VIOL! Her voice came through like bullets as I stood holding the phone, which was tethered to the night stand by a too-short cord. I couldnt movecouldnt even bring myself to sit down on the bed.

He raped her. Nohe just violated her. Nopethat word means rape. My mind spun as I tried to accurately translate her wordsso clear yet so inexact when outside my native tongue.

At first I thought it was important to understand exactly what she was sayingto understand the precise degree to which he had taken advantage of herbut I soon realized it was not important at all. The woman shouting on the phone was communicating something horrific to me. Quibbling in my mind over translations was not helpful. Heres what mattered: he had done something awful.

He was my sons father. I had just turned 22 and was living with him in a small one bedroom in Santiago, Chilehis hometown. Diego was barely six months old. The tension in our home was growing by the day as the monster of his addiction spewed despair, violence, and rage upon anything and everything it met. The pain of our suffering as a family was enough. And now I was living with a rapist? He violated a young 18-year-old girl in her own home. It sounded like he broke into the house. But maybe not. It sounded like something out of my nightmares. But maybe it wasnt. I couldnt read between the lines. He had been partying until early in the morning with the girls father. I think. The person on the other end of the phone line was that mans wife, the girls mother. Definitely.

Given the tumult of life with him, it was hard to be surprised by the phone call. Yet still, every ounce of my being felt tortured by the voice on the phone, as if I were being held up to the fire, forced to stand there burning. Hed been gone for nearly two days. He was on a cocaine-fueled binge. Clearly what this woman was saying held truthI had no doubt. But was this my responsibility? What was I supposed to do for this woman, for her daughter? What did she want me to do?

Doing her best to hurl the responsibility for this incident in my direction, this suffering mother seemed caught off-guard when, in as calm a voice as I could muster, I responded: