Book #11 of 2021:

Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford

[CW: sexual assault. I’m not sharing the cover of this book, out of concern that it may be triggering.]

Author Lacy Crawford’s first nonfiction title offers powerful testimony on the way she was treated as an underage girl at a prestigious boarding school in the 1990s: lured to an upperclassman’s room, brutally assaulted by him and another senior, shamed into keeping it quiet, and maligned by an administration that refused to take her eventual report seriously and hold either itself or the attackers accountable. Her tale is distressingly familiar — even at the same academy, further covered-up rapes from students and faculty have since been revealed — and the writer’s afterword directly identifies her experience with that of Christine Blasey Ford, who famously accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her as a teen only to see him confirmed to the bench regardless.

There’s no need to relitigate the various arguments put forth in 2018 to attempt to discredit Dr. Ford, but that context is crucial for understanding why Crawford hasn’t previously spoken out publicly about her abuse and why even in this memoir, she uses pseudonyms for her classmates. Despite the widespread #MeToo movement of people sharing their stories and the exhortations to believe women and other victims when they come forward like that, our culture is full of patriarchal contrarians looking to poke holes, as though trauma responses can be expected to function logically, memory for smaller details is perfect, and crimes always leave clear evidence behind.

Perhaps to get ahead of those critiques, the author admits she is not a flawless survivor. She had been sexually active before that night. She foolishly put herself into the situation. She didn’t struggle enough or call out for help. She didn’t tell anyone what had happened right away. She wondered if she had somehow been ‘asking for it.’ Hopefully, however, any reader can see through these early protestations to detect where true culpability lies, as she herself now can.

Accounts like this one are so important, both as part of a lengthy healing process for the teller and to shine a light on the institutions which continue to enable privileged young men in particular to act on their entitlement in horrifying ways without feeling the consequences. Lacy Crawford writes evocatively of her high school years and the long shadow that fell over them, and although it can be hard to face her raw pain head-on, I hope it acts as a deterrence for future silencings and the cruelty they hide.

[Content warning for racism, gun violence, and domestic abuse.]

★★★★☆

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