Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A Story that deserves to be told

I am a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and I hate the Peace Corps. I was raped during my Peace Corps service. The Peace Corps did not respond to provide care in a compassionate and timely fashion.

People ask me all the time, "How was the Peace Corps?" I cannot answer them; I cannot share with them because I am protecting myself by not telling my story to the people who surround me. But I do want to share my story more widely. I will share it anonymously.

I was not able to complete my service. The Peace Corps promptly medically separated me 17 days after I was raped. I'd spent 14 of those days in two different hospitals because my anxiety was extremely high and I could not cope with what had happened to me.

"The Peace Corps Experience" is stuff of legend. The Peace Corps itself loves that it is legend, and so do RPCV's who had good experiences. I am writing to tell readers that in the Peace Corps, rape is something that some volunteers experience. I had a Peace Corps Experience. My Peace Corps Experience was terrible. And the Peace Corps tries to brush experiences like mine under the table. This blog is a tribute to those Peace Corps Experiences that were terrible. Peace Corps Experiences that included the trauma of sexual assault and changed the (R)PCV's life in a completely different way than the way in which the Peace Corps promises to change lives.

I hope that two things grow out of writing this blog:
1. I will be able to share some of my pain with the world, and insodoing, lessen my pain.
2. I want to tell a story that needs telling, to add to the building pressure on Peace Corps to change the way they treat survivors of sexual assault, and to tell my story to people who have no idea whether or not to believe the media's recently negative portrayal of the Peace Corps.

I will not share the country I served in. It could have been any Peace Corps country. Women (and sometimes men, too) are raped in Peace Corps countries all over the world. What I aspire to do with my blog is to capture my daily thoughts about the Peace Corps now, the depth of the pain I am living through, and all the hard work I must do and have done in order to improve my mental health.

This is MY Peace Corps Experience. A story that deserves to be told.