Helping to heal:

New support group helps one student to overcome painful experiences

By Natasha Waggoner
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

Maggie Krase thought she could trust her rook buddies.

"He was supposed to be my 'good' rook buddy, someone I could count on," said Krase, but she found out one night at the end of her freshman year that she was wrong.

"My other rook buddies, I thought I was able to trust. They were supposed to help me out, but they failed me," said Krase, 21, a criminal justice major from Las Vegas, Nev. She has twice found herself the victim of sexual assault while at Norwich.

"Norwich University usually gets 15 cases a year," said Karin Pelletier, Norwich University's Title IX and Equal Opportunity Coordinator, but she added that she had already received 15 assault or harassment cases.

"I'm not looking for any sympathy or apologies, I just want people to be aware that some of the comments and some of the actions they do affect and offend people because of past experiences they've had growing up," Krase said.

At the end of her freshmen year, Krase and her rook buddies were on leave when her cadre took them to the woods. Some of them were drinking, and Krase said that one of her rook buddies let alcohol get the better of him. She said he kept coming on to her.

"He kept saying what he wanted to kiss me and touch me in places I didn't want to be touched, and I told him to leave me alone," Krase said. "I would move myself to another area of rook buddies, who I thought I could trust, and I told them what was going on."

Krase told her rook buddies that her assailant was making unwanted advances toward her, but her plea fell on deaf ears. "They didn't do anything to stop it at all, and I had to keep moving from group to group to get away from him."

Krase asked her assailant not to touch her, but he continued to pester her anyway.

"The little act itself wasn't so bad, but when he did that, it brought back everything from my past, so I felt like I had been raped again," Krase said, explaining that she has been sexually assaulted in the past.

Although some of her rook buddies knew of the situation beforehand, they were reluctant warn Krase.

"I found out later that my rook buddies that I went to for help knew what he was going to do, and my cadre knew what he was going to do," Krase said. "My so-called family was supposed to be there for me, and they weren't."

After this incident, Krase distanced herself from her rook buddies. But as she slowly opened back up to them, a different rook buddy put her back in the same predicament.

"Then last year I went to the company dining out and on the way back I went deliberately in the car with the 'good' rook buddies and we stopped off for gas," she said, explaining that she rode with people whom she thought she could trust.

According to Krase, her rook buddy had been telling her that he wanted to grab her breast, and other uncomfortable advances before that night, and she thought he was just joking about it.

"He would come up to me and say he was going to get me when I least expect it," Krase said. "I would laugh it off and tell him no and every time we saw each other he would try it or remind me that he was going to get me."

There came a point when Krase decided it wasn't funny, anymore, when she said that he continued to sound more and more serious, and become more and more persistent.

"I was asking him politely [to stop], but he kept it up," Krase said. "He thought it was a game." Krase did not share his perspective, and on the night of her dining out, she said that things went too far.

Her rook buddy was sitting in the seat behind the driver when they stopped for gas. Krase went to pay, and when she came to the green Chevrolet, she had noticed that the people in the back switched seats so he was sitting right behind her. She thought that her request would be enough to keep him from grabbing her, but she was mistaken.

"He tried a couple of times and I was able to cover myself," Krase said. "We were on campus and I was getting upset; it was going too far and reminded me of my past. He ended up completing his mission. The second he did it I broke down."

Krase said she did everything she could to hold back the tears while her rook buddy laughed the whole time and bragged about it, saying that he had won the game, and had accomplished his goal. At that point, she said that the driver of the car could tell that she was upset, and told her rook buddy that he didn't think it was funny.

"For the second time, my rook buddies failed me," Krase said. "Ever since then, I haven't really talked to any of my rook buddies."

"I'm not looking for any sympathy, nor am I looking to go after them now," Krase said. "I just needed someone to listen to me."

When Krase met Pelletier, some of that began to change for her, and she began to form a student support group with Celina Silva, a 21-year-old senior criminal justice and English major from Grand Prairie, TX, and Micah Chapman, 21, a senior criminal justice major from Whitefield, Vt..

"We thought it would be a good idea to start a student run program to act as a liaison to the Title IX office," said Silva. "We noticed the males had a lot of questions concerning the do's and don'ts of sexual harassment and what qualifies as harassment."

"It started out with Maggie and Silva, who had some concerns, and I just helped out at one of the meetings," said Chapman. "I just became interested because I had some friends that had been sexually harassed and violated and I felt a lot of guys didn't take it serious enough."

Mica is currently the only active male member in the group. Maggie Denison, 20, a junior communications major from Hopewell Jct., NY, and member of the group, said that he's making a positive impact, has good input, and doesn't always "side with the guys."

"A lot of the guys don't seem to get the idea that it could be someone close to them," Chapman said. "Reality doesn't hit home with them."

Along with being supportive of their peers, this group also is working on many safety issues and awareness projects. Some include getting condom machines in the buildings and hanging up posters and having awareness meetings.

"We're trying to promote safe sex, and we're trying to get condom machines in the corps barracks in safe places," Denison said. "In the civilian dorms, they're in the laundry room right next to the dryers, and that is drying the condoms out."

"Certain projects I'm working on are posters which will be put up around school with statistics of rape cases or diseases or just general safety issues on them," said Kara Swarbrick, 20, a junior communications major from Methuen, Mass.

The group is also trying to get more lights put up in the darker areas of campus, such as the track and by Crawford Hall, according to Elysha Nelson, 19, a junior communications major from Lunenburt, Vt.

The support group is also looking to start a women's society and host social events as well.

"They're looking into some fun things they can do to try and increase the opportunities for women to get together, corps and civilian, to have fun, see each other and do things," Pelletier said.

In order to gain the support of their peers and inform them, the group has meetings where they educate the students on the issues at hand.

"We have a lot of meetings with the corps to try to get people to understand why we're doing this," Denison said. "This is a good cause and not just some femme-nazi group."

The group isn't targeting the guys or the girls, but they are focusing most of their time on the freshmen, according to Nelson.

"We're especially informing the freshmen, because we figure if we start with the new guys and girls, some things will change; they won't get the 'estrogen club' approach as the upperclassmen tend to give it," said Denison of the support group's tendency to be viewed as a club exclusively for women.

There's no difference in support for the group between corps and civilian. In fact, half corps members represent the group and half civilian, it's an issue both sides deal with, according to Silva.

"It's easier to get people that are in the corps to come to the meetings that we hold for the whole campus, because they can make them mandatory," Nelson said. "But it's hard to do that for civilian students, because there is no real punishment if they don't go."

The group is mainly there to listen and support their peers when needed. And sometimes it's easier for students to talk to their peers instead of faculty members, according to Swarbrick.

After having been sexually assaulted when she was younger, she had no one to listen to her or support her. Since being at Norwich and joining the student support group, telling them her story has really helped her, according to Krase.

"Nobody knew my story and by having the group listen to mine and by listening to others is the only thing that has really helped me," Krase said. "I don't have to keep it bottled up, anymore. I'm able to share my experience, which is helping me, and I hope it's helping others."

One in four college women have either been raped or have suffered from attempted rape, and one in 12 of male students committed acts that met the legal definition of rape, according to the National Victim Center website (www.cs.utk.edu/~bartley/sa/stats.html).

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