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Karen Carroll-Coleman’s rape changed her life, and her work. As a SANE nurse (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) Karen has encountered hundreds of rape victims in hospital emergency rooms in the New York area. It’s made her an outspoken advocate for treating survivors with dignity, grace and honor. Of her own rape she says, “This didn’t happen to me because of anything that I had done. If there is a reason that it happened, it happened because of what I’m going to do to change things.”
In June of 1994, Karen’s husband of four years threatened her with a knife. She acted immediately to get an order of protection. He stayed away for three weeks, but one Saturday morning she awoke to find him at the bedroom door with the same knife. He punched her, tied and gagged her, and raped her. “He was trying to punish me for having gone to court to protect myself,” Karen says. “This was definitely about power and control, not sex or lust.”
At the hospital the emergency room doctor “did not look at me or talk to me,” she remembers. “He walked over to the counter, picked up the rape kit, and started to read the instructions.” He obviously had not been trained to work with rape survivors. “I convinced him to let me help him do my own evidence collection. It was painful to be treated this way, and frightening that he didn’t even know what he was doing,” says Karen.
The experience prompted Karen to become a forensic nurse who gives sexual assault exams, and is in charge of a program that trains other nurses to do the same. “I was able to turn that negative experience into something positive and that has made healing possible,” she says. Karen has also become an active participant in The Voices and Faces Project, recently sharing her story as part of a survivor roundtable discussion about rape, race and class. “What I’ve found strength in is the community of survivors who are out there. I have met the most amazing people and have been touched by some awesome women and men,” she says.
By speaking out, Karen is working to debunk the “rape myths” that we as a culture cling to. “I always knew that rape was not the survivor’s fault, but after my experience, I still believed that on some level I was responsible… after all, I married this man! The truth is that most of us have been raped by people we know. People need to hear that, and to see that often our attackers are members of our families and our communities.”
Speaking out in the African American community has been especially important to Karen. As the mother of two grown sons, she says, “It’s important to promote African American male role models who are speaking out against violence against women, like Don McPherson and Tiki Barber. Our community has a long way to go when it comes to addressing the issue of sexual or interpersonal violence. We need to start talking about this! I can only hope my own boys have gotten the message, and I know that I have raised them to respect women, to stand up against rape. The truth is, those of us who can speak up, must speak up, for the millions of people who can’t.”
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