From Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/ashley-judd-dc-im-three-time-rape-survivor
By Tim Murphy
Fri Mar. 1, 2013
In her first appearance in Washington, DC since hinting at running for Senate in January, Ashley Judd opened up about the sexual abuse she was subjected to when she was younger.
Judd, who is considering a challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) next fall as a Democrat, did not take questions from the press—although she did allude to reporters briefly as the “people here who don’t give a rat’s you-know-what about violence”—spoke for more than a hour on Friday at George Washington University on virtually anything but electoral politics. (Topics ranged from child prostitution, to female empowerment, to reproductive health care, to corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to her Kentucky roots.)
But her most candid remarks may have come when she was asked if she had any advice for women who have been sexually assaulted:
I’ve been aware of gender violence all my life, being a survivor of gender violence. Yet I was astonished when I went to graduate school and started to do a deeper dive on gender violence here in America how prevalent rape and attempted rape is, particularly amongst young people. Am I correct that it’s one in three college* students, college women? So that’s a lot. That’s a third of us in this room. And I think part of what’s important, in addition to how we shape the narrative, is that we all have the courage to talk about it, because we’re as sick as our secrets and the shame keeps us in isolation. And when we find that shared experience, we gather our strength and our hope. So for example, I’m a three-time survivor of rape, and about that I have no shame, because it was never my shame to begin with—it was the perpetrator’s shame. And only when I was a grown empowered adult and had healthy boundaries and had the opportunity to do helpful work on that trauma was I able to say, okay, that perpetrator was shameless, and put their shame on me. Now I gave that shame back, and it’s my job to break my isolation and talk with other girls and other women.
At that point, she acknowledged the audience reaction. “I see some people crying,” Judd said. “And that’s good.”
Continue reading at: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/03/ashley-judd-dc-im-three-time-rape-survivor
