{"id":67668,"date":"2016-04-25T11:25:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T15:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=67668"},"modified":"2016-04-25T07:30:42","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T11:30:42","slug":"gillibrand-speaks-out-against-sexual-assault-on-college-campuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=67668","title":{"rendered":"Gillibrand speaks out against sexual assault on college campuses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kirsten<\/a>
Kirsten Gillibrand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

**Watch Senator Gillibrand\u2019s Speech on the Senate Floor Here<\/a>**<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To mark Sexual Assault Awareness Month, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today delivered a speech on the Senate floor urging her colleagues to pass the bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act to combat sexual assault on college campuses.<\/p>\n

Below are Senator Gillibrand\u2019s remarks as delivered:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMr. President,<\/p>\n

\u201cApril is actually Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and I rise to speak about two extraordinary young women who were accepted into their dream colleges and then, after they arrived on campus, were sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tried to seek help from their school and they were blamed for their assaults by their school\u2019s administrators.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of years ago, these two young women walked into my office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t have an appointment. They didn\u2019t have any connections on Capitol Hill. They certainly didn\u2019t have an expensive lobbyist to lead them in.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnnie and Andrea had heard about my work to fight sexual assault in the military, and they simply wanted to help: the same crisis was unfolding on college campuses across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they tried to report their rapes, they were not believed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were actually retaliated against. For them, justice seemed impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut instead of doing nothing, Annie and Andrea joined together, and they created an organization called End Rape on Campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey took their stories to college campus after college campus, to be heard, and to help other survivors like themselves, to make a difference, to achieve justice, to hold these schools accountable.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, Annie and Andrea have helped many other sexual assault survivors file dozens of federal Title IX complaints for how their schools mishandled their sexual assault claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese young women are changing lives. They are helping their peers find justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey took a risk to raise their voices, and now we are closer than ever to passing a comprehensive, bipartisan piece of legislation, to make sure campus sexual assault cases are handled with the professionalism and fairness that all of our students deserve.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are closer than ever to passing a bill that would finally give our colleges and universities an incentive to solve the problem of sexual assault, rather than stay silent and pretend it doesn\u2019t exist, because they\u2019re worried about application numbers or press releases.<\/p>\n

\u201cI urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to support this bipartisan bill, the Campus Accountability and Safety Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause when surveys keep confirming that one out of five of our women in college are sexually assaulted before they graduate, we know we have more work to do.\u00a0We need to follow the example of Annie and Andrea, and speak out about this crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. President, I\u2019m going to use this moment to just tell you one story: the story of Andrea \u2013 what actually happened to her. She wrote a book \u2013 it\u2019s called \u2018We Believe You\u2019 \u2013 with Annie, and it\u2019s an incredible compilation of survivor stories. And it\u2019s quite heartbreaking, and very tough to read, but it\u2019s one of the most inspiring books I\u2019ve ever read.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are thousands of stories just like hers, and I have others to tell here on the Senate Floor, but right now I\u2019m going to tell you Andrea\u2019s, in her own words:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018After I publicly came forward as a survivor, I learned that the biggest triggers aren\u2019t actually the nightmares of my assault, but the nightmares of the betrayals that I\u2019ve had to survive.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018When the media tells your story, it feels like open season on your truth. It\u2019s exposed to commentary, and a part of you loses control over it, and the vulnerabilities that you intended to share.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018When you tell your story to the media, you\u2019re at the mercy of their portrayal, and the portrayal of others.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I\u2019ve been betrayed by friends who struggled to understand what happened to me, and to accept that the same person who put forth strength and composure could fall apart.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I wish I could have said the right things to get them to understand that I was broken, and that my confidence was a lie to both of us.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I\u2019ve been betrayed by the university that I love so dearly, whose seal I wear around my neck, and whose quads and bricks hold pieces of me \u2013 pieces of who I was before, and of who I am today.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. President, Andrea is one of many young men and women whose lives have been shattered by a violent sexual crime \u2013 and then shattered again by that second betrayal, when their schools chose not believe them, or to offer justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese survivors deserve better.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need Congress to act. We have to do the right thing. We have to be their voice. We have to stand up for them. And the bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act does exactly that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo please, let\u2019s all do our jobs, and pass the bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI yield the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**Watch Senator Gillibrand\u2019s Speech on the Senate Floor Here** To mark Sexual Assault Awareness Month, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today delivered a speech on the Senate floor urging her colleagues to pass the bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act to combat sexual assault on college campuses. Below are Senator Gillibrand\u2019s remarks as delivered: \u201cMr. President, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-hBq","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Gillibrand.jpg?fit=224%2C221&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}