I Received the Same Punishment as an Accused Gang Rapist for Peeing in the Wrong Bathroom

Please advise:
Trigger Warnings, inlcuding physical, systematic, and sexual abuse.


I had dreams much larger than my town could afford, hold, or inspire me to take. Like many other dreamers out there, we work our (sometimes delusional) butts off to make it to the city, to that office, to the university, to that realm of society we believe can afford, hold, and inspire us to grab all our dreams.

If you were to tell me about the Cornell 7 rapists while I was still in the town that couldn’t afford the dreams I had, I would have been in shock, perhaps in shambles, and mentally questioning the entire world’s existence. Yet when I heard the disturbing news today, as the woman I am now, I am not shocked. I am in shambles for our brave Jane Doe, but I am nowhere near in shock. In fact, I’m not even a little bit surprised.

Jane Doe’s civil lawsuit lays out hours of horrific abuse—a gang rape—at the Cornell Chi Phi house, just moments after her sorority sisters left her, practically at the doorstep, inebriated, as if she were an item to be delivered, devoured, and ordered via DoorDash. What the institutions did after showed how little anyone involved was actually held accountable.

In 2015, roughly around 5 a.m., I was walking through the college dorms after leaving my boyfriend’s room to return to mine when I had to use the bathroom in the worst way possible. The boys’ bathroom was open and empty, so I went. I didn’t know someone had seen me, or that I could get in trouble for an emergency. Perhaps my parents weren’t powerful enough, or I was still too much of a little girl, but for some reason my punishment matched what Cornell gave some of the men responsible: I wrote a 500-word essay and submitted it to the university for taking an emergency piss in the boys’ room.

I’m still not sure how I am supposed to understand that men who gang-raped a woman—men who should not see the light of day outside a barred window—could receive anything resembling the same university punishment, the same form of accountability, as I did for a bathroom violation.

You see, this is the world we live in. Sorority sisters dropping off an inebriated one of their own at the fraternity is one part of a sadistic cycle that has existed without repercussions for too long. There are sisters who will watch you actively get molested, do nothing, and stand still while fulfilling a cycle that has been in place since the chapter’s president was getting their diaper changed by their au pair with a foreign accent.

Then there are the men, initiated into a sense of “belonging” by means of abuse. They teach our young men that to love is to go through pain, to have loyalty is to have blackmail, and to have success you must always let the man or woman below you know that you are above them.

A tale as old as rape: a cycle of abuse, whether it be from father to son, from son to brother, from brother to pledge, and pledge to girlfriend. The cycle can begin in any position, through any gender, at any stage. And it can end only when the abused decides they are above love through pain, loyalty through blackmail. That is when the cycle finally ends.

But what other issues do we have at play to continue this cycle of abuse?

Someone must have spoken up? Made things right? Stopped the abuse? Treated the abuser correctly as a criminal? And the answer is a definitive rarely ever— or probably not.

But we forget there is another parallel justice system at play. Whether it is campus police with paychecks from campus donors, the internal decision-makers who never show their faces, those who front the money, or the original townsmen who lurk beneath ensuring nothing changes—the result is a dual track where the institution protects itself first—its legacy, its future without change—before it chooses to protect a survivor. Leaving the abused to decide: continue the cycle onto another, dim your morals and bystander instincts, or navigate both the trauma and the bureaucracy completely alone.

When the systems are designed around wealthy, privileged, university-protected rapists, it creates an illusion—a curtain, if you will—that they are not criminals, but merely misunderstood “boys.”

But this isn’t just a university problem. The calculations of liability and assets among a small community are more often skewed, with morals bowing down to finances.

This is how power protects itself: through minimization. Institutions and small communities require so much self-preservation, often by choosing which young men are too valuable, too well-connected, or too useful to treat as the criminals they are.

I was never afraid of what I might find in this world, but perhaps I should have been afraid of what I didn’t know I didn’t know.

I went to George Mason University—no Cornell, if you will—yet I had Middle Eastern royalty walking the campus with Birkins and Lamborghinis.

Money? Plenty.

Influence? Plenty.

But by no means was it a Cornell or a Yale.

Another tale older than rape is a sheltered small-town girl leaving for the city to chase the dreams too big for her 2,000-person town. She doesn’t know how evil this world can be, nor what it looks like. You see, the worst reported crime where she’s from is a child buying chewing tobacco.

But often we forget. We repress dark memories because nobody around us said anything, did anything. They watched and chose to walk away because the stakes are greater in a tight-knit community when one member is now labeled a rapist, predator, enabler, abuser, or criminal.

As a child, the world is malleable; it’s mushy, it’s magical, and it’s all so very new. We take note of what actions require accountability, charity, repercussions, as well as happiness, joy, and opportunity.

I remember so vividly a tree in our backyard. It had magic. Yet no one else could see it. I took my parents to the tree, my grandmother, and later my sisters. But they never reacted to the magic that I saw occurring. Soon I assumed the magic in the tree must have been my imagination, and later I knew it for a fact.

For children, this becomes a benchmark for what’s real and what’s not: whether or not those around you react to what you are seeing, or what has happened.

When those around you refuse to see the magic—or the violence—you learn to stop noticing it too. It becomes false information, or often completely made up. This is how campuses, fraternities, sororities, an office, a family, or an entire town can watch harm happening and still explain the tree as having no magic.

The same refusal that made the magic in the tree disappear is what lets a university hand men who gang-raped someone the same essay punishment I received for a bathroom violation. Teaching us harm only counts if others are willing to see it too.

We know about the systematic errors of a tight-knit community. Not right away, but we slowly learn that it isn’t that the small town was safer—it’s that politics had too much in play.

Any one person supports a tight-knit community far greater than in a large one. So to stir up, “talk,” report a predator, or speak up regarding a criminal has far greater consequences for the operations of the entire community.

Thus, internal discipline becomes weak.

A congregation without a priest is unable to find a replacement in time, and even when there is a replacement, it will take five to ten years for the small community to feel as though the new is now a part of them.

They will protect a child predator because it’s hard to find new teachers out here, this rural, and besides, he attends church every Sunday.

A campus suppresses the news that a student in the dorm beneath mine made and completed an active bomb with a radius of 500 feet, because the emails from parents, the potential lack of students spending money in the cafeteria, and the fear of being there for even just a few days is a far greater liability than if the bomb were to go off— killing me and a thousand others.

Fraternities will hold an entire planned meeting to discuss the liabilities of a new pledge—whether the abuse he gives to his girlfriend openly across campus is a bigger liability than the asset of his father’s wallet and surname on private practices.

Sisters will stop another from jumping off a roof while inebriated, but will watch with “she deserves this” eyes as you are molested by a man she walked you to.

The bomb stays quiet, the abusive pledge gets to remain useful, the molested girl stays undeserving, and the criminals stay protected.

Lying that you didn’t see the magic in the tree becomes easier when a community is built on the comfort of familiar faces, phrases, and hierarchy.

“I did not touch that woman.” Deny, lie, and keep the script has been a scapegoat for even the most powerful man in our office. We understand as a society that if you don’t recognize the truth, it will slowly disappear and become a conspiracy, a lie, unusable, or even false.

When no one has made “change” a member of its community, even the ugliest parts of it appear prettier untouched.

So be it Cornell, George Mason, a corporate office, a fraternity, a family within their own home, or an entire town—the cycle of abuse continues not because it is invisible, but because pretending that it is is far easier than forcing a failing structure to admit it’s been protecting criminals all along.

This was hard to write, but it needed to be written. New accountability disrupts everything that was and everything that could have been, but it is the only way forward into a brighter light.

To the people in my life whose stories I’ve listened to: I hope this doesn’t bring anxiety, sadness, or a reminder of a time you thought you were alone. I hope instead that it ignites a fire to make change an active member of your community, and a requirement of any group you choose to belong to.

Our Jane Doe is brave, and she is igniting real change in our systems. But Jane Doe could be your sister, your friend, your parent, anyone. Countless stories have been labeled fiction because the people around them chose not to acknowledge them.

This is my plea: react to the magic in the tree.

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xo,
Sheridan Guerrette
What Sheridan Said
Life Behind the Artist: Wed at 9/8C