A counselor at the BFC is recounting to Nicolas the story of a young female client who blamed herself for being raped. The counselor used a clever analogy to get her to see that she was the victim.
C: I had a client, I think maybe the worst for me, the hardest for me to deal with around this client's guilt was a client, she was a fourteen year old girl, who had been raped, had sex with some guy who was 24 years old, I don't think that he completely broke her hymen, had sex with men, got date raped, or maybe the guy she had sex with was like 17 and then like a week later got date raped by this guy, woke up covered in blood, this other guy, and ended up having sex with someone on the three week period and she just felt like she was horrible awful person, it was her fault she got raped because she was drinking, uhm. She probably wouldn't have been raped if she hadn't had sex with the first guy, she just set herself up for all these, she was worthless now she felt.
N: She was a "slut." So how do you deal with that.
C: I got her tons and tons of referrals and I talked to her about, it was really hard for me, I think she was one of my hardest clients, it was really hard for me because I wanted her to get her to signify this as a rape without getting her completely freaked out about it, because emotionally it sure as hell was a rape for her.
N: It was pretty recent too right?
C: Yeah, it was, you mean this happened recently?
N: In her life?
C: Yeah,
N: The time between the incident and the test.
C: Yeah, like a month or eight weeks, something like that, and she had completely rationalized it, so I wanted to get her to see that it really was a rape at the same time seeing that it was ok not to do anything about it, that she could see that it was a rape without calling the police, without talking to anyone else about it, I didn't want her to walk out of there stretched thin like a wire, you know, ready to break, but I felt it was really important that she realize that she was raped because women who are sexually abused are more likeley to be really promiscuous and unsafe because they bury the abuse.
N: Hm
C: And they feel that they're not worthy, so I felt it was important and what I did was, she's talking about getting drunk and how she was just laying there and so of course he took the opportunity and I was like,ok here's the scenario. You go to your best friend's house, her parents are out of town for a party, you go into the master bedroom to pee and you open a drawer because you're looking for a Qtip and in the drawer is $2000 in $20 bills. Now, they shouldn't have just left them laying there right? So it's ok if you take it? She's like that would be stealing. She went oh. She said you're right. It wasn't ok. it's his responsibility not mine, I should, I said yeah, you should be safe. You shouldn't live in a world where people can take advantage of you because you don't have any self control at that point, like being drunk and passed out or sick or lost or anything, and so we talked about that, it was a long session, probably an hour and a half. And actually that ties into the whole thing about one of the ways I think this is different than other clinics, even though I haven't worked at other clinics, I've gotten counseled, cause I've gotten tested, a bunch of times, and uh, they have a set period of time that they can spend with you and some of the counselors are incredibly good but they're not incredibly client centered, they have to get through their numbers, they have to number crunch, and we don't. And I think that's great. If there's a client who needs an hour and a half, we can give it to them.
N: Right, because we have this huge reserve of counselors.
C: Cause we have a huge reserve of counselors and because it's important, I mean I feel like that's one of the ways in which we're different from anywhere else, is that each client is important. They're not important because of the funds that they bring in to the clinic, they're important, that's why we're doing this, we're not doing this for money. I think that makes a lot of difference.
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