Still Room for Hope by Alisa Kaplan

Author:Alisa Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FaithWords
Published: 2015-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

As my graduation from rehab loomed, Tina started asking me about my victim impact statement.

The guys were set to be sentenced in March 2006. At the sentencing, I would be able to confront Seth, Brian, and Jared with what they had done to me. Ideally, this would provide me with some emotional closure. I’d also be able to explain to the court exactly how the crime had affected me before the judge decided their sentence.

Ways the crime had impacted me? I sure wasn’t short on material. But as soon as I put pen to paper, I found myself freezing up. I couldn’t write it. Not even a little of it. Finally, Tina told me that writing my statement was a condition of graduating from rehab.

“I can keep you here another month on a county bed,” she told me. “I’m the one who signs your release, and I’m not signing anything to let you out of here until you read that statement to me.”

She was bullying me, but once again she was right. It wasn’t a great idea to have me out there on my own, brand-spanking-newly clean, and rehashing all the ways that being raped had screwed up my life. If I had to do that, Tina wanted me to do it in a safe, controlled space, where I was surrounded by clean and sober people and all the support I’d need to get through it.

On October 21, 2005, I got a day pass from rehab so that I could go to the DA’s office to practice reading my victim impact statement.

Reading those words aloud had a devastating effect on me, so I took care of myself. The first person I called after we got out of there was my sponsor. And right after I read my statement, my parents drove me back to rehab.

I have a copy of that statement in front of me as I write this. At the time, I thought it was a document of healing, but it is crystal clear to me now how sad and broken and lonely I was. Reading it now breaks my heart; I have nothing but compassion for that girl. And that’s truly what I was, even three years after the assault: a child.

I was released from rehab on my eighty-ninth day, right before Thanksgiving. And on Thanksgiving Day, 2005, I gave the photograph of the two of us back to my dad. He had tears in his eyes when he saw what I’d given him, but he also told me that he’d never lost hope that I would.

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