Black Rape Victims Lack Refuge

By: Natalie PardoAbout 1,200 marchers, including survivors of rape and domestic violence, whisked through the Saturday morning traffic on Chicago’s north lakefront. On this summery September day, they mixed with cyclists and joggers.

Only the marchers’ light blue T-shirts, emblazoned with the words "Step Out to Stop Abuse," set them apart from the steady stream of fitness zealots.

Victims of sexual violence are not always so easily identified. Most walk in silence. They are mothers and daughters, cousins and friends.

Between 1990 and Aug. 27 of this year, Chicago police recorded 41,897 sex offenses. The number of offenses—from public indecency to criminal sexual assault—peaked at 6,186 in 1992, fell steadily to 4,894 in 1995, and rose slightly to 4,960 last year.

About three of four sex offenses were against minorities, with black victims accounting for 60.5 percent of all the cases, police records show.

Minority women are most often treated as if they were to blame for being assaulted, said Linda Oakleaf, a rape survivor who works for Rape Victim Advocates, 343 S. Dearborn St., a nonprofit provider of counseling and medical and legal advice. "Hospitals and police are less likely to believe a black woman," Oakleaf said. "They fall over themselves to believe a white woman, especially if [she’s] middle class."

Rape counselors help women heal. "Survivors have told us that ‘I make decisions better. I feel like I am taking care of this problem,’" said Beryl Fitzpatrick, executive director of Rape Victim Advocates.

Counseling services should be neighborhood based," said Madeline Rich, director of women services at the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago Loop Center. "Lots of women won’t come here, won’t come anywhere out of their communities."

But counseling is scarce in the neighborhoods where most of the crimes occur, and most of the public funds for those services are controlled by the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the Reporter found.

"We’re not trying to horde the dollars," said Polly Poskin, executive director of the Springfield-based nonprofit group. "The plan [is] to get those services out to where the people are."

Crime Patterns
The percentage of rapes—defined by police as sexual assaults—against minority women is staggering. In 1995, 2,632 women were the victims of criminal sexual assault, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health. Nearly nine of 10 were minorities, with black women accounting for about 75 percent of all cases.

The city’s South and West sides were among the hardest hit by sexual assault, according to the department’s analysis of 1994-95 statistics. Fifteen community areas recorded assault rates greater than 300 female victims per 100,000 residents. All but two were at least 80 percent black, according to the census.

By contrast, 36 community areas recorded sexual assault rates under 100 victims per 100,000 residents. Of those, 16 were at least 80 percent white and 16 others were majority white.

Grand Boulevard, a black area that ranked first in the city, recorded an average of 114 rapes over the two years, or 571 per 100,000 residents. Forest Glen, a white Northwest Side community, recorded one rape, or a rate of 5 per 100,000.

High-crime areas record more rapes, said Detective Scott Keenan, a Chicago Police Department sexual assault specialist.

"Where are most of the drug crimes? Where are most of the murders?" Keenan asked. "They’re in the poor areas."

Keenan admits that police insensitivity "is always a huge problem" in rape cases. But the police department recently received a $100,000 federal grant to rewrite its guide on sexual assault, he said.

Advocates and health officials say sexual assault is the nation’s most under-reported violent crime. Eighty-four percent of rape victims do not report to the police, notes "Rape in America," a 1992 joint report by the National Victim Center and the Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center.

In Chicago, only one in eight women reports the crime, said Toylee Green, director of the women’s sexual assault program at the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago Harriet M. Harris Center, 6200 S. Drexel Ave.

And victims are often too ashamed to relive the assault under what may feel like undue police scrutiny, advocates said.

Acquaintance or date rape further blurs the issue. Charley, who asked that her real name not be used, was raped by her date in 1995 but chose not to report it.

"I was hesitant because if they had to contact him I didn’t want to deal with the repercussions for myself and my career," said the 20-something North Sider. "I was depressed. I was a walking zombie."

A few months later, she sought counseling at the Loop YWCA, 180 N. Wabash Ave. "They are very understanding. They were very respectful."

Inconsistent Service
There is a trace of hesitancy in Teresa’s soft voice as she recounts being raped nearly four years ago. She was 21, and walking near 75th Street and Stony Island Avenue in the early afternoon of New Year’s Day.

A man came up from behind her with a switchblade and dragged her into his car. He drove to a nearby alley, where he threatened to kill her, then raped her.

After robbing Teresa of $400 and CTA tokens, the man kicked her naked out of the car. Raped, traumatized and freezing, she gathered up what clothes she could and inched her way home. A passerby helped the sobbing African American woman to a nearby laundromat and called police, who took Teresa to the emergency room at Jackson Park Hospital, 7531 S. Stony Island Ave.

It felt like police were interrogating her, she said. "I didn’t like the way the detectives treated me because they were tearing my story up, changing my words to make it seem like I was lying."

Her only comfort, she said, came from the hospital’s rape advocate and a nurse—a rape survivor—who offered Teresa clean underwear, clothing and information about counseling services in the area.

But those services are inconsistent and in short supply, the Reporter found. "Rape crisis services just fold into the general lack of attention, care, support and concern that poverty areas [suffer from]," Poskin said.

When a rape victim arrives in the emergency room, hospital staff tend to her medical needs and conduct a lengthy evidence examination. But only five of 36 Chicago hospitals could tell the Reporter how many victims they have treated since 1993.

Swedish Covenant Hospital, at 5145 N. California Ave., is an exception. It has offered comprehensive rape treatment and services since the mid-1970s.

"Our main goal is to be an advocate for the patient," said Gabrielle Rutkowski, an emergency room nurse at Covenant, which has treated 199 sexual assault cases since 1993. "The nursing care I’m giving is a lot, and it’s really nice to have [an advocate] because they explain the process."

On Sept. 8, Robbie Anthony, an advocate with the Westside Sexual Assault Services Network since 1993, was called to Loretto Hospital to counsel a rape victim, only to be told the 16-year-old had left without being examined. A few minutes later, Anthony’s pager called her to West Suburban Hospital Medical Center in Oak Park. It was the same 16-year-old.

When Anthony got there, the girl’s mother said they had left Loretto because of the negative attitude of the nursing staff.

A few hours later, Anthony was called back to Loretto, at 645 S. Central Ave. This time, she found a rape victim who had been waiting to be examined for about two hours, while one nurse sat at the nurse’s station eating potato chips, Anthony said.

Marlene O’Connor, vice president and chief nurse officer at Loretto, would not provide any details about the incidents. "If there were any allegations brought forward, they were investigated," she said.

But the hospital is ill-equipped to deal with the rampant violence on the West Side, said Gloria Lewis, community outreach specialist at the Austin Community Domestic Outreach Project.

"We don’t have the resources in our community like up North," she said. "Loretto has nothing. How can money be allocated and found for them? There’s nothing for other poor communities."

South Sider Teresa said she received good treatment at Jackson Park, but the effects of the assault lingered. She quit her full-time job because she was afraid to go outside. "I’m walking down the street and I’m approached by someone I don’t know who violated my rights," she recalled.

She attended a few counseling sessions at Jackson Park, but didn’t feel comfortable telling her story to the white, male psychologist. Then she found a kindred spirit in poet Beverly A. Reed, a rape survivor who runs Oasis, a small support group on the South Side.

Through group meditation and journal-writing, Teresa has reclaimed her life, and recently got married. At Oasis, "I’m with people who care about me," she said.

Tight Money
On the South Side, the Harris YWCA provides medical advocacy services to rape victims at St. Bernard, Jackson Park and South Shore hospitals. A new affiliation with Holy Cross Hospital began July 1.

Last year, Harris counselors saw 834 rape victims. A $21,000 collaborative state and federal grant will help to establish counseling services in Englewood, said program director Green. "It’s just a spit in the bucket," she said. "It’s just a little drop of water, and we need a flood in that bucket."

The organization gets most of its money from the Coalition Against Sexual Assault—$131,561 this year and $732,458 since 1990.

The Coalition’s 1997 budget of $5.75 million includes $693,000 through the federal Violence Against Women Act and $2.02 million from state funds. The Coalition is the only nonprofit that receives state funds for rape services from the Illinois Department of Human Services, and gets most of the federal funds distributed by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, said Michelle Waul, program monitor at the Authority.

Since 1990, the group has distributed $3.2 million to five Chicago centers. Four centers currently share the funds: the Harris YWCA; Rape Victim Advocates, at 343 S. Dearborn St.; the Loop YWCA; and the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago’s Quetzal Center, 5691 N. Ridge Ave. In fiscal year 1996, the centers served 1,383 new clients; 72.3 percent were minorities.

The fifth center, the Community Mental Health Council, 8704 S. Constance Ave., had a contract with the Coalition for 11 years. But the two groups parted company in 1995 over administrative disagreements and the Coalition’s concern that rape survivors would be classified as mentally ill at the South Side facility, said Dr. Carl Bell, the Council’s chief executive officer.

"It’s their way or the highway," Bell said. "Anytime you get a special interest group in control of a funding stream, that special interest group is going to have a political agenda. And if you are not politically aligned with their agenda, then you might get benign tolerance, but I don’t know if you are going to get friendly support."

Austin resident Linda Ellis, whose Westside Sexual Assault Services Network, 1140 N. Lamon Ave., treats about 300 victims a year out of a small office with two desks and a broken copier. She helped start the group in 1993 after three serial rapists terrorized the community, assaulting 10 women in one week, Ellis said.

Rape Victim Advocates offered to fund and operate an Austin branch, but residents "wanted it to be community-sanctioned and community-owned," Ellis said.

Outsiders often bring in stereotypes and preconceived notions about rape victims, she said. "You don’t come up in my house and take over," she added. "I’ve seen the ramifications of white women counseling black women."

Hospital emergency rooms have become a second home for Ellis and her small band of advocates. Her operating budget is so small she can track it in her head: $23,500 in grants from two hospitals, the Chicago Foundation for Women and First United Church of Oak Park.

Allowing the Coalition to allocate public monies cuts small agencies out of the process, said state Rep. Calvin Giles, a West Side Democrat. He has asked Ellis to present him with a proposal for additional funding, he said. "By going to a private organization [the state] is passing the responsibility," he said. "It’s unfair to the constituent that needs help."

Organizations that don’t think the system is working for them should take their complaints to the public bodies that provide the funds, Poskin said. "I’m not an apologist for [the Coalition], the state or the federal government about how [they’ve] chosen to address the need for sexual assault services in the state. Improvements need to be made all the time."

This summer, the Coalition got a $200,000 boost from the Violence Against Women Act to serve Spanish-speaking populations, the disabled, Asians and the West Side. The group awarded $50,000 each to its four Chicago centers.

Isabel Kang, a member of Korean American Women in Need, wonders why her group was overlooked. "One cannot help but ask why they haven’t approached us," she said. "We’ve been here since 1990."

The Coalition’s long-term goal is to establish satellite offices throughout the city, she said. But those offices would be run by the Coalition’s affiliates, not neighborhood organizations.

Meanwhile, Beverly Reed of Oasis said she had no choice but to dig deep into her own pockets to renovate a South Shore home for eight sexual assault survivors.

"The very first step is the hardest. It says I’m in pain," she said. "We have to help these women remember themselves."

Contributing: Interns Elizabeth Schneider and Peri Stone. Interns Dan Gorenstein, Phoebe King and Thorrie Rainey helped research this article.