It's My Fault Because I Had a Drink? How Being Sexually Assaulted Introduced Me to Victim-Blaming Culture

I rarely think of myself as a victim. When I’ve faced challenges in my life, I’ve tried to avoid the word, thinking it sounded self-pitying and indulgent.

But all that changed when I was sexually assaulted and mugged last month and was abruptly introduced to the culture of victim blaming.

I've seen some strange things during the five years I've lived in New York. I’ve seen a woman throwing a man’s clothes out of their fifth-floor window onto the street. I’ve witnessed half-nude men and women doing unmentionable things on street corners. I’ve watched people fight in public and make up moments later. But I’ve never had anything truly strange or dangerous happen to me until the night I was mugged.

It had been a fun, laid-back night until I took the subway home. I met up with a friend for a drink after work, and around midnight I got on the subway to go back to my apartment. I had recently purchased a condo in East Harlem. When I decided to buy the place, many people asked me if I thought the neighborhood was safe. I said yes without hesitation. There’s the potential for danger in every neighborhood of New York, I thought. How was Harlem at 2 a.m. that different from my old neighborhood, the Upper East Side, in the middle of the night?

About one block from my apartment, a man began following me. “Oooh, I know a drunk white girl when I see one,” I heard him say. He grabbed me and forcefully kissed me. I was so shocked that I couldn’t move for a moment. Then he lifted my purse from over my shoulder and ran away with it.

Without thinking, I began running after the man. He didn’t make it very far, and I caught up with him quickly. I grabbed him and began punching him and hitting him with my knees.

“What the f*** do you think you’re doing?” I yelled. “Give me back my purse!”

He dropped my wallet, which he had taken out of my purse, and pointed to my keys, which had fallen on the sidewalk.

“Here are your keys!” he said, tossing my purse to the ground and running away. I grabbed my keys and ran to my apartment as fast as I could, looking behind me to make sure I hadn’t been followed.

The moment I was inside my apartment, I called a friend to tell her what had happened. “You have to call the police,” she said. I didn’t want to; I had heard terrible stories about how police treated women who had been assaulted. I didn’t think they would treat me any differently. But my friend convinced me that I needed to report the case, and I finally dialed 911.

Within a few minutes, several police officers — both men and women — had shown up at my apartment. More and more kept coming; at one point, there were nine cops in my living room. I repeated my story several times and went for a ride in the police car to see if the man who mugged me was still in the neighborhood.

I was told I would be called the following day to arrange a time to go into the station and look at mug shots. My phone rang the following morning at 9 a.m. The officers had not left my apartment until after 3 a.m. the night before, so I was still asleep. The policeman on the phone wanted me to come into the precinct that morning, but I had an appointment that I could not miss, so I told the officer I couldn’t come in until the following day (Friday). He did not seem pleased; he kept insisting that I come to the precinct that day. I repeated several times that I couldn’t make it until the following day.

“Ma’am, are you sure you can even identify this man?” he asked, sounding annoyed. “It says in the record that you were intoxicated."