Thread by @Hogshead3Au

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell Oh @CoachKiwi - you’d have been so proud of @DukeU’s caring treatment of me - better than I was to myself. #Duke believed two things that altered my life:
1) THAT it happened.
2) THAT I was more emotionally broken than I was letting on. 1/

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU •Duke allowed me to red-shirt from my full-athletic scholarship for a year.
◦I received full tuition, room, books, meal plan and student fees; I did not swim from the fall of 1981 until the start of fall 1982.
2/

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU My dorm room required me to walk through woods, so Duke admin moved me onto the most desirable, most central location on campus, “Main West.”
•couldn’t sleep; Duke found me a single – again, on Main West.
•Duke allowed me to drop two classes immediately …
3/

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU …and my transcript doesn’t say “WP” or “WF” or anything else – the courses are withdrawn like I was never registered for them.

In the next three weeks I got into two car accidents – I never had one before I was raped and haven’t had one since. After the 2nd car accident …

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU … Duke allowed me to get to the airport and take the next flight home; I took my exams after the December holiday break, in January. (That means profs had to make me exams!)

5/
Ok: this is my FAVORITE STORY:

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU •All students have to park either close to Main West, or “Guam” a parking lot that was far away and required walking through woods. I was, frankly, deluding myself into thinking that “just today I’ll park illegally, here in the close parking lot.” 🙄😵‍💫

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU And over time I ended up with a huge stack of tickets – hundreds of dollars’ worth. I went to the police station to go pay the tickets. The police station is where I had presented myself after being raped in the woods, bloody and swollen, months ago …

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU …and also where I’d kept going trying to find him – sketches, looking through books, etc. The woman behind the screen said to me, “Nancy …why do you have all these tickets?” and I sorta collapsed and said, “Look, I just cannot walk from Guam to my dorm room.” 😓

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU ◦Duke forgave the parking tickets without me asking.
◦Duke gave me a special parking pass that allowed me to park almost anywhere except where the emergency vehicles parked.

See? They believed I needed HELP. Not DISCIPLINE.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU •Duke paid for my summer school in 1982 to make up the two classes I’d dropped in the fall of 1981. 
•In the fall of 1982, the start of my junior year, the Duke swimming coach allowed me to start back swimming slowly.
◦I got very fast very quickly.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU Coach Bob Thompson said, “you’re going to win gold in 1984.” I thought, “this guy is deluded. I just want my scholarship. I don’t care about winning.”
He knew me better than I knew myself - that a little bit of swimming and feeling graced made the ball jump back into my hand.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU In January of 1983, I took 3 semesters off Duke to train for the 1984 Olympics. To my knowledge, hadn’t been done.

•In summer of 1984, I won three gold medals and 1 silver; the most decorated swimmer at those Games.   

•I graduated from Duke in 1986, with honors.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU Unquestionably, I would not have been able to win or to graduate from Duke Univ with academic honors if I had not been helped tremendously. I didn’t have to worry about finances at all. I was not shamed for having been raped, having PTSD, or for having a hard time concentrating.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU (Nobody knew about brain-trauma in 1981, but I really suffered)

Sexual assault survivors should get this whether they were beaten or not, whether they knew their assailant, whether their symptoms show up immediately or months later. Recovery looks messy, it is not linear.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU Survivors are judged so quickly, so harshly.
 
I will never forgot the kindness Duke administrators showed me, Gerald Wilson, Sue Wasiolek, Professor Jean O’Barr, at a time when I was the worst-version of myself; when I was so vulnerable and fragile, when they didn’t have to be.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU All rape survivors should get the same treatment. They should get the opportunity to make sure their sexual assault doesn’t interfere with their life’s goals, or with their academic trajectory.
But trust me, they don’t.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU I can say without a shadow of a doubt that if I’d been treated like my clients are treated, I’d have drowned. 
And I have no illusions why I was believed … my rape fit the tiny % of rapes where the parties don’t know each other. He wasn’t famous…

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU … an athlete or a prestigious professor. I hadn’t been drinking n “Campus Drive” is well-lit, a regular running path with frequent busses and cars. 
He smelled. His vernacular was so strong I had a hard time understanding him. No one on the “other side.”

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU The story was in the paper regularly.
I was already a national/ world champion many times over - a 1980 Olympian. 

It makes me utterly in awe of young women coming forward against fellow students or powerful men, when the circumstances are very different, but rape just the same

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU PTSD just the same, educational disruption just the same — and they aren’t believed. Or the depth of their emotional harm isn’t believed - that they’re faking it to get something-for-nothing.
It would have crushed me. 

Again, everyone should get what I got.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU Oh! And girl friends! Amazing friends that would let me talk and who put up with me.
Teri Conklin, Captain of @DukeSWIMDIVE, gets gold medals for being 20y/o, picking me up from the hospital and keeping up, “you’re doing so well!” - even when I didn’t believe it.

@CoachKiwi @lolobrollo @gwpurnell @DukeU @DukeSWIMDIVE .@threadreaderapp - unroll please 🫶🏼