Marching for Rape Victims on Denim Day

By Rachel Strom

A teenage girl cowered in the corner of the stage at the Bronx Museum, a group of teenage boys surroundeded her, preventing her exit. She began to scream for them to stop as they slowly enveloped her.

A young man sat on a bench, two big guys approached and started pushing him around, telling him to get up, as he repeated “Stop.” Meanwhile a dozen other teens were circling around the situation, saying “Don’t touch me.” “I thought it was the last time.” “I thought he was my friend, my father, my brother, never again.”

The performance was part of the annual Denim Day, April 27th, an event designed to educate people about sexual assault. The name comes from the event that spurred the national day of awareness, a ruling by the Italian Supreme Court in 1998 in which it overturned a rape conviction because the victim wore tight jeans. The judges determined that the victim’s tight jeans implied consent to her attacker.

The event’s activities began with a march in the afternoon on East 173rd and the Grand Concourse in the South Bronx. About 20 middle and high school students, mostly girls, were joined by members of BOOM! Health, Bronx Family Justice Center, Fountain House Bronx, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, and Relationship Abuse Prevention Program (RAPP).

The kids carried signs and banged on hand-crafted drums made from two-gallon buckets. They shouted “No means no!” as they walked down the Grand Concourse to the Bronx Museum of the Arts on East 166th Street. When they got to the museum, many organizations set up information and games to help the teens understand that there were resources available to them for rape and sexual assault.

Student Elijah Wilson read a poem about sexual abuse. An NYPD Detective from the Bronx Special Victim’s Division spoke briefly about how domestic violence happens to teens and how to prevent it. He stressed the importance of speaking to someone if anyone ever felt that they or someone they knew were in danger. One young woman went on stage and said that a family member had raped her, that she had nowhere to turn and felt it was her fault. She said was able to change her life with the help of a support group for rape survivors.

Towards the end of the event, a group from City-As-School, put on a performance about bullying and sexual abuse called “Invisible” that captivated the young audience. Each person did a monologue, sharing painful stories about rape and abuse.