College president "comes out" as sexual abuse survivor (Denver, Colorado)

When a campus center to help victims of abuse opened at the Community College of Denver recently, President Karen Bleeker was asked to give an official welcoming speech. Her audience got much more than that, something extraordinary. In fact, her audience soon discovered through her own testimony that their own college president was a courageous survivor of child sexual abuse at the hands of her UNNAMED FATHER.

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_13820164

Griego: College president stands with victims
By Tina Griego
Denver Post Columnist
Posted: 11/19/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/19/2009 01:18:18 AM MST

A ribbon-cutting was held recently on the Auraria campus for a center to help students, staff and faculty who may be in abusive relationships or are being stalked or have been sexually assaulted.

A press conference preceded the ceremony, and among the speakers was Kathy Robertson, who told of her 21-year-old daughter, Abby, a Metro State student. Abby's ex-boyfriend stalked her, escalating his threats until, in December 2007, he entered her apartment, and he killed her.

Also speaking was Karen Bleeker, Community College of Denver president. It is likely most people in the room expected her to give a boilerplate welcome. Center staff had sent her a few talking points.

But just before the press conference, she pulled aside Barbara Paradiso, the Center on Domestic Violence director at University of Colorado Denver, and asked if it would be appropriate to speak more personally.

And so Bleeker said: "I hesitate to begin speaking because this happens to be so close to my heart. I wonder if I can maintain enough composure. But I know I am among friends and that this is a safe place. There was a time in my life when I was not the president of a college when I was a 3-year-old girl at the hands of her father and a victim of sexual assault and violence. And I knew that violence for the entirety of my life, from 3 to 17, until it culminated with a death threat by my biological father, who told me that if I was there in the morning, that he would kill me. And (he) gave me a $50 bus ticket to leave. So, I left."

I was not there but watched a video clip later. Bleeker speaks in measured tones. The strain of maintaining her composure is clear.

Bleeker declined to speak with me further about her remarks. I understand that. It was an extraordinary moment. Extraordinary for the revelation and for the courage it took to acknowledge before television cameras and strangers. Extraordinary because, despite all we know about victims of sexual assault and of relationship violence, we still expect that somehow we can tell the once- wounded from the whole, that somehow it is obvious. We are conditioned to see either the woman held forever prisoner by her own victimization or the woman we blame for her own hurt and so can dismiss as not a victim, at all.

We insist upon this limited perspective even when we know someone who has been a victim of sexual assault or domestic violence.

Even when we have been that victim ourselves.

But here is a community college president speaking of her own experience with violence, with profound betrayal. Here is a woman of accomplishment describing long walks with her mother who said she knew of the abuse but didn't know how to stop it. A woman who refused to be defined by violation.

"I felt tremendous pride that we have someone in such a high position willing to put herself out there," Paradiso tells me. "Not only to demonstrate, 'you are not alone,' but that you can move beyond it and accomplish your greatest dreams."

Therein lies the power of Bleeker's admission. Therein lies its gift.

Were you surprised by what Bleeker said? I ask Lisa Ingarfield, Phoenix Center associate director.

"No," she says, "but I'm always saddened by these experiences, and the piece that saddens me is people have them and they don't know where to go or they are told it's their fault or they deserved it."

I know what this is like. I've written about it before. Nineteen and naive. I told myself the person who hurt me was a good guy, a friend, and so couldn't have meant me harm. I tried to make things normal. I didn't know where to go. Years later, I still struggle to write about it.

This is the phenomenon about which we do not speak. It is a phenomenon which reinforces itself because its victims are shamed and so are isolated. They are denied a collective voice, and it is only through that voice that a culture changes.

Support this center, Bleeker said that day, protect its existence because it's important, because not so long ago, victims had no place to go.

Auraria serves 43,000 students among its three colleges. A need long existed for a safe place, a 2 4/7 hotline to call (303-556-2255), a person to talk to, for someone to say: What is happening or what has happened to you is not OK.

"We don't tell people what to do, but we do provide a space to talk about their options," Ingarfield says.

Phoenix Center volunteers are going to classrooms, educating fellow students on relationship violence, on how to safely intervene to help a friend and where victims can get help.

The center opened in its space at the Tivoli Center, Room 259, in mid- August. Its services are free and confidential. Demand, Ingarfield says, has "grown exponentially."