REPORT: Event Aims to Raise Awareness, Remove Stigma from Reporting Sexual Assault

Before he raped her one morning earlier this year, Guadelupe's father checked all the other bedrooms in the house to be sure her mother and other family members were still asleep. Then he went into her room.

“When I woke up, he covered my mouth and he sexually abused me,” said the 21-year-old Coachella Valley resident who asked that only her middle name be used for this story.

“He told me I better not say anything. Then he just got up and left,” she said.

Guadelupe told her story in soft, halting sentences, mostly in Spanish, sitting on a couch at Coachella Valley Sexual Assault Services in Palm Desert, where she now gets counseling.

In recent months, counselors at the agency, which is part of San Bernardino Sexual Assault Services, said they have seen increasing numbers of girls and young women such as Guadelupe, who are victims of rape or sexual molestation by family members.

As part of its activities to mark Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the agency will hold a special outreach event for the Latino community — called “Taking Back the Power” — today in Thermal.

Dealing with sexual violence in Latino families — or any ethnic group — often involves breaking through layers of cultural taboos to help survivors speak out and hold the perpetrators responsible, while not stigmatizing the community as a whole, counselor Elvira Barragan said.

“They don't want anything like this to come out,” said Barragan, a program assistant who is Guadelupe's counselor and translated for her during an interview this week.

“There's a lot of Hispanic parents — (for them) family comes first,” she said. “Whatever it is, they're going to keep it on the low; they're not going to break up the family, regardless.”

Winette Daugherty, program coordinator at Coachella Valley Sexual Assault, said the organization's strategy for breaking through those cultural walls is to focus on outreach and education to let survivors and their families know that help is available for them.

“We don't change our approach; we don't change our verbiage,” Daugherty said. “We just try to give them tools to overcome the guilt. To have a voice is really OK, and it's not OK for people to hurt you.”

In Guadelupe's case, her family responded quickly and decisively. Later in the day, she told a brother about the rape. He and her mother confronted her father when he came home from work and refused to let him in the house.

“My father said he doesn't know why he did it,” Guadelupe said. “My older brother convinced (my mother) to call the police and make a report.”

Originally from Mexico, the family has been in the U.S. only about a year. Guadelupe's father is now in jail; he will likely lose his green card and be deported, she said.

Cases rise among valley Latinos

The number of reported rape and molestation cases within Latino families in the Coachella Valley is partly a matter of demographics, according to Daugherty and other experts in the field.

The 2010 U.S. Census showed Latinos as 45.5 percent of the total population of Riverside County versus 36.2 percent for whites.

Coachella Valley Sexual Assault logs close to 100 calls a month from survivors, family members and others seeking help and information, Daugherty said. In the past six months, she said, more than half of the women calling about recent rapes have been Latino — 26 out of a total of 51.

The other 25 cases — which include 23 white women and two black women — reflect the fact that rape, incest and sexual violence cut across all age groups and socioeconomic boundaries, experts say.

National statistics indicate about one in six women — white, black and Latino — will experience some form of sexual violence during their lifetime. The rate for Asian-Pacific Island women is about one in 14; for Native American women, one in three.

Two-thirds of all assaults are committed by someone the victim knows. About 7 percent are family members.

Sandra Henriquez, executive director of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, said the higher numbers of Latino women contacting the Coachella Valley rape crisis center could be credited to the agency's increased outreach to the community.

“I really don't believe that, whatever figures you're seeing, sexual assault is more prevalent in any community,” Henriquez said. “Reporting patterns factor in a number of different things that include the level of outreach and education in a community. More people could be coming forward.”

Confronting sexual violence in any ethnic community “needs to be rooted in cultural sensitivity and delivered by people that are from that group,” she said. “That's going to be the most effective.”

But she agrees with Daugherty that “the messages are always the same. If you have been sexually assaulted, you are not to blame. There are resources in the community to assist you.”

Before he raped her, Guadelupe's father kept both her and her mother isolated in the home and financially dependent on his earnings.

The family is struggling economically, but Guadelupe is now taking courses to improve her skills and her English. She wants to work to help her mother.

At home, her family quickly moved her out of her former bedroom, she said. They don't like talking about the rape or her father, but now they can go out together and laugh.

The counseling she receives at Coachella Valley Sexual Assault also is making a difference.

“It's helped me not to think of bad things,” she said. “There are days I feel bad, but I try to be strong for my mother and family.”

What she wants other women to know, she said, “is not to be in silence. Don't keep it inside like they're always told, but speak up.”

Her message to men is “to think before they hurt women. Don't hurt people that love you.”