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before it went into the loaf pan. To have noticed the fly buzzing around my head, fearing it would wind up in the bread and be mistaken for a reason. But if someone asked what I did over the weekend, I would most likely say I made bread. That's Michelle Bowdler, social justice activist, public health professional, and author of the recent book is Rape A Crime, A Memoir, an investigation, and a Manifesto, which was long listed for the National

Book Award. Michelle's is a story of trauma and the long shadow of its aftermath, and the extraordinary healing power of giving voice and taking action. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. I was born in a northern suburb of Chicago and grew up with a mother and a

father in a townhouse village in that area. And when I was just barely seven years old, my father died of a fast moving cancer, and there was a lot that changed then. My mother was thirty three years old with two kids, two young children, and we were pretty lost without him. And about five years later she remarried and we moved to a small, very rural town in

northeastern Ohio. It was an odd fit for me. Um We left behind our family and our friends and came to a place where many people actually had never even left the state of Ohio, and I felt really out of place. And I was very much looking forward to college and moved on to leave as soon as I could, and wound up in Massachusetts and haven't less since. Describe to me what you were like as a young woman heading into college. College was really transformed for me when

I got to Brandeis University. People had read books I had never heard of. They had tasted foods I didn't even know that you know the names of, and I didn't really even know what I wanted to study. And within a semester, I had made friends for the first time in my life. I decided to be an English major, and I think probably by second semester I had come out, which was a big surprise for me at the time.

And then as the four years of college went forward, I felt like I found a real footing in not only the love of reading and writing that I discovered, but also um in terms of feminist politics. And I was very active on the Brandeis campus and had just the most wonderful time just feeling like a head of voice that there wasn't anything I felt like I couldn't do. I couldn't wait to see what life had to offer

after I graduated. So when you graduate from Brandeis and you've really that beautiful thing that can happen where you come into your own you move into an apartment not that far away I did. I moved into an apartment in Austin, which is right near Boston University and near ish to downtown, and lived with three of my dear friends. And it took me about a year to find a job that I felt I was interested and I worked

at a circuit factory as a bookkeeper. I did all kinds of things until I found a job in editing. I was editing for a small man magazine, and that was when I really started to feel like, this is really great, paying my own rent, I'm learning how to cook. I I'm responsible for what happens to me, and it was just a wonderful, magical time for me. Walk me

through what happened on the first night of summer in. So, the first night of summer in I had dinner and went to a concert with a friend of mine, and during I think intermission, a friend from Brandis came up to us and she had a big pile of flyers in her hands, and she said, you know you live in Austin, don't you Have you heard about the fact that there's been a series of rapes that's been on the news. And we put these flyers together because we

don't think enough people know about it. Could you perhaps take some and put them up? Would you be willing to do that? And I was all too happy to do that. I felt like I had lost a little bit of my political will over the last two years because I was just busy trying to find a job. And I was so happy to feel like I could

do something meaningful. So I took a big bunch of flyers and I put them on my table out in our hallway, and I remember thinking to myself, Gee, I'll have to see if my roommates can help me put these up tomorrow. And then I went to bed, and for some reason, none of them were home, which was unusual, but I was the only one home, and I I looked at those flyers, and when I thought about it later, I never, even for a second I thought about the fact that this was happening and that it could happen

to me. It was more about how I could help other people. And I never thought for a minute that I was in any danger. And I went to bed, and a few hours later I felt my door open, and I thought, maybe it's one of my roommates coming home and they want to say good night. I hadn't really no idea what time it was, and it was two strangers, and so I sort of felt the light come in and was waiting to hear my friend's voice and realized in that moment that there were two people

in my apartment. And they rushed over and it was clear that this was a home invasion, and that was the beginning of the night that really you have changed my life. Did you connect in your mind the home invasion with those fires? No, you're so frozen in a moment like that, and I I just felt like I went into a different mode of let me see what I can figure out is happening here so that I can keep myself safe. And so I worked really hard

to let them know that I wasn't a threat. When I was spoken to, I tried to speak in very measured tones to be reassuring. One of them said, We're not going to hurt you. We're just here to rob the house. You know, it's the economy. We need money or something something like that, and so I decided, maybe for some self preservation, to just believe what they said. And it wasn't until the night progressed where I realized, oh, no, these are the men on the fire that they're talking about,

and I am going to be raped. And then I also sort of went into a frozen mode where I had to again figure out what do I need to to survive this. How many hours in all were these strangers in your apartment? It felt like it was about two hours, and I'm not sure that that's the truth, because it might have been less. But the night seemed to just go on and on, and one of them stayed with me, and while the other one ransacked a

post college apartment where there was nothing of value. It felt like that process just went on, and then there was a lot of back and forth about what else should we do? Should we leave? Do you have money? Do you have a car? That just seemed endless, It was prolonged. One of the split second decisions Michelle makes is to not tell these two men that she's a lesbian. This is a knee jerk in stinct contrary to her values. All she's thinking about is getting to the next minute.

The men bind Michelle's hands and feet, then blindfold her. They place a gag around her face, and she's terrified that they're going to strangle her, but instead the gag goes over her mouth and they tell her to keep calm. Finally, they leave. I waited until they left and made sure that they were gone, because they didn't want to have

any reason for them to harm me more. I just worked to loosen my self and was able to untied myself eventually, and then I couldn't find my glasses and I am very, very site impaired without my glasses, and I couldn't find and was very disoriented. But there was no question that I would have to go to the hospital. I was physically hurt, and I I didn't know how badly. I thought that I should have a medical exam, and I never thought maybe I should wait. I just felt

like I needed help right away. I walked across this little apartment hallway to neighbors that I had never met. It was probably about three or four in the morning, and I knocked on their door and I just I said, I need to use your phone. And at the time, in the early nineteen eighties, the Boston Mary Rape Crisis Center was in place, but it had started just a few years before. It's one of the oldest rape crisis

centers in the country. And then Beth Israel Hospital had a victim services program which still exists to this day. They call it a violence prevention recovery now, but at the time they were known for being able to help people who have been raped get the care that they needed. So there was no questions that that was where I would go. You knew where to go. I did. I don't know how I did. Maybe because of the political work that I did in college. I really I'm not sure.

You know, it never ceases to amaze me the way that in the midst of severe trauma, the mind of the brain, you know, just the survival instinct can become so incredibly sharp. I mean, of all the hospitals in Boston, Boston is a city of hospitals that you shuffled through, you know, in some way your mental rolodex, and knew where to take yourself. I just find that fascinating and such resilient see of the human spirit, even in a

moment like that. I think the thing that stands out for me the most about being at the hospital and awaiting an exam was how clear it was to me in some part of my brain that I was suddenly a different person. I had now had this experience, and I felt like I was utterly changed. I think during the attack, I became quite dissociated, and in order to survive,

I sort of wasn't there. I was there, but I wasn't there, and I still had that feeling when I was at the hospital, I even in moments, felt like maybe I died because it just seemed so unreal and so impossible. And so I was in the emergency room. I had a friend with me, and somebody came out and asked me. They said, we usually have women who can do the exam, but we don't right now. We only have men in the e R. Do you want

to wait and we can get somebody? And I said I would wait and rape exams, rape evidence collection exams. At a time, it was it was at least a four hour exam. Now I think that's the maximum that it would be, but back then it could be four to six hours. It really is unlike any other exam.

And what I've heard people say, and what I've said myself, is that in essence, your body is a crime scene, and that the forensic evidence that lives on your body is the thing that they have to extract in order to even have the possibility of moving forward to identify the perpetrators. They come you in every possible place they can comb you, and they they have a silhouet of of a human that's on a piece of paper and I think this is still true. And they mark we're bruised,

They mark anything that is relevant to the assault. I mean, it's even as I'm saying, and I just think it is really so intrusive after you've just had a violation and intrusion that defies description. But some people do go through a rape kit, and I felt like I I felt obligated to because if this was clearly a case of serial perpetration, and I I didn't want anybody else to have to go through this. If we could find the men who had done it, we'll be right back.

Following her medical ordeal at the hospital, Michelle is back at her apartment when two detectives arrived, presumably to ask her questions about the assault and to collect more evidence for her case. A few hours after being at the hospital, or maybe it was even several hours later, um, there were detectives who wanted to interview me to see if I could help them in what I thought was going to be an investigation. And we sat down and started talking and they kept asking me, did you see them?

What can you tell us about them? What did they look like? And I must have said several times I did see them. I was I was blindfolded, and I could feel them getting frustrated they would be able to get some DNA evidence and also fingerprint evidence, but it would be important to them that they had a description,

and I felt like I was letting them down. And at one point one of the detectives reached into his satchel and pulled out a gallant sized baggy and there was a knife in it, and he held it up and said to me, does this look familiar? And even as I say it now, it creates like a lump, a lump of fear in my throat. And this is, you know, over thirty five years later, And I said,

did you find that in my bedroom? And then it started to come back to me that they had a knife, and that I saw it for that split second before they put the blindfold on me. They did have a knife. I didn't make the up in my head. I did see it, and I was terrified, and I just said, well, I assume that was from my kitchen. And then there were a lot of questions about my kitchen knives, Well could you identify this to are you sure? And I

didn't know, and I didn't understand why that mattered. There were a lot of questions that of a lot of detail that didn't really matter to me. And I will say that in the work that I do now, trying to be more of an advocate. I think a lot about what didn't happen, and what didn't happen was they didn't say, is this too early for us to talk to or have you had a chance to get some sleep, or I know this is hard, but time is of the essence. I felt like I was just a bad witness.

They did say, you know, I guess that's about it, and we'll be on our way. We'll get back to you if we have any more questions, and it was very strongly stated. So I thought we were done and that I would wind appearing from them in about three or four weeks. I guess I was naive about how quickly things take. The detectives asked Michelle to come down to the Boston Police station to give her fingerprints so they'd be able to distinguish her fingerprints from the rapists

when dusting the apartment. I went to the police station and got my fingerprints taken, which was also a very strange experience where I felt like I was a criminal, that I was somehow being booked. You know, they turn your hands over and the ink and get your fingerprints, and there's not a lot of words that are exchanged while it's happening. And then the ink stayed on my hand.

And this was I think, less than twenty four hours after I had been attacked, and it was a lot of police contact and in an environment I had never been in. And at the very end of our exchange and having the fingerprints done, there was a a dog barking somewhere. I don't know if it was a police dog was right outside and the windows were open, but the dog was barking and barking and barking, and policewood people were like, oh, not again, and oh this dog.

And finally the officer looked at me and said that dog, just like a woman, can't keep her mouth shut. I couldn't believe it. And it was also the moment where I thought, Oh, this last twelve hours or whatever it's been, has all been a waste of time. That somebody who could say something like that made me feel like, Oh, if he is at all reflective of this group of officers, then why did I even bother? I bet they won't

even look. It was devastating, And it was also devastating was that I didn't have my old self that I could conjure in any way to basically say, listen to you, and what I would have said, you know, two days before, like I can't believe you just said that that is so not okay, you know, and really talked to him about misogyny and walked out with all this swagger that I didn't have anymore. How quickly our sense of self

can be taken from us. The nature of trauma, I think, is that it robs us of our voice, Its silences us. In this way, It's like a secret that we keep from ourselves because the self that would have been confronting that police officer has gone a wall. That self is not available in the inner swirl of shame, self blame, inadequacy, Michelle worries about being a bad witness, and she does not yet have access to the range of her oceans.

I began to feel angry when I was moving. I was staying with a friend of mine, and I was moving about six weeks later, and I still hadn't heard anything, and I didn't have a cell phone that I could give the detective, and so I thought, Oh, I better let him know I'm moving. I tried saying that, like, oh, I'm moving and I thought I should let you know so that you would know how to get in touch

with me. And then that was when he got dismissed of like where the police we know how to find people and did, And I said I would let you know if I had any news, because at some point I said, well, I thought, maybe you know, do you have an update? Another one on the phone. No, I said I'd call you if I had any news, and it was clear that me calling was annoying. You're right, I can never again be a person who does not

have this story chasing me. And so there's this period of time in the immediate aftermath, meaning you know, the initial weeks and months and then extending into years, where the whole question of talking about it, not talking about it, telling not telling is very prevalent. And the first place that that arises is when you think about telling your mother and you think, I can't tell my mother. I'm not going to tell my mother, and your mother is told.

I imagine there are people who don't and who never tell their parents. But then your mother doesn't come to visit right away, and you tell her not to and she doesn't. When your mother finally does come to visit. You're furious at her because she didn't come and you needed her, and she didn't come that she should have known that you needed her and come. There's a term called to ross that I read about, and it's something

that's particular to the Iranian culture. The example that I've heard of is you're taking a taxi ride and you're done, and you get your destination, and you say how much do I owe you? And the taxi driver says, oh, my goodness, you don't pay me. The pleasure of your

company was enough. I couldn't possibly take your money. And then you, of course argue, and then they insist no, and then but ultimately both parties in this the cultural exchange, know that at the end the driver is to be paid, but the back and forth is considered a politeness of courtesy and somehow a recognition of I don't want to bother you, but of course you must. And but you know it goes on like that, and that is known

as tarros. And of course if the you didn't pay the taxi driver, he'd be very upset and he would want to be paid. The dance of taraff has prevented Michelle and her mother from having an honest conversation. Michelle had told her mother not to come, and her mother had taken her at her word. Over years, this misunderstanding calcified into resentment that Michelle carried with her like a

stone in her pocket. Years later, years later, when my mother was dying and my sister and I were talking about it, I brought that up somehow because my sister had asked me a question and I said, yeah, that was really hard that she didn't come. And I know I told her not to, but it was still hard

for me. And she explained that when I said don't come, they had actually called a rape crisis center in one of their towns, and the person at the other end of the line said, if she tells you not to do what you must listen because a rape victim loses all sense of control, and even if what she's asking you seem so outlandish, you have to respect it. And yet we never had that conversation. We lost the opportunity

to have that conversation. And the secret that I was holding was that I had a resentment even though I was so distraught that I couldn't ask for anything different. And she never said to me. Years later, here's why I listened, and to this day I regret it. There's a lot that we lose by being afraid to say the thing that we think will hurt somebody's feelings because we love them, because we don't want them to feel

shame or guilt. But what happened instead of what happened to me, was that there was a real lost opportunity to have closure that I think we all, all the whole family could have benefited from. That's so poignant and and so universal I think in families. And then it's gone right. You've lost it, and you have to live with the choice that you made not to say, not to confront, for whatever the reasons were, there's a choice I made and and I regret it. I wish that

I could talk to her about it. We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. In the aftermath, I quit my job, which is actually really common. I didn't know it's time, but to calm a phenomenon, I left my job and I wound up working temp for three or four years because I didn't feel like I

had the wherewithal to commit to a job. I was afraid of being fired, so I did temp work, and at some point I was, you know, at a placement at a doctor's lab for about a year, and the person I was working was she knew something was going on with me. She helped me move on after I told her what happened. So I told her and she said, let's let's help you leave. It was a gift, really. Then I worked at a methodon clinic. That's where I met my wife, who was a nurse there. I started

liking work again. I started feeling like I was using my brain and I liked my job a lote. By that point, I was in my late twenties. Michelle returns to school and get some master's in public health at Harvard. This is the time when she begins to feel she's coming back to herself. She loves studying and learning. She's in love with the woman who will become her wife. She gets a job doing meaningful work in healthcare and mental health at Tufts University, a job she still holds

to this day. She also makes the decision to stay quiet about her history. She doesn't share the full story with Mary, her partner. At one point, Mary says, to you, it's so apparent, how keeping silent doesn't serve you. She knew that something had happened, and she knew that I had been assaulted. She knew the broad brush of it all, but I didn't want to talk about the details. I kind of wanted a new start, and I felt like it had been enough years that I didn't have to

go back. It's almost ten years, well seven to ten years later, and I wanted to feel like I was past it, and so I was keeping a secret from myself, which was that I wasn't past it. And and many years later it was clear that I still had some work to do. But at the time, I felt, well, you know this is I'm ready to move on. I've moved on. I'm I'm studying at Harvard and I'm doing something I love, and I don't want to feel like when I get to know people that I have to

say that I can talk about other things. And it didn't really work for me. I mean, I did it, but I just felt like it was time. And the people I told in the intervening years were really few and far between. Mary and Michelle have two children, a son and a daughter. Born in the profound vulnerability of motherhood awakes the sleeping giant of her silenced story. I

think there were two things. I think that to risk loving them as much as I did, I felt like that was reignited, like I am going to be more vulnerable than I like being. But I'm going to do it and I want to do it. But I knew that it was going to be hard to feel afraid all the time. And you know, when I say that out loud, I think, isn't that a shame? Because in fact I didn't plan to be afraid, and I didn't want my children to experience the impact of trauma, of

my trauma. I didn't want to. It's still fear in them now. I still think about my daughter could climb the playground equipment like in the most incredible way, and and you know, walk across a ladder that's eight feet off the ground on a on a playground equipment that I would want to just the whole time, you saying careful, careful, and Mary would sort of say she's she's okay. And if she falls, Actually, kids know how to fall and the playground is made for them to have a soft

fall if they fall. So I was with somebody who was not a daredevil, but who understood that kids have to take risks to grow, and that it wasn't serving them if I was always like, oh, oh my god, you know, like wait, wait, be careful. So I tried to hide it. I think what happens when you try to hide your nature or especially trauma, it probably is

in the air somewhere. I really had to reckon with my anxiety and my worries about their safety and just about what it meant to raise children and have them live in a world where awful things happened. They also grew up in a home that was full of joy and full of love and full of silliness. So it wasn't just one sided. But that other part was still with me, and it was with me more than I

was comfortable with. And you also reach a point, I think when they're in middle school where telling them it's one of those great By great, I mean huge parental dilemmas, which is, if there's something that is from a parent's own experience that's really really hard, you know, all we want to do is protect our children from that knowledge

and the realization that we can't. Yes, I do believe that we should give our children more credit than sometimes we do, and so it always struck me that when kids are really little and they say things like tell me a story, what what did you what was your favorite at age growing up, or whatever the questions are, and then it's what did you do after college? And

why did you do that? And then it started to feel like I was not being truthful because the questions were about my post college life, and I didn't like that. And then my daughter, also as a young child, exhibited a lot of anxiety. And at one point she was running into our room every night. She was probably three or four years old, and she was running into our room saying she was having nightmares that the bears were

going to come into her room and steal her. And that was when I said to Mary, I feel like she must be picking up on something I've never talked about what happened to me in front of her, But my goodness, she thinks someone's going to come through a window and hurt her, Like I totally felt like I had somehow she had absorbed that, somehow, in some strange way. We've spoken before on this podcast about inherited or epigenetic trauma, the way trauma experienced by a parent can literally alter

the DNA and impact the child. Michelle and Mary are very present parents, deeply conscious wanting to be upfront and honest with their children. They've talked to their kids from the time they were little about what it means to have two moms, what they might hear in school, and how their moms might help emotionally support them. But on the subject of Michelle's violent attack and how it happened, Michelle and Mary put that off. Maybe their kids didn't

need to know. But once their son and daughter reached middle school and Michelle's profile has risen as an activist for law enforcement reform, she decides that it's time to tell them about her history. We decided to tell my daughter because I found out from Mary that my son already knew, and so I guess she had kept a secret from me that he had read an article I had been working on, and he told her, but he

didn't want to tell men. And it was interesting. It was like we were all being guided by this silence. So I wasn't telling them what I was working on, and then he saw it, looked at it without me knowing, and then he didn't want to tell me. And and so when I tried to talk to him about if. He said, you know, I don't really want to talk about it. I'm just sorry that happened to you. And I wanted to respect how an adolescent boy might not

know how to talk to his mother about it. So I said, okay, Ben, but we'll talk about it more when you're ready. And so we told our daughter. Mary told her and then I followed up, and she was shocked, she was upset. She, you know, had a lot of questions. We wouldn't not tell them that my father died or that Mary's father died when we were young, and that had a huge impact on us. And yet this was something I had held and it was a big relief, and it was something that I wrote about and labeled it,

called it Eventually you have to tell your kids. And there were more people who were interested in wanting to talk to me about that, not because of my experience, but they said, I've wondered that question about my kids because I And then it might be something else. It might be abuse, it might be you know someone in the family who doesn't speak to them anymore for whatever the reason is, and they don't even know that person exists,

Like all the all kinds of secrets. Michelle does a speech around this time in which the first sentence is I am a rape survivor. This is very deliberate on her part. After so many years of silence, She's going to name it, She's going to own it. In the wake of that speech, she feels more like her genuine self than she has in a very long time. And this makes so much sense, right. We don't choose our stories.

As my dear friend Sylvia Borstein, the great Buddhist teacher who has been a guest on this podcast, often says, it's not what I wanted, but it's what I've got. The more we're able to own the totality of our life's experience, the more possibility there is for wholeness of self and with one's family as well. It's true that when you fight against what you can't escape, you can't be your true self. And I have figured that out

over many years. And part of the reason I think people fight against that is that they think that if they accept that, they're accepting what happened to them. And I don't think the two have to go together. I think that you can say I'm not glad that's happened to me, And it did, and sure's what I'm going to try to make of my life, even though I wish it never happened. In Michelle visits the Boston Sexual

Assault Unit for the first time. It's a unit that was created at almost exactly the same time as her rape. She's hoping to be able to identify her attackers now that tracing DNA is so much more prevalent, but her rape kit and evidence have been missing for many years, as is true horrifyingly true of thousands of women. She's

looking for closure. She discovers while at the Boston Sexual Assault Unit that the detective who was so dismissive and insensitive thirty years earlier, that detective had never pursued her case. It was considered closed. But there are many different forms of closure, and the words finally come to Michelle, words that strike me as somehow sacred. Embrace your life fully,

the one almost robbed from you. I was done feeling like I was looking backward to find a sense of peace, and I decided that I could look forward, and that I didn't want to waste any more time with people who weren't going to help me. Look, and that finding the answer wasn't going to give me the closure I thought. And that was when I really started to feel like things had changed in a way that I'm deeply grateful happened.

Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Molly Zachor is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd like to share, please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also find me on Instagram at Danny writer. And if you'd like to know more about the story that inspired

this podcast, check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.