Fighting Back: Surviving Rape (Part 1 of 2)

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- In the United States, 700,000 women will be raped this year. One in four college women will become a victim, but more than 70 percent will not go to the police or seek help.

Beaten, raped and left to die, the Central Park Jogger is alive and back to tell her story of survival. Trisha Meili is the Central Park Jogger. Sixteen years after the attack she can finally walk through the park where she almost lost her life.

Meili says, "As a result of the brain injury, I don't have any memory of anything that happened the evening of the attack." The 28-year old awoke from a 12-day coma to start rebuilding her body and life after being brutally attacked, beaten and raped. "I was surrounded by all these people who were rooting for me and praying for me and helping me," she says. Meili symbolically reclaimed her life when she ran the New York City Marathon, which finished in Central Park. "It was just such a triumph for me. It really was such a milestone," she says.

Kellie Greene, also a rape survivor says, "As soon as he said the words, I'm not here for the money, I knew exactly what was going to happen."

Karen Reivich, Ph.D., a psychologist at University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh, and author of "Resilience Factor," says we all have the ability triumph over such unimaginable horror. "We're talking about optimism that's wed to reality. It's focusing on what you can do and using your energy there."

Keys that create resilience are an emphasis on the present, a willingness to accept help, and a can-do optimism.

It was optimism that helped Greene move forward from what happened to her. "The anniversaries are hard and I would relive that day from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep," she says. After three years of counseling a breakthrough occurred. "I decided to go skydiving to reclaim the day and it became the day I go skydiving instead of the day that I was raped."

More than 250 rape survivors and supporters have joined her to take a similar leap of faith. Greene says, "If I can survive rape, almost being murdered, and jumping out of an airplane, a perfectly good airplane, I can do anything in this world."

Two-thirds of all rapes occur at night -- mostly between 6:00 p.m. and midnight. Seventy percent of all the women raped knew their attacker.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Trisha Meili
http://www.centralparkjogger.com

Kellie Greene
http://www.soar99.org

Karen Reivich
reivich@psych.upenn.edu

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