WORCESTER—At Worcester State’s Denim Day event, Miss Worcester County Josette Huang delivered a powerful message: healing from sexual assault is personal, non-linear, and deserves empathy—and consent is always key.
The Sexual Assault and Violence Education (SAVE) Task Force at Worcester State University held a Sexual Assault Awareness Month Denim Arts & Crafts Event for Denim Day on April 10 featuring guest speaker Miss Worcester County Josette Huang.
Huang, who is competing for the title of Miss Massachusetts this June, has been focused on her community service initiative, “From Victim to Survivor: Ending Sexual Assault.” She shared her survival story and how she became an advocate for prevention, survivor advocacy, and victim support.
“Sexual assault is a too-common issue, and a very serious one, that needs to be treated as such,” she said, presenting some statistics. “Every year, almost half a million Americans are sexually assaulted – that’s one person every 68 seconds. On college campuses, the problem is more rampant, with one in six women, and one in sixteen men experiencing sexual assault.” According to a WSU survey, 45% of students reported experiencing at least one incident of sexual misconduct.
“That probably means you know a survivor; you probably know several,” Huang told the crowd. “An estimated 63-percent of rapes go unreported. Less than half of Worcester State students who have experienced sexual assault have disclosed the incident, and only six percent result in a conviction. Even if it may seem that sexual assault is not that huge of a problem, it is. It’s something that needs to be addressed now, by everyone in the community.”
Victims, Huang said, are ten times more likely to die from suicide. She cited her own story.
During her final year at the University of Chicago, she was raped by her ex-partner. She chose to pursue a Title IX case against him, which she won, but that was after she reached what she called the lowest point in her life. She dealt with her trauma by not sleeping to avoid the nightmares and drowning herself in booze to avoid her thoughts while awake. After several weeks, she was involuntarily admitted to a mental hospital. A week filled with processing led her to the conclusion that she needed to pursue justice in order to heal. Huang said she gradually gained the clarity to report the crime and pursue a case against her perpetrator.
“No punishment will ever be enough,” she said, “but I hope I can at least restore some of my faith in humanity and protect those who might otherwise become the respondent’s next victims.”
To this day, she said, the incident affects her, as well as her family, friends and other relationships.
She hopes that sharing her story will help encourage more people to hold perpetrators accountable, and to show more empathy to survivors, as well as encourage others to speak of their experiences.
One important factor when helping a victim, she said, is for people to understand that every survivor’s healing journey is their own. “Whatever they need to do to heal, is the right thing to do,” Huang said. “If that’s reporting, that’s great. If that’s crying in your temple, that’s great. If it’s yelling your pain out at 3 a.m. to a crisis hotline, like Pathways for Change, that’s also great.”
Her best advice to survivors going through their healing journey is to give themselves grace.
“Healing doesn’t happen overnight, it’s not linear, and you will need to depend on other people to heal,” she said. “But give yourself the grace to heal and tell yourselves as many times as you need that you deserve to heal.” Addressing the issue of consent, Huang said people often question whether sex is okay if it’s with your significant other even if they don’t really want to, or if someone is intoxicated but not too intoxicated, and other what-if circumstances. The way to remove that doubt, is one simple sentence, she said.
“If it’s not an enthusiastic yes, it’s a no,” she said. “Consent is very sexy. You might think it would be awkward to ask, but I think everyone would say they’d prefer a potentially awkward moment over dealing with a lifetime of trauma, because they weren’t asked.
”To support survivors better,” Huang said, “the most important thing you can do for that person is to listen without judgment, and assure the person that it wasn’t their fault, that they are believed, and that whatever action they decide to take in their healing journey is the right one.”
Sarah Valois, an associate director in the WSU Counseling Center, and coordinator of SAVE, said preventing sexual assault and helping victims at WSU has the same chief obstacle that is everywhere – underreporting.
“We know through our survey that 45-percent of our students have experienced misconduct [which] could be direct assault, could be sexual harassment, gender-based discrimination, interpersonal violence or stalking,” Valois said. “We found, through our survey that most students’ incidents do not happen on campus, but off-campus with someone who is not a student, or happened prior to come to campus. That said, there are still those incidents that happen on campus, and they are largely not reporting them.”
Valois said the event was about sexual assault awareness and prevention, and part of several events throughout Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Another WSU event on April 30 will also feature Huang as guest speaker and include several WSU student organizations.
For more information, visit worcester.edu, pathwaysforchange, or missworcestercounty.com.
Steve Smith, a veteran reporter with 17 years at The Hartford Courant, now brings his passion for photojournalism to Worcester. An award-winning photographer, he has covered major events like U.S. soccer, pro football, and UConn basketball. He is also the official photographer for the Miss Massachusetts competition and works as a realtor. Contact him at steve@stevephotographysmith.com
