Research shows that intimate partner violence occurs at the same rate in the LGBTQ communities as in the heterosexual community. Last year, Rainbow Response released a groundbreaking report on IPV in the District, which confirmed that DC’s LGBTQ communities experience IPV at the same rate as the heterosexual community. However, for a variety of reasons, survivors of IPV in the LGBTQ communities do not have equal access to services to help them escape; therefore it’s critical that our community be afforded as many protections and resources as possible.

Although there is no federal law outlawing discrimination against LGBTQ individuals in the workplace, the District has outlawed this type of discrimination for many years. Unfortunately, it remains perfectly legal to terminate an LGBTQ employee who happens to be a victim of IPV, simply for reasons related to the abuse. For example, three years ago one of my good friends, who is a lesbian and was out to her employer, found herself in an abusive relationship and was forced to miss work periodically because she was either in court seeking a protection order, or was at home waiting for the bruises on her face to disappear. Noticing that she had been taking time off from work, her employer threatened to fire her even after my friend disclosed the reasons for her absence. Fortunately, this talk happened just as her abusive partner finally decided to leave the relationship, and the District, for good. However, if my friend’s employer had fired her, she would have had no recourse available. Not only would she have been abused by her partner, she would have become abused by the system too.

. . . Much has been discussed about the comprehensive provisions in the bill, including requiring employers to post notice of these protections, develop workplace violence policies, and provide training for staff on domestic violence. Many questions and concerns have been raised about these provisions that are important and valid. I have tremendous respect for both the business and domestic violence community, and have no doubt that we can all work together with Committee staff to revise the bill where necessary to ensure it moves forward. But please let me remind us what the core issue of this bill is about at the end of the day: discrimination. If we as a society are committed to creating a safe and healthy District of Columbia, then we must help those who are in need, and protect them while they heal, not unravel the fragile threads that are supporting them.

Today on Holla Back DC!, a bystander witnessed a man harassing and stalking a woman on the street in Mount Pleasant, and decided to step in. After a confrontation, the bystander walked away with bruises courtesy of the harasser's belt. Here's the story:

I was walking off a late-night snack around 3:30 in the morning. There was a woman walking with a man right behind her. She kept turning around at him. I could tell that she didn’t want his attention. She was headed down Irving which is a very dimly lit street. At one point the woman suddenly jumped back and began dialing on her cellphone. I figured she was calling the police. Being just across the street, I approached them and ask for the time. The woman seemed startled. The man just looked at me. The woman then continued down Irving street. The man began to follow her. I yelled,”You shouldn’t be doing that.” The guy stopped and turned around towards me. I pulled out my pocket camera and took a quick picture. That really got his attention. The woman kept walking down Irving and the man’s attention was now on me. He mumbled something and then came towards me.

I crossed Mount Pleasant street and he followed me. He began taking off his belt and then began swinging it at me in a zig-zag cross motion. The belt buckle struck me several times. I lifted my cane to stop the blows. I began yelling. There was a couple walking across the street and a guy yelled, "We’re calling the police." I managed to strike the assailant with my cane on his head. I had hit him so hard that my cane bent. He ran across the street into an alley. Another man was walking past me and I told him to watch out. The assailant was now gathering beer bottles as the police approached. He threw a bottle just as the first of 3 police cars stopped. . . . The assailant was arrested. The woman was safe. I am covered in bruises.

When the problems of street harassment and public sexual assault are raised on this blog, readers sometimes respond by placing the onus on ending harassment on the harassee. This usually takes one of three forms:

(a) Don't overreact. Just learn to take a compliment.

(b) Why didn't you fight back? Kick him in the balls.

(c) Street harassers are too dangerous for us to expect anyone else to intervene.

Of course, challenge (c) points out the problem with expecting victims of harassment to either (a) shake it off or (b) fight back. It also shows how violent misogyny can transfer pretty easily from female targets to anyone who would defend them. So—beyond preventative measures—how do we help minimize the risk of street harassment when we see it, while keeping ourselves safe? Last year, local self-defense expert Lauren Taylor gave Sexist readers some tips on being a pro-active bystander:

* Look out for number one. “Always think about your own safety first,” Taylor says. “Look at who’s around who could back you up if necessary. If you’re inside, say at a bar or social event, figure out where the doors are.”

* Speak to the victim. “When you’re thinking about intervening, address the person you think is being targeted,” Taylor says. “Say to her, ‘Are you OK?’ Or, ‘Can I do anything?’ Or, ‘Do you want to come with me?’ This won’t necessarily solve the situation, but it will let her know that there are other options. It will let her know that people are seeing what’s happening, and it lets the harasser know the same thing. There are witnesses, and it’s not going to go unnoticed.”

* Make a scene. “For example, you could draw attention to it by saying something like, ‘This guy is putting his hands all over her!’ Or, ‘This guy is harassing her!’ and that could draw enough attention to the situation that the harasser would cut it out,” Taylor says. “Airing any of these things, and making them more visible, will ultimately make them better.”

“Now, the harasser may respond by saying, ‘Who are you? This has nothing to do with you! She doesn’t mind!,’” Taylor says. “But you still have transformed what’s going on, and possibly made it safer. The harasser talking back doesn’t mean it didn’t work.”

* Even if the victim doesn’t ask for help, you can still do something. “Like with everything, it totally depends on the situation,” Taylor says. “Especially if it’s a partner thing, you may hear the victim respond, ‘Oh, I’m okay, go away.’ But I still think it makes a difference that it was noticed and recognized.”

The Holla Back DC! witness looks to have followed Taylor's tips to a T. Results were mixed: While the initial harassee got away safely and an obviously dangerous person was arrested, the bystander paid the price with a painful and scary physical confrontation.

Photo of Mount Pleasant by NCinDC, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

The Diamondback reports that the new education program will be funded with a $500,000 grant from the Department of Justice, and that it will be targeted at "expanding existing programs, educating students, training public safety officials and training administrators."

It's the "educating students" part the Diamondback is concerned about:

Though the details of the education aspect are still being worked out, health center officials said it will likely be incorporated into freshman orientation and be similar to the university’s online alcohol education program, AlcoholEdu.

. . . Some students, however, were doubtful the effort will have the desired effect.

“Taking a collaborative approach is a great way to help decrease the amount of sexual assault that goes on campus, as it is not possible to tackle the problem if not everyone is involved,” junior marketing major Stephanie Nguyen said. “But if the education program is similar to AlcoholEdu, then I can guarantee that no one will pay attention.”

AlcoholEdu, for the uninitiated, is an "interactive online program" about the effects of alcohol that all University of Maryland students must complete. On-campus skepticism of the alcohol abuse education program is encapsulated in this University of Maryland Facebook group, entitled "AlchoholEdu Is Way More Interesting When DRUNK!!!!!!!!" The group, which currently only has five members, describes itself this way: "group is for anyone who has had to sit through that 3 hour bullshit that encouraged me to drink way more."

Let's hope that UMD's sexual assault education program does not produce similar results.

Well, it looks like AlcoholEdu haters are in for some good news. The sexual assault education program "will not be anything like AlcoholEdu," says Kelly Kesler, Assistant Director for Health Promotion at the university. "The comparison is actually not correct."

Outside the Classroom, the organization that developed AlcoholEdu, has also created an online program for addressing sexual assault on campus: SexualAssaultEdu. Kesler says that UMD's program will be not at all be related to that initiative. (Outside the Classroom, for its part, says that several independent studies have found its programs effective).

So what will UMD's student education piece look like?

It's a video. Kesler says the project is still in the beginning stages, but the proposed content of the work has largely been defined: "The objective is to educate students about the scope of the problem on campus in terms of sexual assault, relationship violence, and stalking," says Kesler. "It will teach students about the contributing factors. . . . It will educate students about bystander support skills, about making a positive peer influence, and about the resources that are available for victims and how to make use of them."

Kesler says the university is researching how best to relay that information—two possibilities are through "vignettes and expert interviews." The video will likely be shown at new resident orientation programs for students living on-campus, in selected classrooms, and online.

Emily Ruskowski isn’t thinking of much as she sits on a concrete bench at the Foggy Bottom Metro stop on a late-summer night in 2009. In a station crowded with loitering commuters, one man makes his presence known. He’s tall, young, dressed professionally in a blue button-down and black slacks, not bad looking, actually. He paces in front of Ruskowski once, twice, before finally settling down next to her on the bench. He stands up again, paces a few feet away, turns his back to the rail, and stands facing Ruskowski. When the train arrives, Ruskowski files in one car behind him.

Twenty minutes later, Ruskwoski, 25, arrives at the West Falls Church station and heads up the escalator. There he is again—already waiting at the turnstiles, quibbling with a station manager over a faulty SmarTrip card. The manager lets him through the gate, and he stands on the other side, facing Ruskowski again, waiting as she makes her way through the turnstile. He starts flirting. “How are you?” he asks. He speaks with a thick foreign accent. Ruskowski was right: He is handsome. “What’s your name? Do you have a boyfriend?” They turn toward the parking garage, where Ruskowski had left her Toyota that morning. He asks her to have dinner with him. And for her phone number. She is polite. She tells him she’ll take his number down. She’ll call him.

They reach the elevator. Ruskowski presses the button for her floor. “What floor are you on?” she asks him. “Same as you,” he says. It’s almost 1 a.m., and Ruskowski doesn’t mind having company through the desolate garage, actually. “I’ll be fine,” she thinks. “This pervert is going to walk me to my car. No other pervert will grab me, as I’m claimed by this pervert.”

They exit the elevator. The floor is empty save for two cars, parked side-by-side. Out of 2,009 parking spots in the garage, they had parked directly next to each other. “That’s funny. You parked next to me,” Ruskowski tells the guy. “I didn’t drive,” he says. They reach her car. He asks her out. He asks for her phone number. The hair on the back of her neck begins to rise up. Had he followed her all the way from Foggy Bottom? She counters again for his number. “No, I’m taking yours,” he informs her. Ruskowski rummages for a slip of paper in her purse, careful to avoid any receipt with a name or an address or a credit card number. She considers delivering him a fake, but what if he calls, right there, in the empty lot? She writes down her phone number and hands it to him.

And then he’s leaning on the driver’s side door of her car. He wants a hug. She puts her arms out to block him and he wraps himself around her. She pulls away and says goodnight. “Why don’t I come to your house, now?” he presses her. “Where do you live? I don’t have a car,” he says. Ruskowski tells him she has to leave. She unlocks her door. She’s shaking. “One more hug,” he insists. He circles around her, blocking her access to the door. He reaches his hand out and grabs her breast. His hands pin her arms to her side. She struggles. He tries to kiss her. She whips her face away, pushes him off, enters the car, slams the door, and locks it. He knocks on the window to wave “bye-bye.”

She watches as he walks away, then peels out of the garage. She calls her best friend, Sean Duggan. Duggan is asleep in his Boston apartment, but he picks up the phone. She sounds calm at first. “I think I’ve been assaulted,” she tells him. As she recounts the story, she becomes more and more upset. She sounds like she’s in shock. She starts to sound a little paranoid. She’s worried about the man recognizing her car, knowing her license plate number, tracking her down with her phone number, showing up at her house, waiting for her at the Metro stop. They stay on the phone for an hour. Ruskowski returns to the station the next day and files a report with the Metro Transit Police.

That night, she receives a call from a strange phone number. She doesn’t pick up; the caller leaves no message. The next morning, the number calls again. No message. She can’t believe she actually surrendered her contact information to a sexual assailant. Ruskowski calls the Metro police over and over again, hoping to reach an officer who will investigate the case in light of the new information—she’s got the guy’s number. She keeps getting redirected to a line that no one answers. Eventually, Detectives Jim Duncan and Kate Loran take Ruskowski’s call and provide her with this instruction: If the guy calls again, pick up.

The next day, he calls. She picks up. It’s him. The phone connection is bad, and the man’s accent is thick, but she can make out his intent: “When can I see you, when can I see you,” he says. “I love you, I love you. I’ll see you, I’ll see you.” Ruskowski proposes an afternoon date for the next day. They agree to meet at the West Falls Church Metro at 4 p.m.

Ruskowski gets there at 3. She waits just outside the turnstiles. Loran stands beside her, posing in plainclothes as Ruskowski’s friend. Three other officers stand by. Ruskowski keeps her eyes on the top of the escalator, scanning the face of each passenger who churns up into the station. Her date calls at 4:10 p.m. He’s late.

An hour later, he comes up the escalator and walks through the turnstile toward Ruskowski. He doesn’t get within 50 feet of her. She signals Loran. The man slows down. He sees the officers approaching. He attempts to turn around and re-enter the station. Then he swerves and runs for the exit. The officers restrain him. The man attempts to struggle out of their grasp. They bind him in handcuffs. One month later, he pleads guilty to sexual battery by force in Fairfax County District Court.

Six months after the attack—after the stalking, the grope, the police report, the sting operation, the restraining order and the plea hearing—Ruskowski is glad her groper followed up. “I felt really stupid for giving him my phone number, but that’s the thing that helped us catch him,” Ruskowski says. “I would never advocate giving your assailant your number, of course, but I would do anything in your power to report the incident, as hard as it  can be. If you’re persistent and honest, someone will listen to you at some point.”

—

This column is the fifth (and final!) in a series. Catch up:

Part 1: Touch and Go: How Groping Happens.
Part 2: “I Just Wanted Him to Finish And Leave”: Why Some Groping Victims Stay Silent.
Part 3: “Why Would I Want to Touch Your Ass?”: When Groping Victims Talk Back.
Part 4: "I Wanted Him to Feel Physical Pain": The Revenge Fantasies of Groping Victims

Find all the Sexist’s groping coverage here. Illustration by Brooke Hatfield.

Last week on the Sexist:

1. Meghan McCain Schooled, Spanked, Murdered: Political Debate or Snuff Porn?, because Paul Begala BDSM is not what I'd prefer to conjure up with my morning news.

2. 5C Commissioner Gigi Ransom Censured Over "Potential Hate Crime", because local politics can get a little too personal.

3. The Ten Creepiest Paul Rudd Stalking Tweets! because swoon.

4. Bacardi's Massive Internet Fail, because "Get An Ugly Girlfriend" was such a compelling Israeli ad campaign, it made waves over here in the states!

5. Big Penis Dating Site Reveals Inches Before First Date, because you don't want to walk into that shit without knowing the relevant details, amirightladies.

Photo by flirtykitty

Speaking of creepy things to do: Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, and Reese Witherspoon are reportedly filming in Adams Morgan today until 1:30. I don't have time to go stalk Paul Rudd, so instead I'm stalking people stalking Paul Rudd on twitter. And repeatedly watching this Paul Rudd dancing compilation (above).

The top ten creepiest Paul Rudd in D.C. tweets—including one from a CP staffer—after the jump!

10. Can't argue with this one:

adefran Wow, Paul Rudd's dreamy.

9. At least she didn't pee ON him:

theresamac Holy crap. I was just 5 feet from Paul Rudd. We smiled at each other. Then I had to keep walking, lest he see me pee my pants.

8. The CP Tweet!

cernest: I wonder if I'll be able to see Paul Rudd from my office window: http://tinyurl.com/ljqdha

7. "Mark my words" is never creepy!

MereDitty Paul Rudd/Reese/Owen Wilson were filming yesterday 3 blocks from my office and I missed them! I will see them by summers end, mark my words

6. Just "considering" at this point:

necsortenecfato Film crew on Columbia. Word on the street Paul Rudd is in the movie. Considering my stalking options.

5. What's creepier than kissing Paul Rudd until he calls the cops?

XrisThomas @theresamac i would have kissed paul rudd had i saw him. on the lips. until he called the cops.

4. . . . referring to kissing as "putting my mouth on his mouth"

CMCrawley @necsortenecfato Let me know if you need some company stalking Paul Rudd. I want to put my mouth on his mouth.

3. Paul Rudd, a PERSON?

ejhonsa Saw Paul Rudd today on the street by Archives. It was like running into a classmate whose name you've forgotten. He looked like a person.

2. Ah, yes: It's the famous and successful actor who is truly "terribly alone":

molluskbrigade Paul Rudd passed by me on the street. He looked at me. He looked terribly alone. This is something that happened to me.

1. And the creepiest Paul Rudd tweet goes to:

rileykim Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd.. Paul Rudd..

As a law professor at Howard University, Dawn Martin was stalked by a delusional, homeless, serial stalker of African-American female professors. The stalker, Leonard Harrison, was searching for the physical embodiment of his "fantasy" wife — a fictional female character, Geneva Crenshaw, in a book, And We are not Saved, written by Prof. Derrick Bell.

Instead of following its own security procedures to ban the stalker from campus, Howard responded to her requests for protection by refusing to renew her teaching contract. Prof. Martin sued Howard,alleging sexual harassment/hostile work environment and retaliation for protesting sexual harassment.

The hearing is set for November 14. More on this story as it develops.