Dear Senator Halloran...Did You Read the Whole Book?

 By Marilyn Moore

Dear Senator Halloran,

I wonder….did you read the whole book?  You know, the book Lucky, by Alice Sebold.  The book from which you read on the floor of the legislature, the book that begins with a detailed description of a brutal rape (I wonder if there’s such a thing as a rape that isn’t brutal…), a rape that Alice endured, and survived, when she was 18 years old and a first-year college student.  Because you inserted the names of senators into your reading of that passage from the book, essentially demanding oral sex from Senator Cavanaugh, your speech went viral, Nebraska Nice sounds like hypocrisy to the nation, and the Legislature’s Executive Board is considering a resolution to censure you. That will play out in some way over the next few days, and whatever the outcome of the censure motion, you will complete your term and return to life as a citizen, with the new role of “retired legislator.”

It's the book I want to address.  Lucky is a memoir, a book based on the writer’s memory of her life.  It’s not fiction. It was first published in 1999.  Copies are available in the Lincoln City Library collection, where there’s a waiting list, and in high school libraries in many communities, including Lincoln.  Based on the description of that rape, found on the first ten pages of the book, which was indeed hard to read and hard to hear, and without a doubt a thousand times harder to experience, you labeled the book “obscene” and said it should not be in school libraries, that children needed to be kept safely away from such obscenity.  Such a conclusion to be drawn after reading only a few pages of the book….

Had you read the entire book, you would have read the rest of the story...the impact of this assault on Alice’s relationship with her parents, and her older sister, and college friends, and future male friends and romantic partners.  You would have read about her experiences with law enforcement officers and medical examiners and mental health providers immediately following the rape, and the judicial system for months to come.  You would have read about the people who stepped up to support her, especially her writing professors, and those who just couldn’t, or wouldn’t. You would have read about moments of sheer terror that overtook her for years to come.  You would have read about bouts of drug and alcohol addiction.  You would have read about people who didn’t want to be around her, because she was “that girl, the girl who was raped,” and people who wanted to be around her because she was “that girl, the girl who was raped.”  You would have read about the decades of effort that it took for her to emerge as whole, and healthy, and the writer that she is.  But I doubt that you know any of this, because I’m pretty sure you didn’t read the whole book.

You described the book as “obscene,” and a how-to guide for boys on raping girls.  Oh, my, Senator, what an absurd statement.  First of all, most boys don’t want to be rapists.  They don’t plan to be rapists. They don’t have “rape an 18-year-old virgin in a tunnel” as one of their life goals.  Second, for those who do, they do not need a how-to guide.  For all of human existence, men have raped women, in every millennium, on every continent, in every culture, before wars and during wars and after wars, at professional conferences and in workplaces of every kind, in homes and parks and cars and churches and schools, on city streets and country roads…men have raped women.  They have not needed a how-to guide.  The perpetrator’s actions may make readers uncomfortable, but that doesn’t make the book obscene.  Those behaviors are described in every crime report taken by a local police officer, they are a matter of public record, they are reported in local newspapers, and they are testified to, under oath, when assailants are charged and tried.  

But what I find most troubling about your statement is that it is totally devoid of understanding that this scene, this brutal rape, was Alice’s real life.  This happened to a young woman, and she describes all the terror she experienced.  She describes what she did and said in order to live to see the next day.  Her fright must have been beyond words….but she found words.  Did you acknowledge that?  Her feelings, her emotions, her terror, her determination?  Her courage?

And it’s because of that, her courage to describe what happened, and all that happened in the aftermath, that I believe firmly that this book should be accessible to teenagers.  You see, what Alice experienced wasn’t something that happened to her and her alone.  You probably know that sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes; according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, two-thirds of rapes and sexual assaults go unreported.  The Nebraska Crime Commission reports that 788 forcible rapes were reported to law enforcement agencies in Nebraska in 2023.  Given the likely under-reporting, it’s not unrealistic to think that nearly 2400 forcible rapes happened in Nebraska in 2023.  That’s 2400 people who experienced what Alice experienced, nearly all of them were women.  Closer to home, 6 forcible rapes were reported in Hamilton County, your home county, in 2023.  If the same under-reporting is true in Hamilton County, there were more likely to have been 18 forcible rapes.  Eighteen people in Hamilton County endured what Alice endured, just last year.  And it’s likely some of them were teenagers.

Every high school counselor, every high school principal, every school nurse, every school social worker, and yes, every high school librarian, has most likely at one time, or many times, known a student like Alice, a young woman, sexually assaulted, fearful, angry, uncertain, hurt.  Some, like Alice, can tell their parents.  Some cannot.  Some, like Alice, are able to report it to the police; some cannot.  Some, like Alice, are assaulted by a person unknown to her, a stranger; most will have been assaulted by someone they know, a family member, a friend of the family, a trusted adult figure (think coach, or priest, or camp counselor, or teacher) or a boyfriend, who she is trying to please.  Some will tell a trusted person at school; some will become known to the trusted person at school because rumors start, whispers happen, and a counselor soon knows that someone like Alice needs help.  And part of that help can be knowing that it was indeed awful, and frightening, and not your fault, and that you are not alone.  

You see, Senator, had you read the whole book, you would have heard the relief in Alice’s voice when she learned that Mrs. McAllister, a woman in her hometown church, had been raped when she was eighteen.  In her words, “Mrs. McAllister gave me two things: my first awareness of another rape victim who lived in my world, and…the proof that there was power to be had in sharing my story.”

So there you have it, Senator, in Alice’s own words, and in the words of every survivor of sexual assault that I have known, the reason this book needs to be in libraries, available to teenage readers.  There is power in story, there is power in knowing you are not alone, there is power in knowing that you can survive. I hope you will take time to read the whole book, and I hope that you will acknowledge and affirm the strength and bravery of women like Alice who survive and who share their story, so that others may survive, also.   

(Afterword:  Yes, I know that the man who was convicted of the rape was exonerated in 2021.  This person served 17 years of a hellish prison sentence.  The fact that the wrong person was convicted does not make the trauma that Alice experienced any less severe, and it means that whoever did rape her is still unidentified.)  

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