As busy as she is with her job at the ETSU counseling center, Kim Bushore-Maki isn’t nearly as busy as she should be.
Maki counsels students who have been raped – but more than 90 percent, she said, don’t come forward.
“It can be months, even years before sexual assault victims come forward,” said Maki. “They’re afraid to seek help, or they’re embarrassed or ashamed. Sometimes they think they can handle it on their own.”
Maki and her assistant, Laura Jones, are helping to organize the annual “Take Back the Night” rally and march to bring awareness to the crisis of sexual assault and the help available to its victims. The rally begins at 7 p.m. tonight in the Martha Street Auditorium in the Culp Center, where a survivor will speak about an experience with sexual assault.
The ETSU Women’s Choir will sing, and Dr. Wayne Andrews will give a statement of support. After the rally, participants will march around campus with candles and flashlights to “light up the night.”
One reason the rally is so important, Bushore-Maki said, is because it lets victims know there is someone out there who can help. “Sexual assault is often cloaked in secrecy,” she said. “The message is ‘Don’t tell anybody. It’s not OK.'”
And since nearly 80 percent of victims know their attackers, it can often be even daunting for victims to come forward. For instance, a victim may be reluctant to speak out against rape by a boyfriend or a date. In a circumstance like this, a victim may have difficulty proving her case, as well.
“The way our legal system is currently structured, victims are often put on trial along with their attacker,” said Bushore-Maki. “As it is, only 10 percent of rapes are even reported. Of that number, only a small percentage of attackers are actually prosecuted. Those aren’t very good odds.”
Also, due to the increase of date rape drugs, women (and men) are being victimized more frequently than before.
Bushore-Maki noted that victims are increasingly drinking spiked drinks, or even being encouraged to drink excessively by their attacker(s), so that they are physically unable to fight back or even say ‘no.’ “I think we’ve reached a new low,” she said.
For her part, Bushore-Maki may not be as busy as she could be, but she’s trying to get the word out. “All of us have a role to play,” she said. “You know that saying ‘Silence is the voice of complicity?’ Well, that’s true in this case. Men have more power in this society to tell other men that hateful comments and actions against women are not OK.

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