Tamara Brown and Kyle Schofield Interviews

Part 1: Sources, Quotes, Photos

By Tamara Brown and Kyle Schofield

 Ryan Acuna

23-year-old Male

Advertising and Mass Communication Major, Student

"I would define sexual assault as any unwanted attention either sexual or flirtatious."

"I have neither experienced nor witnessed a sexual assault happening, but I know that it is a problem all over the country."

"An attempt to prevent sexual assault would be to be vocal if something doesn't seem right, and to not only watch out for yourself but also other people around you."

"Texas State should make the consequences of sexual assault more well known. They should be expelled!"

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Jessica Marie-Margaret Conlen, 28, Financial Analyst

- “First job out of college in the oil and gas industry was primarily all men. I was an accounting assistant and the CEO of the company made me feel very uncomfortable multiple times. He would come up to me and would usually put his hand on my back and follow it down my backside, casually stroking my back down to my upper-ass over and over. Playing soccer, I had a more pronounced posterior than most and has been a focal point of unwanted attention for me. I was 23 and he was 45 at the time.”

- “While an Accounting student at Texas State, I was at a party with some of my friends. I became way too intoxicated and my friend and her boyfriend left to go back to her apartment. Another girl’s boyfriend who was at the party would observe me from a distance for the entirety of the night in a very uncomfortable way. Later that night I fell asleep on the couch, and I remember being picked up off the couch hours later and cradled, and then laid down on a bed in another room. I remember being disoriented and not knowing what the fuck was going on. Next thing I know I’m feeling things that I should not be feeling and I’m alone in this apartment with no one that I knew. I freaked out and ran to the couch and grabbed my phone trying to reach out to anyone else, I don’t know why I didn’t think I could call the cops. I went to my parents’ house afterwards and I couldn’t talk to my mom, I just went to the shower and cried. When I went home and talked to my boyfriend he made me feel like it was my fault because we had an argument before this situation occurred. A friend came to my boyfriends’ house and we went to the hospital together and consulted a detective on the matter. Nothing ever happened. He ended up making a plea deal to where he never got convicted or anything ever set on the record against the man who had done those things to me.”

- “I think the government could do a lot more to punish people who have never been caught or convicted of something prior to that moment. First offense or not, assault victims need to know that there is a specific standard of punishment that is levied against people who do that, no matter how much money the person defending themselves have or how good their lawyer is or how much money they will contribute to a campaign fund.”

- “I am 90% all for the MeToo movement and am so proud of the women coming out and speaking out about these things that have haunted these women for most of their lives. There are many women that have struggled internally from this and I’m so glad that there is a method for them to come out and be heard. The other 10% of me is scared of the people that can try to grab on to the MeToo campaign in a negative way, who can try to take advantage of the movement to generate publicity for themselves based on false accusations. It makes me sad because you almost don’t know if that person is taking advantage of it and putting a spin on it, or if it’s a real situation. Again, I am proud women are speaking up and are not ashamed of it, because it is a shameful thing. It is hard to speak about it. This is something that I did not wanted to happen but it did and now I have to live with that.”

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Chelsea Grace Magana, 29, Human Resources Specialist

- “I was a waitress somewhere and there was a manager that was above and would start touching me inappropriately. When I told him that I did not want that he started treating me badly and would make me very uncomfortable at work. I have also been assaulted more than once but am not comfortable with talking about it.”

- “My biggest fear of having a child who is female is that she would be assaulted like I was. Carrying that guilt of ‘is there something that I could have done’. I don’t ever want her to feel that way. I think that’s the biggest thing.”

- “I think that when someone comes forward with something, the government should stop automatically thinking that the girl is lying. That she is just exaggerating the facts and making something out of nothing. They make it impossible to want to come forward with what happened.”

- “It’s a big battle for me, mentally, that she is safe and if something were to happen that she would tell me, because I never told my parents to this day.”

- “I think that the MeToo movement has opened a lot of people’s eyes that ‘wow I’m not different’, that it has happened to a lot of people. I think it’s helping a lot of people that are currently going through sexual assault or harassment, but it hasn’t done anything to really reduce the culture that we have in the United States.”

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Jasmine Anderson

24-year-old, Female

Psychology Major, Student

"I wouldn't limit it to just physical; sexual assault is any unwanted sexual advancement by a side party that makes you feel uncomfortable."

"I think that universities should be more vocal about sexual assault on campus. Its kind of a 'hush-hush' topic because no school wants to be associated with sexual assault, but to stay silent on the issue is almost comparable to condoning it. They know it happens; they should speak on it before an incident happens and it is thrust into the spotlight."

"When I was a freshman in college, I was sexually assaulted by a football player at my school. He had come to my room upset and wanting to talk, but he ended up getting physical with me against my wishes. I was crying and repeatedly asked him to stop because I didn't want to have sex. Only one other person knows this happened, and I wish I had the power to prevent anyone else from having to experience that feeling."

"Personally, just be aware of your surroundings. I feel like a lot of sexual assaults that happen on campus are done when someone is under the influence. So I would say to try and to remove yourself from situations that could lead to something else. Its easy enough to tell someone to 'Just Say No', but in today's climate that doesn't really work because people are more aggressive and in their minds 'No' is not absolute. We have to learn to respect the wishes of others, and not just what we want."