Healing's on the line

One shirt tells the story of a 14-year-old whose first kiss 'turned into rape.'
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
T'S A PAINTING OF A SILHOUETTE IN A strapless red dress.
A male hand grasps the waist."The first thing you think ... Did I wear the wrong thing?" the painted letters ask.
The painting is on a white T-shirt, pinned to a clothesline.
But it's not a shirt that anyone will wear. Instead it speaks to the emotion behind one woman's experience with sexual assault.
The T-shirt and about 50 others hang on clotheslines throughout the Family Service Agency Rape Information & amp; Counseling Program on Indiana Avenue.
Part of project
They are part of the Ohio Clothesline Project and have made a stop in Youngstown to commemorate October as a month to raise awareness about domestic violence. The public can view the display through Friday during office hours, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The T-shirts were crafted -- using paint, fabric, felt, ribbons, markers, glitter pens -- by female survivors of abuse or violence or by people who care about those survivors.
They tell of rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse, domestic violence, stalking, sexual harassment and other crimes directed primarily at females.
Many show pain, confusion, anger, fear and betrayal. But some also show hope, even acceptance.
"They're all equally striking and touching," said Ellen Taylor, program director at the rape program.
One shows a purple felt fish under the water, with the black silhouette of a woman beneath it. A lasso of orange ribbon goes from the silhouette, above the water and toward a sun.
One tells of a death, but its sleeves read: "dreaming, living" and "bearing, surviving."
Another has pieces of lace and ribbon pinned to it randomly. It's front reads: "However we dress, wherever we go," continuing to "yes means yes and no means no" on the back. The "no"s have been cut in large letters from dark felt.
One white shirt is decorated in a slightly darker white pen and white lace. "Don't look behind in anger or forward in fear but around in awareness," it says.
Still another T-shirt, this one yellow, is darkened by the painted face of a woman with a black eye, bloody mouth and gun to her head. "Shut your trap," it says.
One has two dates: 1981 and 1999. "Never caught him, am I safe?" it says. "18 years later and I still look at every face."
What becomes of shirts
Those who craft shirts either keep them, donate them to their local crisis agency or have them donated to the state display.
They are made by survivors and others all over the country. In the Ohio project, there are more than 300 under the guardianship of the Ohio Coalition on Sexual Assault. Roughly 10 or 15 have been donated from the rape program here.
Taylor said the project began in the early 1990s and has grown more than its originators ever thought it would. The Ohio display last visited Youngstown in April. Taylor said she tries to hang the shirts in April and October each year.
Making the shirts, for women, is a "healing experience," Taylor said. "Oftentimes it helps them express things they don't have the words to express."
She also said that many women create them with the hope that they will be seen by others.
"It's kind of a shared experience of women," she explained. "And a way we can support each other in that healing venture."
According to literature from the state coalition, the project has four purposes: to bear witness to the survivors and victims of the "war against women;" to help survivors and others with the healing process; to raise society's awareness of the extent of the problem; and to provide a network of support and information in communities displaying the project.
"Each person suffers in individual ways," Taylor said. "Every woman has a right to suffer through that. There is none lesser or greater."
A white T-shirt uses bold red, blue and yellow paint to tell: "I was 14. My first kiss turned into rape."
"Why me?" accompanies a pink T-shirt featuring a chaotic display of circular scribbles.
On a small shirt is: "I was only an innocent child."
A dark blue T-shirt has been written on with silver pen: "You took my innocence. I forgive you, for me."
One says, "Just because I was silent doesn't mean it didn't hurt."
Another features a cross over a grave marked "1995," and asks: "Dad -- Was she bad enough to kill?! I want my Mommy back!!"
It's been signed by "Logan, age 11."
viviano@vindy.com