SF Gate City Brights columnist Dr. Jan Gurley writes about domestic violence against women in her latest column. She begins by telling about Mary, one of her patients who was brutally raped in the Mission:
“She’d slept one night in the Mission District under a bush, and woke in the dark when someone grabbed her ankle. Four men held her down and raped her. Now, almost three months later, she spoke in a flat, detached voice like this was somehow normal, just another blank to be filled in like her cough, or whether she had an allergy, her eyes drifting all around the room. No, she hadn’t reported it – the idea seemed somehow foreign to her. No, she hadn’t seen them since and, well, as she said, it was dark and she didn’t want to turn her face and look at them while it was happening – and she couldn’t go back to that area of town ever again, which was a shame since she left her stuff, but it was all probably gone by now anyway. No, she hadn’t been examined or seen by anyone afterward. And no, she hadn’t had a period since.”
Gurley goes on to talk about the domestic violence issues facing homeless women. We’ve done some stories about the subject here; you can read the rest of Gurley’s column here.
