An outgoing woman with a vivacious sense of humor, Jen Herbst '96 defies the image many people entertain of a woman who has been raped.
"I'm not" a rape victim, Herbst said with a proud smile. "I'm a rape survivor."
After testing the "squish factor" of the couches in The Dartmouth's lounge last term, Herbst settled on the most comfortable chair and openly discussed her life and her experiences with rape.
Two weeks before the end of Winter term, Herbst did much the same when she talked about rape to about 40 people at Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. After speaking, she answered questions asked by audience members.
Herbst said she decided to publicly discuss her experiences because rape survivors have a "perspective that is highly under-represented on this campus."
"I saw a need for it here," she said about speaking out on rape. "I saw a lot of people not particularly aware of their actions or consequences of them."
"It's not their fault they don't know about it, because people don't talk about it," she said. "They need to know it happens to people, everyday people."
"They need to put a face to rape, rather than a number. They need to know that it happens, than it happens in nice neighborhoods with picket fences."
A forced encounter
Sounding calm and eerily detached from the situation, Herbst talked about what happened when she was raped.
Herbst was six or seven years old at the time and visiting the house of a client of her father's, who is a lawyer. The rapist was the 10-year-old son of this client.
She said she could not be more specific about the identify of the rapist, because his family is wealthy and influential and would most likely sue her and make life difficult for her family if she ever revealed the rapist.
The family of the rapist and Herbst's family lived no more than a five-minute drive apart in an "upper middle class white suburbia outside of Detroit," she said.
Both families spent the day socializing and enjoying the client's swimming pool.
After swimming, the boy led Herbst into a room to show her his train set. Once inside, he locked the door and "pulled out a stash of Playboy magazines," she said.
The boy showed her numerous pornographic photographs, then "he started playing 'games' with me," Herbst said as she fidgeted with the armrest of her chair.
"All the time I had no idea what was going on," she said. She said she was totally confused while the older, and much larger and stronger child took advantage of her.
Herbst said the "games" included him forcing her to perform oral sex on him and him penetrating her and forcibly having sexual intercourse, "right on the train tracks ... I can still feel them right against my back when I wake up in the middle of the night."
"I tried to get out a couple of times, but he was much bigger than me," she said. Beyond the locked door, "my parents were 50 yards away."
Herbst said the rapist's family moved away a couple years after the incident.
A 'pop culture baby'
So onlookers can appreciate the many other sides of Herbst, she also talked about her interests and family.
A 22-year old biochemistry and molecular biology major and music minor, Herbst said she has a great love for music and popular culture.
"I'm a pop culture baby," she said, laughing.
Captain of the women's disc team, Herbst said in the off-season she has fenced with the fencing club. She said she works at Lone Pine Tavern and hopes to eventually become a high school teacher.
Herbst grew up in a suburb of Detroit with a family she clearly adores.
Her father, Jay, is a lawyer and "probably the kindest person I've ever met, seen, or heard of."
While her father is her "hero," Herbst said she always emulated her older brother Michael. She said she also is close to her sister, Cathy, and her "professional mom," Carol.
A slow recollection and recovery
Herbst said being raped has had a large effect on her life, but not so influential that it has in any way ruined her life or taken it over.
"I haven't completely dealt with it," Herbst said. "I'm probably as far as I'm going to get. I'm probably always going to have flashbacks. I'll probably always be more upset by scenes of rape in popular culture."
Herbst said she has never been through any sort of therapy to help her deal with her trauma, but once she came to the College she met with a couple counselors who encouragingly told her she had successfully recovered from being raped, at least as well as any survivor can hope.
"They've been very supportive and congratulatory," Herbst said of the counselors she met, including Heather Earle, former Sexual Abuse Awareness Coordinator at the College.
Before being raped, Herbst was "already a quiet kid," and after the incident she withdrew further into herself, she said. She no longer had much trust in her parents and instead she relied on herself and her friends for support.
Herbst said she did not realize that she had been raped until she was in the seventh grade and she was reading an article about date rape in an issue of Seventeen magazine.
"I slowly remembered and recollected what happened to me," Herbst said.
"I didn't know what was making me so jittery all the time," she said. But once she experienced her revelation about being raped, she changed some of her attitudes.
She said she refused to ever try to be "cute" and instead became more of a tomboy. "I refused to ever look feminine," she said.
Herbst said she formed some close friendships during her adolescence, friendships that greatly helped her cope with her tragedy. Key among her friends was her former boyfriend of five years, Paul Astolfi.
"He, more than anyone, helped me deal with getting raped," she said. "He helped replace horrible memories with excellent ones. He helped reinstill trust in men, faith in myself."
She said it was especially difficult trying to be intimate with another man. She often would experience flashbacks and became physically ill when she and her boyfriend became intimate, she said.
But after dating Astolfi for five years, until last summer, she said, "I can regard intimacy as normally as anyone else. I have few hang-ups."
Recently, Herbst has been dating someone new, Chris Linton '96.
"He's my best friend," she said of Linton. "He's hysterical, makes me laugh, which is cool."
Linton said, "Jen's one of the most amazing, well-adjusted people I've ever met."
A revealing testimonial
Herbst said she was prompted to hold some sort of public discussion at Dartmouth about being raped after she heard Physics Professor Delo Mook gave a speech about sexism.
Herbst said she had openly discussed the topic three years before at a summer camp for boys, and the experience not only helped her, but also the young men she talked to seemed very moved by her story.
"Within two or three days, every one of the boys found me and thanked me," she said.
So she decided to offer the same kind of revealing testimonial here at Dartmouth, and worked with Sig Ep to hold the speech, she said. She said she wanted to do it there because she felt comfortable in the house, where Linton happens to be a brother.
She also said it was easier for her to talk about her being raped at this point in her life, because it happened 16 years ago and has nothing to do with Dartmouth.
"No one can blame me as a six or seven-year old," she said. "There isn't any baggage attached to it, like what I was wearing or if I was drunk."
Herbst said women who are raped are often unfairly held responsible for the attack. "Women here, they are easily blamed, and frequently are."
Linton said he thought the session "went really well" and was "well-received."
"I was worried about some people reacting poorly to it," he said. But "the air of support in the room was amazing."
Linton said Sig Ep sponsored the event and coordinated it with Sexual Abuse Peer Advisors, but the idea to hold the discussion was entirely Herbst's own.
Kristin Gendron '96 has been a friend of Herbst's since they attended the same second grade class. "Jen is the most genuine person I know," Gendron said. "She's amazing because she's so goofy and so mature at the same time."
"I never realized how much it affected her," Gendron said about Herbst's being raped. "Now, after going to [her speech] it was really eye-opening. It made me see a lot of things about her I hadn't seen before."
"God, I thought it was incredibly ... wonderful having a rape survivor talking about how it affects her everyday life," Gendron said. It may have happened a long time ago, but Herbst's discussion showed how "it's still significant in her life today."
Herbst said the only drawback to speaking before an audience about being raped is that many people will now only recognize her as the woman who was raped.
"How many people know something about me, and I know nothing about them?" she said. "It's a little unsettling."
