The Rape and Domestic Violence Information Center turns 50 in two weeks and it’s reaching that milestone, in part – because Virginia Hopkins didn’t do anything.
She can explain.
In 1972, Hopkins was a young attorney with idealism to burn.
She was a new graduate of the WVU College of Law and a new hire at the North Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society in Morgantown.
Call it the law firm for people who couldn’t afford the law firm.
Forget chairs upholstered in rich leather. Its attorneys were more apt to sit on the floor in a circle, as they discussed their cases and other matters related to the judiciary.
They were more about giving voice – than making partner.
When a distraught woman showed up one afternoon, Hopkins suddenly wasn’t feeling as idealistic as she had been earlier in the day.
Tracking it down
In a quavering voice, the woman told Hawkins she had been gang-raped months before and had become pregnant.
Even with the trauma, she kept her baby, and now she was fearing for both their lives.
“They said they were going to rape her again,” Hopkins recalled last week from her office in Kingwood, where she still practices law.
“She was terrified and I was mad because I couldn’t do anything. I had to tell her that I couldn’t help her.”
‘It didn’t mean I was advertising …’
Victim support services then were nonexistent – and with no strong laws, rape cases were almost always lost in court.
Stigma and shame kept many victims from even thinking about legal action, if they told anyone at all.
A woman who tried to fight back in court would be subject to loaded questions that inevitably shifted blame.
How drunk were you?
How flirtatious were you?
What were you wearing?
That line of defense infuriated Hopkins. It still does.
“This will show you how old I am, but I used to say that just because I had an antenna on my roof, it didn’t mean I was advertising that I had a TV in my living room, and that I was giving you permission to break in and steal it – if that’s what you wanted to do.”
It had been some 20 years since anyone had been prosecuted for the rape of an adult female in Monongalia or Preston counties.
There was even a conventional wisdom among criminals: If you were burglarizing a place and you found a woman there alone, the rape was always on the house – because that charge was always dropped.
Victims, as said, didn’t want to have to sit there and listen to it being parsed that they were somehow to blame for what happened, in the parking lot or on the couch.
Hopkins, though, didn’t want to ever have to tell another victim that she was simply unable to help, either.
And she wasn’t the only one in her professional circle who felt that way.
Kindred spirits who before couldn’t do anything – suddenly started doing everything.
A year later, in 1973, the organization that would become the Rape and Domestic Violence Information Center was formed out of the shadow of tense whispers and over-the-shoulder fear.
RDVIC was the first of its kind in West Virginia.
All roads lead to Charleston
It started with an ink pen and notebook.
Hopkins began writing down the names of colleagues she knew who also didn’t like how it was.
And those fellow storefront attorneys, and sympathetic prosecutors and police officers and hospital ER staffers, started jotting the names of people they knew.
“We found out there was a group in Michigan doing what we wanted to do, so we wrote them a letter – and they wrote us back. That’s how you had to do it back then.”
What you got, Hopkins said, was a small band of victim advocates in Morgantown who were asking “What can we do?” rather than “What did you do?”
Around 20 or so such victims contacted RDVIC in its first months of existence – and that was without advertising of any kind by the organization.
“That’s how we knew we had something,” Hopkins said.
RDVIC began holding seminars for people in law enforcement, medicine and the legal profession.
It wasn’t always easy, Hopkins said.
Sometimes, there were rude jokes and off-color asides from the back of the room. Sometimes, prosecutors walked out in the middle.
RDVIC, though, kept lobbying locally and in Charleston.
It worked.
Laws already on the books were shorn up — and whole new legislation was enacted for the protection of people, while ensuring them a true day in court.
Rape, and other acts of sexual assault, not to mention just plain physical abuse against victims of all ages and gender was now treated for what it was: A crime, that would be prosecuted.
A half-century later
These days, RDVIC takes literally thousands of calls from victims seeking help.
People go to the Facebook page and web site – http//www.rdvic.org – for resources.
There, they can send a secure email.
And they can call help lines that are staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Volunteers turn up at the police station or hospital at 2 a.m., as the rape kits come out.
Don’t get too comfortable
RDVIC is holding its 50th Anniversary Gala from 6:30-10 p.m. Oct. 13 in the Hotel Morgan Ballroom.
Visit the website for ticket prices and other particulars for the evening that will feature live music, drinks and hors d’oeuvres and tributes to RDVIC workers and volunteers, past and present.
A silent auction will also be held, since the center wants to built a new shelter in the Morgantown area, so it can continue to be a port in the storm for victims.
The party is great, Hopkins said — but victims don’t get to take a break from being victims.
According to numbers culled from the RDVIC website, 433,648 Americans aged 12 and older are sexually assaulted or raped every year.
Some 60,000 of those sexual assault victims are children.
And every minute in America – 60 seconds – 24 people are raped, physically abused or stalked by an intimate partner.
“This is a mission,” Hopkins said.
