Take Back the Night Week at Ohio University will continue Wednesday night when an activist and childhood sexual abuse survivor takes the stage for the week’s keynote event.
Erin Merryn, the keynote speaker, will discuss her personal experience with childhood sexual abuse and the way America approaches the topic. About one in four women and one in six men will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2006.
“I believe everyone is born with a purpose and I found my purpose through the events that have taken place in my life,” Merryn said on her official website. “I decided at a young age to take a stand against evil and instead expose it to put a silent epidemic in the spotlight.”
Merryn was chosen as the keynote speaker because she is a strong survivor, who is working hard to tell her story and facilitate change, said Emma Wright, the Women’s Affairs Commissioner for Student Senate.
“I first heard about her when I was actually reading an issue of Glamour, because it was the ‘Women of 2012’ edition and she was featured,” Wright said.
“I think she has a powerful story and a great message to spread and will be very inspiring to other survivors as well as non-survivors.”
Senate used payments made through UFund to pay for Merryn’s visit, Wright said.
“I think it’s important that we have the personal experience to kind of illustrate for us what it means for someone to have gone through that and the toll that (sexual assault) takes on the individual,” said Susanne Dietzel, director of the Women’s Center. “Rape is not abstract, rape becomes part of your lived experience, and she gives expression to that.”
Merryn is on a mission to pass a bill in all 50 states called Erin’s Law, which would make education available to children on how to prevent or report sexual abuse. The bill has been signed into law in Missouri, Indiana, New York and Maine. Eleven more states are taking the bill into consideration as well, according to Merryn’s website.
“I think that the survivors who are strong enough to talk about what happened to them should do it,” said Audrey Imes, president of Voices for Planned Parenthood. “If you could bring it down to (the public’s) level and show them that one in three women that they know most likely have been assaulted, I think you could change peoples perspectives overnight, I really do.”
je726810@ohiou.edu
