Citizens gave testimony about their encounters with porn and those who consume porn to the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee on December 12, 1983. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.101-103).
Testimony of Ms. M
When I was thirteen, I was camping with the Girl Scouts in Northern Wisconsin. It was ten years ago in November. I was walking through the forest outside of the camp in midafternoon and came upon three deer hunters who were reading magazines and talking and joking around.
I turned to walk away and one of the men yelled, “There is a live one.” And I thought they meant a deer, and so I ducked and tried to run away. I realized that there wasn’t any deer in sight and that they meant me. And I started running and they ran away–they ran after me. I tripped, the forest was covered with pine needles and leaves and they caught me. And I told them that I would go away, to leave me alone, please.
And they said, “You are not going anywhere” and forced me to get up and pulled my hair and started looking at me up and down, calling me a little Godiva–I had long hair then–a golden girl, and making jokes.
They told me to take my clothes off and I did. It was very cold. It was November. I took my clothes off, and they told me to lie down and the first man started. They told me not to say anything, that if I made a sound that they would kill me, they would blow my head off…
All three of them had hunting rifles. They–two men held their guns at my head and the first man hit my breast with his rifle, and they continued to laugh
And then the first man raped me. And when he was finished, they started making jokes about how I was a virgin and I didn’t know how they knew I was a virgin, but they did. And they made jokes about this, and jokes about how they could have used something like this when they were in boot camp, and made jokes about being in the military.
The second man then raped me. None of the men attempted to kiss me or touch my breasts. They simply wanted to have intercourse. When the second man was finished, the third man was not able to get an erection and they, the other men, told me to give him a blow job, and I didn’t know what a blow job was.
The third man forced his penis into my mouth and told me to do it and I didn’t know how to do it. I did not know what I was supposed to be doing. He started swearing at me and calling me a bitch and a slut and that I better do it right and that I wasn’t even trying. Then he started getting very angry and one of the men pulled the trigger on his gun, so I tried harder.
Then when he had an erection, he raped me. They continued to make jokes about how lucky they were to have found me when they did, and they made jokes about being a virgin. They started kicking leaves and pine needles on me and kicking me and told me that if I wanted more, that I could come back the next day.
Then they started walking away and I put my clothes back on and it was not far from where they had set up their camp, and I looked down and saw that they had been reading pornographic magazines. They were magazines with nude women on the covers.
I went back to the camp–well, first I got my clothes back on and walked a fair amount away, and then I broke down and cried under a tree and decided what I needed to do. And I went back to the camp and I didn’t tell anyone that I had been raped. I went to the bathroom and saw that I had bled on my underwear, so I assumed that I had gotten my period. I did not know that virgins bleed. I didn’t find that out until a few years later.
I didn’t seek any medical help. I didn’t tell anyone that I was raped until I was 20 years old…
[Allen Hyatt, Assistant City Attorney for Minneapolis]: Excuse me, what went through your mind when you decided not to report this?
Well, in retrospect I realized that I felt like I needed some control over what had just happened, that I didn’t feel like I could tolerate anyone and having them think it was my fault or blaming me or not understanding. And to have no control over who had that information once I told someone, knowing that my mother would most likely tell a great deal of people and I would have no control over that information.