For much of the past year, trials at the Downtown Justice Center had been paused due to the coronavirus pandemic. They restarted in September 2020 only to be halted again in November when case numbers began to spike. Officials plan to restart trials on March 1, 2021.
It's meant a painful year-long delay for one rape survivor waiting for her case to go to trial. At her request, ideastream is not using her name.
Just Want It to End
The topic of my case is very, very sensitive and very personal. And I’m not ready to tell the world yet.
So, maintaining my commitment to get through the trial is very, very difficult at this moment. I'm going to make sure that I finish what was started. But there are days when I want to quit. I want to be done. I just want it all to end.
A Paused Life
No matter what I do. Whether I try to make friends, whether I try to go out and eat dinner, or start this new job and start new schooling, it's always there that these days are going to have to happen, even if I don't want them to happen, or I want them to happen months ago when they were supposed to happen.
I never know when it's going to be because coronavirus keeps changing the schedule so rapidly that I never have a set date where I know I'm going to have relief, that this is finished.
Journaling
When I start to feel shaky or uncertain about whether I want to continue, I have a journal that I write in. And my first journal entry was actually right after my assault happened.
So, if I ever feel very, very uncertain, I go back and read that entry and understand how I was feeling in that moment because after the assault you try to forget everything. And going back and reading that it gives me inspiration to say, 'Hey, I need to make sure this doesn't happen to somebody else. I need to make sure nobody else feels the way that I feel every single day while waiting to go to trial, while waiting to get some answers, some relief to all of this pain.’
And I know that going to trial isn't going to fix all of the pain that I have, but it will help with some of my fear.
