According to data compiled in 2018 by researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community in a document titled “Black Women and Sexual Assault,” 35 percent of Black women experienced some form of contact sexual violence during their lifetime. And of every 15 Black women who are raped, only one reports the crime to authorities.
After she was raped, Clarke turned to shopping to cope. “I thought I would be able to buy back my value, buy back my worth,” she explained. “I was trying to look good because on the inside I was dying.”
Clarke said she was able to heal when she gave her life to God and verbalized what happened. “Many times with rape victims, we think that if we forget about it, that’s the end of it … No, that’s not the end of it,” Clarke said.
As part of her healing process, Clarke started I AM QUEEN Magazine in October 2016 to highlight the trials and successes of women from all walks of life in the Caribbean, the United States and Canada. She describes her journey in her 2017 book, How I Escaped the Prison Rape: The Journey to Total Freedom, and speaks around the world advocating for women and children who have been sexually assaulted.
Clarke encourages women who have been the victims sexual violence to take time for themselves, find a way to talk about what happened to them, and realize that what happened had nothing to do with them and everything to do with the person that attacked them.
“We got to get that pain out because, if we don’t get that pain out, the only person that is really dying on the inside is us,” she said. “If you can’t verbalize it, you can’t get over it.”
