Arizona congressional candidate Bernadette Greene-Placentia was raped in August by an attacker who smashed her over the head as she repaired a campaign sign, she revealed publicly on Wednesday.
It happened in the dead of night when she hopped out of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee just after 2 a.m. on a Friday and headed across a parking lot to address the damaged sign, the District 8 Democratic candidate told the Phoenix New Times in an interview. The blow came out of nowhere and knocked her out. When she came to, a man was on top of her, pulling his penis out of her body. Another man came by and started to nudge her leg, but she swung at him with her foot, and both men left, she said.
Somehow, she drove herself home to her apartment in Sun City, where she’d been staying alone. She had rented it in order to remain a voting-eligible resident of the district after redrawn borders put the home she shared with her husband, Alex Placentia, 1.6 miles outside it, the New Times reported.
Like many victims of sexual assault, Greene-Placentia held back on reporting the crime or even telling anyone. She was embarrassed. She didn’t seek medical attention, even though she suspected a concussion. She bathed numerous times. She tried to “forget it happened,” she told the Phoenix New Times.
In doing so, she disappeared for two days and was cagey on the phone with her husband, confounding him and her campaign aides.
As she struggled to confront the reality of her attack, the Democratic candidate saw that her experience was part of the larger national conversation and realized she needed to speak out, she told the newspaper. Her campaign is framed around fighting for Arizonans, she said, “and I didn’t feel like I could keep saying that if I weren’t also fighting for women that are victims of sexual assault.”
She began telling people, then reported the rape to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office two weeks afterward, the New Times reported. MCSO spokesperson Dave Moyer told the New Times that the investigation is ongoing.
“Speaking publicly about what happened has been incredibly difficult for Bernadette,” a campaign spokesperson told the Guardian. “She chose to share her story because she knows many survivors struggle in silence, and she hopes that by speaking about her experience, others will know they are not alone.”