Last August, in Steubenville, Ohio, a 16 year old received a life sentence. Yesterday two of the teens who imposed that sentence on her were given their own far shorter sentences: juvenile detention for of a minimum of one and two years, respectively.

. . .

My own life sentence began when I was 19, three years older than the Steubenville survivor. It is a sentence I share with, conservatively, one in seven women. As is fairly typical, I wasn’t physically injured (in the sense of bruises, cuts, or gunshot wounds), but 37 years later I still bear the emotional scars.

In the first decade, especially, others I loved came to share my sentence: A young man I should never have married – an unconscious attempt to prove I wasn’t “damaged goods.” A spouse who hesitated to wake me in the middle of the night, because sometimes I woke up swinging. A relative I reluctantly agreed to let clean our house, knowing how challenging it was for me to grant anyone access to my personal possessions because that kind of access led to later phone and mail harassment. PTSD isn’t rational, so the reality that this relative wouldn’t hurt me did nothing to damper my emotional response the moment I discovered my spouse had left her alone in our house – and it was in that moment (one of many) that my injury spread to others.