SAVING FIVE

A survivor of rape and childhood abuse chronicles her healing and her activism.

Nguyen arrived as a freshman at Harvard in 2009 under unusual circumstances—she had flown directly from the emergency room in California, where she was treated for injuries inflicted by her abusive father. When he flew to Boston, an injunction was issued to prevent him from stepping on campus. But her safe space of four years was shattered in October 2013 when she was raped by a classmate. Her memoir excludes almost all details of the event and its perpetrator, which seems odd since headings like “3 Hours Until the Rape” appear to lead up to an account. A friend asks her what she’s going to wear to a party, a question she says reverberated in her head for years, but we never find out the answer. Since she doesn’t explicitly state that she’s going to omit further details, one is surprised to reach the end of the book without ever learning more. What we do hear about is the incredible frustration she suffered trying to stop the state from destroying the evidence in her rape kit after a six-month waiting period, a fraught battle that drove her all the way to Congress, where she spearheaded the passage of the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act in 2016. The sometimes outrageous machinations this required are narrated in granular detail. Interwoven with it is an extended fantasy/adventure sequence where characters named 5, 15, 22, and 30—the author’s selves at these ages—go on a quest through the phases of grief (Denial, Anger, etc.), processing sorrowful memories and family history to arrive at healing. Meanwhile, there’s another curious omission. Since the whole purpose of preserving the rape kit evidence is to prosecute the rapist, it is perplexing that we hear nothing about whether any case ever went forward or is planned.

A troubling account of the obstacles our system places in the path of rape survivors.