My name is Jaclyn. I live in Arizona with my husband and 2 children. You may know or recognize me from the Emmy Award winning hit NBC reality show “Starting Over”. My then boyfriend/now husband, Michael, and I appeared in the 3rd season as part of the “Relationship Bootcamp” series. The show was filmed just 1 year after I was raped and it was on the show, in front of nearly 3 million viewers, where I first told my rape story. At the time, I hadn’t come to terms with what had happened and was still very traumatized by the event and looking back, was not quite ready to heal.
But I lead people to believe otherwise because, deep down, I wasn’t ready to face it. I was still blaming myself and was feeling very much ashamed. I left Starting Over with amazing life lessons and tools that most people my age don’t discover until much later in life, if ever at all. And because of this, I was able to convince myself that Starting Over had also healed my rape, made it just… disappear, if you will. But somehow, the memories of July 17th 2004 would continue to haunt me. Until several years later…As the 5 year anniversary of my rape approached, I began to realize how very present the events of that night still were in my life. I started to see how I had allowed my shame and anger to consume me and deprive my husband, daughter, family and friends of the person I once was, the person they all grew to love. I knew in my heart that it was up to me to change this, to heal it, to make it better, to make ME better. I began reading books written by survivors, I courageously reached out to friends, I found different organizations online geared towards helping people like me. In doing all of these things, a passion was ignited in me to become more educated on the subject and find ways to make a difference in any way possible.
Somewhere along this journey, ROAR was born (Reaching Out After Rape). ROAR has become my personal journey to make a difference in whatever way I can. Whether that be posting the number to the national assault hotline on my facebook status every day or contacting the media to help encourage them to shine some light on ways to prevent rape in our community or raising money to help organizations like RAINN.org that helped me when I needed it the most. Reaching out to victims, reaching out to survivors, reaching out to organizations, reaching out to the media, to the community, to whoever or whatever that is, this is me, reaching out after rape.
I want to make a difference and I will. I’m excited for the challenges that lie ahead and am so glad you’ve joined me on this journey.