AOC says she feared being raped during Capitol riot
‘I didn’t think that I was just going to be killed. I thought other things were going to happen to me as well,’ AOC says
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.During the Capitol riot, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn’t just fear being killed, she was also afraid of being raped if the pro-Trump mob had managed to find her.
“I didn’t think that I was just going to be killed,” she told CNN’s chief political correspondent Dana Bash. “I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.”
“It sounds like what you’re telling me right now is that you didn’t only think that you were going to die, you thought that you were going to be raped,” Ms Bash said to a nodding Ms Ocasio-Cortez.
“Yeah, I thought I was,” she said. The Queens lawmaker has previously said that she’s a survivor of sexual assault. She said her past traumas was on her mind as she hid in her office during the insurrection. Her office is in the Cannon building, which is across the street from the Capitol but is connected to the building that was breached on 6 January via underground tunnels.
“Survivors have a very strong set of skills. And the skills that are required as a survivor, the tools that you build for resilience, they come back in right away,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said in June. “And for me, I felt like those skills were coming right back so that I could survive.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene mocked for complaining AOC left Oreo wrapper on Capitol steps during protest
AOC hits out at Biden over eviction moratorium as police ban her from lying down in overnight Capitol protest
AOC hits back at JD Vance after he calls her and Pete Buttigieg ‘childless cat ladies’ who shouldn’t govern because they don’t have kids
She said the Capitol siege was “animated” by “misogyny” and “racism”.
“White supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said. “There’s a lot of sexualizing of that violence.”
About a month after the Capitol riot, Ms Ocasio-Cortez first revealed during an Instagram Live that she had been sexually assaulted years prior.
The 31-year-old was first elected in 2018 and won reelection in 2020.
She had just started her second term when she was forced to hide in her office bathroom as she heard banging on doors and yells of “where is she?” coming from the corridor outside.
The person later turned out to be a Capitol police officer but didn’t identify himself as one at the time.
“There’s no way that a person in that situation would have even thought that that was law enforcement,” she told CNN. “That’s not how we’re kind of trained into thinking.”
She said the decision to speak about her sexual assault in her early 20s was not “a conscious one”.
“You don’t say, ‘This is the moment. I’m going to do this now.’ It feels like something happens in the circumstances that almost propels you to, and almost forces you in a way to come forward,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez said. “Because I think a lot of survivors would rather never talk about what happened ever again.”
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments