Anna Navarro is 38 years old and on her 20th birthday, nine men drugged and raped her. "There was torture and a lot of violence," recalls this Barcelonan. For more than a decade she kept "total silence." She did not explain to anyone what happened. She kept it to herself despite the serious psychological consequences that silence added to the situation experienced. Until, 13 years later, she decided to tell her mother about her sexual assault. Then to her surroundings. And after doing it on social networks after the sentence of La Manada, she now wants to do it with an uncovered face. Her goal is to encourage all women who have been sexually assaulted to speak up and seek help. The rape and her silence have caused her serious psychological problems that make it impossible for her to have a normal life. And that is why she demands more aid.
"Silence is devastating," repeats Anna Navarro in conversation with La Vanguardia. She assures that this concealment is "a violence that you exert on yourself" but that she did not realize it until she began to go to therapy. By then, more than a decade had passed since the multiple sexual assault she suffered at the age of 20, and she already had a diagnosis of severe depression and anxiety. When she told her mother what had happened and she took her to her primary care doctor, the doctor was able to identify the real origin of her depression. Three days later she was already being visited by a psychologist and she began therapy.
The sexual assault has left this woman, who is the mother of a 12-year-old boy, with a long list of consequences. One of them is the impact on self-esteem: "You neither love yourself nor take care of yourself." It's like a hole: "You spend life as if it weren't yours, you go like a ghost," explains Navarro. She assures that she does not remember many moments of the years that she was silent. In her therapy, they told her that when she started it, she would feel as if the rape had just happened. So it was. “The fears and discomforts multiplied, although I was in good company,” she explains.
His depression was joined by post-traumatic stress and he was awarded 41% disability. And to her initial diagnosis after the pandemic has been added: agoraphobia, borderline personality disorder, bipolar and schizoid points and dissociation of perception. With this, she requested a review of the degree of her disability. She now has 65% for which for three months she has received 480 euros of a non-contributory pension. It is her only income, she assures. An annual reviewable aid and subject to family income.
Talking about the rape again also had physical consequences: "I vomited daily and lost 15 kilos." And the pandemic also affected him; he explains that after the most critical moment he spent six months in bed. Luckily he is now beginning to improve. But she has a hard time going out. "My life is a roller coaster: days when I have anxiety and days when I am better."
It was the sentence of La Manada that caused her the need to break the silence in networks. "I was affected by the treatment of the victim and also the aggressors," she says. She wrote the tweet in which she explained her rape precisely on her birthday, the date marked by the attack. “I wanted to stop spending my birthdays crying,” she says.
This Barcelonan does not lash out with her silence, for which she blames society, but she wants to use the media loudspeaker to ask the victims of sexual assault not to be silent. Let them explain it to someone they trust, be it a family member, a doctor or a friend. Today she knows more about sexual assaults, but she believes that 18 years ago "perhaps they would not have even listened to me at the police station."
“The trauma makes it impossible for me to lead a normal life and I can't work,” explains Anna. She currently takes about 15 pills a day between antidepressants, anxiolytics and antipsychotics and this medication is dead. She is afraid of going to sleep and she has nightmares daily. During her years of silence, she jumped from one job to another: “I have lost many jobs and I have left others”; but she explains that since she started therapy she broke down and she can't work. She somewhat assures that they certify the reports of her doctor and psychiatrist, for which she has requested her incapacity for work because her doctors assure that she will not be able to lead a "normal" working life. But she says that they deny it because the diagnosis "may not be definitive and I can be cured." "Explain to me what magic therapy cures you of a rape?" She explains indignantly.
She has been with a couple for four years who knows her story from the beginning. “Thanks to him and my mother I got out of bed,” she explains. And it is his son that he often draws strength to move forward. But before arriving here the road has not been easy because "a rape affects you in all relationships: social and sentimental." He acknowledges having gone through many toxic relationships "because you don't love yourself and that they don't value you, you don't see it as a problem."
She believes that now women who suffer a rape like hers do not have more support, simply "more repercussions." One of the last to have met an 11-year-old girl in Badalona, she left her in bed for a whole morning without being able to get up. She regrets that there is no plan for sexual assaults like the one that exists for battered women and denounces that she, unable to work, has been denied aid three times and "I have spent five years without receiving anything," she explains. Also, she believes that while you are in therapy there should already be some help. She laments the "institutional violence" to which "especially" women who, like her, have not denounced her sexual assault are subjected. And she believes that they are not a recent form of rape: "I have a 60-year-old friend who was also gang raped," she says. She also regrets that the victim "is not in the center."
It has improved thanks to psychological help, which, however, is sometimes very spaced out in time because "I see the psychologist once a month and the psychiatrist every three or four months." And he regrets that there are women who need more therapy They have to end up paying for it out of pocket with how expensive it is and they have to end up deciding between eating or doing therapy. And although she knows and trusts that she will continue to improve, she doesn't believe that she can fully reintegrate herself. "I have a strong trauma." "You don't heal from this, you learn to live."
From 1 to 10 it is now a 4, but aspires to pass. And in the future, when she is better, she sees herself capable of dedicating herself to helping other women. "I want to be part of the change, take out the positive part, if it has it."
