BJ Taylor Turning Point

In 1994, at age 47, Rolling Meadows resident B.J. Taylor felt she had everything she was supposed to want in life: a highly paid sales job with a paper products company, a good marriage, a beautiful home, and a 37' sailboat. She and her husband had just finished putting their four children though college. Yet Taylor felt like something was missing.

A volunteer at NorthWest Action Against Rape, (NWAAR), a rape crisis intervention center in Arlington Heights, Taylor was beginning to find her work counseling victims of sexual violence more rewarding than her sales job. The center provided free 24 hour sexual assault/abuse counseling and advocacy services to the northwest suburbs of Chicago. As a volunteer, Taylor counseled victims by phone, and was on call for hospitals and police, going in to help advise rape victims, often guiding them through the process all the way to the courts.

Taylor, who has personally experienced sexual violence but chooses not to dwell on it, says of her volunteer work at NWAAR, "It was making a difference in who I was as a person, watching the bravery of these women struggling through this trauma. And my sales job was not fulfilling. I was selling, working from home, and I felt isolated. My soul was dying. When some client was screaming at me that they needed their truckload of eight ounce paper cups urgently, that it was life or death, I thought, 'You have no idea what life or death really is.'

"Because I was in sales," Taylor continues, "I could make my own hours and I ended up doing a lot of the court interaction and counseling victims about lack of evidence, trying to separate the legal process from the healing of the victim. The experience was extremely powerful. Being there and being able to support someone who wasn't able to support themselves at that moment. Being able to offer information about the legal process. I could see the results of my intervention immediately."

When the position of Executive Director for NWAAR opened up, Taylor decided to turn her back on future sales commissions, and quit to take the job. Having volunteered at the center for seven years, she brought valuable experience to the position.

"I want to create the social change to make this a safe, nurturing world for all people, especially women," says Taylor, now 51, who completed a Master's Degree in Women's Advocacy shortly after accepting the Executive Director position. "Sign carrying is not enough. The laws regarding violence and civil rights have not been enough to make social change. FBI statistics show that one in three women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. My role is to keep saying, 'We cannot ignore this problem. I will not be dismissed. I'm not going away and I'm not going to let you brush it under the rug.'"

As Executive Director for NWAAR, Taylor supervises counseling, advocacy, and prevention programs, as well as spear heading all marketing and fund-raising efforts. She has 10 staff members and 46 volunteers. The volunteers use pagers, and are on-call during three 12-hour shifts a month. They can be paged to return a call to someone who has called into the hotline in the middle of the night, or to assist at a hospital emergency room. Taylor says rape crisis centers can offer a higher degree of privacy for their clients under the law than doctors or psychiatrists can. Records cannot be subpoenaed without permission.

"Ours is a therapeutic role," says Taylor. "The victims make their own choices from the get go. We tell them they can refuse to participate with the rape evidence kit at the hospital if they want. We explain to kids (victims under 18) that they can go to the hospital, but that the hospital has the right to call their parents. It's their choice. We want victims to know their options and the reality so they can make informed choices. We feel it's important to give them back control in these situations."

Taylor believes one of the most important services NWAAR provides is the counseling work of the volunteers who offer a sympathetic, non-judgmental ear for victims of sexual violence. Volunteers must undergo forty hours of hands-on instruction to receive certification in Sexual Assault Training. They are required to learn about the psychology of trauma, the rape kit used by police and hospitals, and the criminal justice system.

"We're letting people know what their options are, and just listening to them, no matter what happened or when it happened," Taylor says. "When I was a volunteer, a phone call came in at 3 a.m. from a woman who had been sexually abused by her father. She had gone on with her life, but recently her boyfriend had moved out, and she was going to have to take her three-year-old and move back in with her parents. She just needed somebody to talk to about her options. It is important for (the victims) to have somebody there who 'gets it'. Somebody who listens while they figure out what to do. The right intervention and understanding at the right time can really help a person overcome the experience.

"One of the most common scenarios," Taylor continues, "is when a victim will call up three months later (after an incident with sexual violence.) They went to the ER, the physical wounds have healed, but it's not going away, they can't sleep."

Taylor and her volunteers counsel these victims and their families, and help educate the legal and medical practitioners involved. They counsel women from all socio-economic backgrounds.

"Sexual violence against a homeless woman or a prostitute can often be dismissed (by police and doctors)," Taylor says. "But it's our role to say, 'The issue here is consent. And it's your role to accept this as sexual assault."

In addition to increasing awareness amongst physicians and police, Taylor finds NWAAR volunteers must also educate the families of victims.

"Very often we are intervening with families who are blaming the victim," says Taylor. "She went to a party she wasn't supposed to, ended up at the ER, tried to keep it a secret. The parents find out about it, now they're back in the ER looking for answers. We tell them, 'We understand she used poor judgment, but that doesn't mean she deserved to be raped.'"

While raising awareness among healthcare providers and families of victims can be daunting, Taylor says the most frustrating part of her job is convincing communities that sexual violence exists and poses a problem.

"People say to me, 'Oh, it must be so difficult working with these victims,'" Taylor says. "But I'll tell you. It's not difficult to work with the victims. They're glad we're here. It's the community residents who refuse to admit that this is a problem who are frustrating to deal with. My quest is to overcome the denial of the community."

&#Taylor's organization places child assault prevention as a top priority, going into grammar schools, teaching "respect and rights-based programs." They present to parents, families, school administrators, teachers, and the children themselves. Through role play, they teach children that harm might come not only from strangers, but from someone they know - a bully or a family friend or relative. The prevention course coaches kids to yell "NO!" or "I'm gonna tell!" But the need for educating grammar school aged children is hard for people to grasp, according to Taylor.

"People can understand the threats at the high school level, but the threat to an eight-year-old is hard to imagine," she says. "Eighty-five percent of all children who are assaulted are assaulted by someone they know. Most people have the wrong idea of sexual assault. The general population does not truly believe it's part of all our lives.

"It's not about sex," Taylor continues. "It's about power and control and demeaning another person. It shouldn't be an embarrassing topic because a sex act is used. As long as we continue to honor power and control, sexual assault will continue. We need to honor safety and nurturing, sensitivity and caring."

Taylor has found her full-time devotion to NWAAR to be a rewarding choice, never regretting her decision to quit her sales job.

"I think I've come into my own in terms of confidence, and interacting with the community," she says. "I've been Executive Director for four years now, communicating information about NWAAR and gaining support. And when I receive a dollar for NWAAR, it's a really big deal. $500 from the Rotarians means a lot more to me than any $10,000 commission check I made from paper cups."

Taylor finds the advocacy work and community programs fulfilling as well. One of the most inspiring experiences of her job, Taylor feels is "to see those kids (in the school programs) and to hear them yell 'NO!' really loud. It's about giving children a voice. Teaching a child to yell no teaches them that they have a right to be loud and to stop someone from doing something they don't want them to do. I just love hearing those kids yell."

Taylor takes her philosophies on empowering women out onto the water as well. A few years ago, she decided to use the sailboat she owns with her husband for women-only sailing classes on Lake Michigan, calling her side-line business, "Passages Aux Femmes," (women's passage).

"I wanted women to be able to learn to sail in an environment with a view of their abilities they can't get anywhere else," Taylor says. "Half of my students have been on boats all their lives, but have never been behind the helm. I had an air traffic controller who was shocked she could dock the boat. I don't want another generation of women to feel that all they can do on a boat is make sandwiches."

Taylor sees a correlation between her work with NWAAR and her sailing school.

"In both, I'm pushing myself and testing myself to reach further," she declares. "I'll put myself out there in areas I'm not as knowledgeable or comfortable about. And basically, I want to put something in place that helps women have the opportunity to self-actualize. Both NWAAR and Passages Aux Femmes are about the exact same thing: for women to get support and empowerment." end

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