Seccuro’s world was rocked anew in September 2005 by...
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Liz Seccuro
Rape Survivor, Victims' Advocate, Author
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In September 1984, when she was a 17-year-old freshman just beginning campus life at the University of Virginia, Liz Seccuro was gang raped by several perpetrators in the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house. She received little assistance from the university, ambivalent reactions from friends and family and a condescending rebuke from local law enforcement officials. Bloodied, covered in bruises and bearing broken bones, she arrived at the office of UVA’s Dean of Students and was dismissed as a liar. She returned to her young life devoid of justice, vindication and support, finding in adulthood a propensity for alcoholism, promiscuity and self-abuse. Following years of struggling to reckon with her assault, she became a victim’s rights advocate, helping others make peace and find justice in their own experiences with gender violence.
Seccuro’s world was rocked anew in September 2005 by an atonement letter sent by one of her perpetrators, re-opening the old wounds of her traumatic assault and implicating one of her attackers. She began a lengthy email correspondence with her rapist to try and get a sense of what happened that night in 1984. In the process, she brought him to justice, resulting in her best-selling memoir, Crash Into Me: A Survivor’s Search for Justice, published by Bloomsbury in 2011. Through her efforts to stand up for victims of gender violence, she has helped change laws on a national level through such legislation as Title IX, a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs; the Clery Act, a federal statute requiring colleges and universities to share information about campus crimes; and the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act, a comprehensive program providing outreach and solutions to the problems faced by women on today’s college campuses.
Seccuro is a regular presence on NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN and contributes articles to The Daily Beast, Glamour, Living Healthy and Time, among other publications. She was recently appointed to the Board of Trustees of SurvJustice, the national non-profit victims’ rights advocacy tasked with increasing the prospect of justice for survivors of campus sexual violence by providing legal assistance, training institutions, and supporting change-makers. She is also on the Board of Directors of both RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization, and One in Four, a non-profit organization, led by men dedicated to the prevention of rape by applying theory and research to rape prevention programming. She is currently at work on her second book — a novel — and lives with her husband and two children on the East End of Long Island, New York.
A keynote speaker who appears regularly before audiences of athletes, college students and administrators, law enforcement officials and legal professionals, Seccuro speaks on our current crisis of gender-based violence — what we’ve achieved and how we can do better. Engaging, witty and non-judgmental, she balances her own traumatic story and hard-won rehabilitation efforts with contemporary stories of survival and justice that leave audience members with a lingering sense of purpose, resolution and hope.
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Topics
Topics
Hooked: Liz’s Story of Opioid Addiction
Keeping Our Campuses Safe For One & All
Cultivating Empathy in the Corporate Environment
Videos
Videos
Sizzle Reel - Liz Seccuro
Liz Seccuro Speech 2016Gala
Books
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