FIRE!

Content note: sexual assault and survivor experience.

This isn’t my normal content - sometimes the events of the news need space in my words to take over. Today is one of those days.

When I was growing up, we were taught what to do if someone in a car tried to take us. Keep your distance. Don’t get in. Give them false information. We had language for kidnapping.

I don’t remember being given much language for sexual assault. As I got older, I began hearing about date rape. But even then, the questions seemed to arrive before the care. What did you say? Were you too friendly? What were you wearing?

Somewhere in my early twenties, I remember being given another piece of advice: if someone attacks you, yell “FIRE!”

The explanation was that people might ignore cries of “rape” or “help,” but they would respond to a fire. I don’t know how reliable that advice was. I know what it taught me to expect: my danger might not be enough to bring someone running. I might have to name a danger that threatened them, too.

FIRE!

That word has been coming back to me as I read the reporting about a young woman who alleges she was drugged and raped at a Cornell fraternity house in October 2024. In records from the university’s disciplinary investigation, she described feeling “like bait.” The reporting also describes group messages that treated her body as something available to other men.

She reported the encounter to campus police in 2024. Cornell says its disciplinary process resulted in sanctions, including expulsions and suspensions. Criminal charges were not brought at that time, and several of the young men had to write essays, ESSAYS, as ‘punishment!’ Now, following her civil lawsuit and renewed scrutiny, the criminal investigation has been reopened. The allegations remain contested. Those distinctions matter. So does the fact that she sought help long before many of us heard her story.[1]

I am furious. I am heartsick. I ache for her. As a survivor myself, I’m reading this with more than an opinion about a news story. There is grief here that I recognize, and anger I don’t know where to put.

And when I encounter comments asking why she’s bringing this up now, I want to shout: she already reported it. Why is the timing of our attention becoming another accusation against her?

When I was twenty, we didn’t have cell phones to share our locations. We had instructions. So many instructions.

Carry change for a phone call.
Call when you go somewhere new.
Park near the lights.
Look behind you.
Don’t walk alone.
Watch your drink.
Check the back seat.
Know your surroundings.

Then there were the other instructions, the ones that reached beyond safety and into how we were allowed to exist.

Dress modestly.
Don’t flirt too much.
Don’t be too loud.
Don’t be too friendly.
Don’t attract attention.
Be polite.
Be graceful.
Smile, but not too much.

Know your place.

Some of those precautions came from people who loved us and desperately wanted us safe. I understand that. I’ve wanted the people I love to be safe, too. But the accumulated message was heavy: preventing someone else’s violence was a responsibility we were expected to carry everywhere.

I remember that instruction booklet far more clearly than I remember boys being taught what they owed us. And over the decades, the booklet has only gotten longer.

If something happens anyway, another set of questions waits on the next page.

What were you wearing?
Were you alone?
How much did you drink?
Why did you go there?
Why didn’t you leave?
Why didn’t you fight?
Why didn’t you scream?

I am exhausted by the expectation that women should become experts in anticipating danger and then experts in defending themselves against the suggestion that they caused it.

FIRE!

This is where my anger follows me into the church, into the space where I serve and teach and care for people. I worry that we will avoid these conversations because they are uncomfortable. That we will assume our sons are protected from this kind of thinking because they’re growing up in Christian families. That we will offer another reminder about modesty to the girls and leave the boys without a serious conversation about consent, entitlement, coercion, and courage.

I want us to talk with boys before they are standing in a room or reading a group chat where someone is being dehumanized. I want those conversations to continue as they grow.

“What would you do if your friends spoke about a girl that way?”
“What would you do if someone described her intoxication as an opportunity?”
“Would you object?”
“Would you get help?”
“Would you be willing to lose a friendship, or several, to protect another person?

Have we taught you what that courage might cost?
Have we made it clear that we will stand with you when you choose it?

We need to teach, plainly and in ways children and teenagers can understand, that another person’s body belongs to them. A relationship doesn’t create a debt. Flirting doesn’t give permission. Consent to one thing doesn’t mean consent to everything, or everyone. Someone can change their mind. Someone who is incapacitated cannot consent.

We need to teach boys to recognize harm, refuse to participate, and seek help. We need men to have these conversations with other men and to challenge the language and the jokes that make cruelty feel ordinary.

And we need to practice actual responses: stop sharing the message. Say that it’s wrong. Tell a trusted adult. Seek emergency help when someone is in immediate danger. Refuse to let loyalty to a friend become permission to abandon someone else.

And, for the love of all that is good and holy, why should the work of making these conversations happen keep falling so heavily on the people already carrying the fear?

I speak of imago Dei continually. Every human being bears the image of God. Every person has dignity that cannot be earned, lost, or taken away by someone else’s opinion.

That young woman bears his image. Nothing about her clothing, her choices, her relationships, or anything she consumed could make her less human or make violence against her acceptable.

The men accused bear his image, too. I believe that, and I struggle with it. Right now, I don’t have a graceful paragraph that makes the tension disappear.

But bearing God’s image carries a responsibility to honor that image in others. It cannot become an excuse to soften the harm, evade accountability, or hurry the person who was hurt toward forgiveness so everyone else can feel comfortable again.

Repentance requires truth. It requires accepting consequences. Concern for someone accused of wrongdoing must never crowd out care for the person reporting harm.

I believe those things. I am also angry enough that finding the words is hard.

I’m trying to figure out how to carry this anger faithfully in a vocation where I’m mindful of how I represent Jesus. I want to speak truthfully. I want to resist cruelty, including in myself. I want my words to help protect people.

But I’m troubled by how quickly I start examining my own presentation. Will I sound too angry? Too emotional? Will someone decide my tone is the problem before they hear what I’m saying?

That examination feels painfully familiar. Be careful. Be graceful. Don’t be too loud.

I don’t want to become careless with facts or with people. I also don’t want to make this anger so presentable that nobody feels its urgency.

I want churches where a person reporting harm encounters care, protection, and a serious response. Where leaders have a plan for responding, seek qualified help, and refuse to treat the institution’s reputation as more precious than the people entrusted to it.

I want parents and ministry leaders to begin the difficult conversations. I want boys to grow into men who can recognize dehumanization even when it comes from someone they like. I want girls to hear that they deserve safety and that someone else’s choice to violate them is not their fault.

And I want survivors reading this to know: you do not owe anyone your story. You do not have to disclose it to prove that this matters. Your dignity has never depended on how well you fought, how loudly you cried out, or how quickly you found words for what happened.

I don’t have a tidy ending. I have rage, grief, questions, and a conviction that our universities, our schools, our churches need to face this. I’m bringing that to God, too. I don’t know how to pray about it honestly without letting him hear how angry I am.

I remember being taught to shout a word that would make people pay attention.

I am saying it now.

FIRE!

Short statement
As a survivor, a Christ-follower, and someone who serves in church leadership, I am furious and heartsick over the allegations of sexual violence at Cornell and the dehumanizing messages described in the reporting. I ache for this young woman and for survivors who are reading this story with pain they recognize.

Every person bears the image of God. That conviction calls us to protect people, take reports of harm seriously, and pursue truth and accountability.

If you have been sexually assaulted and you need help, please contact someone you trust, or call RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline at 877-995-5247

[1] Reporting: Associated Press, republished by NBC New York and ABC News timeline, reviewed October 4, 2026.

Photo by Maxim Tajer on Unsplash