08/07/2020
TW: Sexual Assault and Su***de
This is Daisy Coleman. She was an artist. An advocate. A leader. A visionary. A survivor.
In 2012, a classmate of Daisy’s r**ed her after plying her with alcohol at a party. She was 14. He was 17. He was also a footballer, with family connections that included wealth and status privilege. After the assault, he and his friends dumped her on the front lawn of her house in almost freezing temperatures. Her mother found her scratching at the door the next morning, barely conscious.
Despite having evidence to prosecute, charges against Matthew Barnett were ultimately dropped amidst an unofficial campaign of victim blaming and aggression towards Daisy. While Barnett went on to study at his grandfather’s distinguished alma mater, Daisy’s mother, striving to protect her children from the unbearable hostility being meted out against them (Daisy in particular), moved her whole family out of the Maryville town in which a privileged young man had first assaulted her daughter and then been protected by his community.
Daisy suffered because of the sexual violence a man chose to do to her. She suffered because of the lack of support a community chose to deny a child. Despite that, she went in to found a student-led national organization with a mission to end sexual assault among middle and high school students. The work of Safe BAE continues today, giving teens the tools to combat sexual violence, to understand consent and to reject victim blaming.
This week, Daisy Coleman ended her life by su***de. She was 23. As her mother Melinda says, “She never recovered from what those boys did to her and it’s just not fair.”
It isn’t fair. And men’s lives go on to fulfil the great “potential” society defends and protects for them, while the women they choose to harm are left to put themselves back together.
Daisy Coleman had a potential too. She managed to fulfil so much of it despite the violence that was done to her, first by Barnett and then by the structural powers in place that work every day to protect men just like him.
Rest in power, Daisy. You will not be forgotten.
