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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thought they weren't just going to kill her in the attack on the Capitol

2021-08-09T19:08:58.402Z


Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained that she thought the Capitol raiders would do more than kill her if they found her.


Ocasio-Cortez reveals she was a victim of sexual abuse 0:40

(CNN) -

When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez barricaded herself in her office during the Capitol uprising on Jan.6, she feared not only would the mob kill her, but that she would be raped if the rioters found her.

"I didn't think they were just going to kill me," Ocasio-Cortez told CNN's Dana Bash on "Being ... AOC," the first episode of CNN's new series "Being ..." which airs on Monday. Monday at 9 pm Miami time.

"I thought other things were going to happen to me as well."

Asked if that belief was partly driven by her experience as a survivor of sexual assault, Ocasio-Cortez said past traumas weighed heavily on her mind as she hid.

"Survivors have a very strong skill set. And the skills that are required as a survivor, the tools that you build for resilience, come back right away," Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview in her district in June.

"And for me, it felt like those skills came back right away in order to survive."

He also linked the sensation to what he described as the "misogyny and racism" that "encouraged" the "attack on the Capitol."

"White supremacy and patriarchy are closely linked in many ways," Ocasio-Cortez said.

"There is a lot of sexualization of that violence."

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Ocasio-Cortez first shared in February that she had been sexually assaulted years ago.

His revelation in an Instagram Live video came less than a month after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol, breached security and began pacing its halls in search of lawmakers.

  • "January 6 is not over for me": Cops testify about his mental health and lingering wounds from the Capitol attack

The congresswoman, who has just started her second term, described in the video that she was locked in the bathroom of her office, heard knocks on the doors and finally heard a voice that demanded: "Where is he?"

Ocasio-Cortez did not know at the time that it was a Capitol Police officer ... because, according to her, the officer did not identify himself.

"There is no way that a person in that situation would have even thought they were a law enforcement officer," he told CNN.

"This is not how we are trained to think."

The decision, weeks later, to tell her story of sexual assault in her early 20s, she said, had not been "a conscious decision."

"You don't say, 'This is the moment. I'm going to do this now.' It feels like something happened in the circumstances that almost pushed you into, and almost forced you in a way to show up," Ocasio-Cortez said.

"Because I think many survivors would rather never talk about what happened again."

A "painful" first term

When Ocasio-Cortez arrived in Washington two years ago fresh from a surprising setback to a high-ranking Democratic incumbent, her new colleagues were slow to accept her.

Some have never done it.

Although he rarely spoke about it in public, Ocasio-Cortez told Bash that his first term "was very painful."

  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveals she is a survivor of sexual assault by describing the trauma she suffered during the Capitol uprising

"I came in and unseated a headline that, while it may not have been resonant in our community, was very popular within those, you know, smoke-filled rooms," said Ocasio-Cortez, 31.

"I took a friend [from those members]. And so, I entered a very cold environment, even within my own party."

That incumbent, former New York Rep. Joe Crowley, was the fourth House Democrat when he lost his seat to Ocasio-Cortez, who denied him an eleventh term.

Ocasio-Cortez said she was rejected by some of Crowley's old friends and others who questioned her good faith, but never took the time to involve her once she got to the Capitol.

"Sometimes it was very rare to go to the House [of Representatives] and see a colleague who never greeted me," he said.

"And I felt like, wow, it's very hard that there are people who have opinions about you who are sitting next to you and not even start a conversation with you."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Assault on the Capitol

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2021-08-09

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