Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she is a survivor of sexual assault and compared the trauma it caused to what she felt during and since the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I am a survivor of sexual assault,” the New York Democratic congresswoman said in an Instagram Live stream on Monday night, appearing to tear up. “And I haven’t told many people that in my life.”
“When we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other,” she added. “As a survivor, I struggle with the idea of being believed.”
She took aim at those calling for people to move on from the Jan. 6 attack and responded to calls from Texas Rep. Chip Roy and 13 other House Republicans that she should apologize to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for saying in a tweet last week that he “almost had me murdered” by objecting to the Electoral College results.
“These are the tactics of abusers,” she said. “This is not about a difference of political opinion. This is, like, basic humanity.”
Discussing the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection and GOP denial, @AOC reveals she is a survivor of sexual assault:
“Trauma compounds on each other.” pic.twitter.com/h9Wdkh1X6K
— The Recount (@therecount) February 2, 2021
Ocasio-Cortez conducted the livestream in order to detail her experience during the Jan. 6 attack and gave a long, sometimes-meandering account of her experience that day — and the days leading up to the riot.
She said that awareness about the potential for danger was high as some of former President Donald Trump’s supporters began arriving in Washington in the days ahead of a rally on the morning of the assault, during which he urged them to go to the Capitol. She described feeling distress on Monday and Tuesday.
On the morning of the Wednesday attack, though, Ocasio-Cortez said that she was in a good mood due to results from the Georgia Senate runoff election the day before showing that Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock had won their races, giving Democrats control of the Senate.
That feeling changed quickly, though. When the angry mob began breaching the Capitol complex, Ocasio-Cortez said she found herself faced with potential danger in her own congressional office. She could hear yells and banging on the door to her office, with people screaming, “Where is she? Where is she?”
“This is the moment where I thought everything was over,” she said. “I thought I was going to die.”
Ocasio-Cortez said she initially hid in a bathroom connected to her personal office and that eventually, “I hear that whoever was tried to get inside, had gotten in.”
A white man wearing a black beanie opened the door to her office and yelled, “Where is she?” while Ocasio-Cortez remained hidden.
A staff member called out, telling her that it was safe to come out. The man ended up being a U.S. Capitol Police officer. But Ocasio-Cortez said that she and her staff member could not tell at the time if the man was actually an officer and that he had hostility in his eyes.
The officer told them to head to another building, so Ocasio-Cortez and her staff member went. But when they got there, they realized the officer did not tell them a specific location to go to and that they could hear other people yelling outside.
“It felt like a zombie movie or something,” she said, adding that it felt like “it’s a matter of seconds” before the intruders would break in.
Eventually, she got to California Democratic Rep. Katie Porter, whom she said did not seem to have the same “awareness level” of the situation outside. They started “bracing for impact” and barricading in Porter’s office, turning off all the lights.
They remained in the office for around four hours.
“The whole situation was not OK,” Ocasio-Cortez said, at one point leaving open the possibility that the alleged police officer who came to her office purposely omitted an exact location to seek refuge in order to put her in danger.
