AILSA CHANG, HOST:
A warning, this conversation covers the topic of sexual assault. At the age of 33, Amanda Nguyen has a string of accolades that most people will never collect over the course of their entire lives - nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Time Woman of the Year, Forbes 30 Under 30. She's also set to become the first Vietnamese American woman ever to fly into space. It's a breathtaking streak of peaks, especially considering the depths she has traveled.
In 2013, Amanda was raped during her senior year at Harvard, just months before graduating. She had plans to work at NASA or at the CIA, but those plans were immediately derailed after she realized that Massachusetts state law would permit the destruction of her rape kit within six months. So Amanda would go on to change the law not only in Massachusetts but across the country to ensure that survivors of sexual assault have the right to have their rape kit evidence preserved for the entire length of the statute of limitations. She details her story in her new book, "Saving Five: A Memoir Of Hope," and joins us now. Amanda, thank you so much for coming in today to talk to me.
AMANDA NGUYEN: Thank you for having me.
CHANG: When you were assaulted at Harvard in 2013, can I just ask, why did you choose to submit what's called a Jane Doe rape kit instead of attaching your real name to the physical evidence that was collected from your body?
NGUYEN: It was fear. You know, I was about to graduate. I felt like I had worked my entire life to have a future ahead of me. And I also knew that the career choices I wanted to go to - NASA or intelligence agencies - was one that looked into people's backgrounds. You have to pass security checks.
CHANG: Sure.
NGUYEN: And if I were to have a court case that was open, that would be used against me. That would be held against me.
CHANG: You knew that, or you suspected that?
NGUYEN: I knew that because I had worked in the White House as an intern before, and part of the application process is a security clearance form that you have to fill out. And that does ask you to list if you have any active court cases. And so, already the systems that are built around us disincentivize (ph) victims, disincentivize survivors from pursuing their justice. Even when I had my first conversation with legal professionals, they were well intentioned, and so they told me what the reality is. They said, you know, court cases often take years. They told me that it's a 1% conviction rate. So was I prepared to go through that? It was devastating to hear that.
CHANG: Right.
NGUYEN: And so I chose to delay my justice because I wanted to fight for my career, for my dreams.
CHANG: Absolutely. But just so people understand, by not assigning your name to the evidence at first, that meant your rape kit would be destroyed under Massachusetts state law after six months unless you kept on extending that timeline...
NGUYEN: Yes.
CHANG: ...Every six months, even though the statute of limitations for rape in Massachusetts is 15 years, right?
NGUYEN: That's right, yes. And it would be destroyed untested, which meant that even if I, as a survivor, had gone to the police, had gone to the hospital and had done the things that people tell survivors to do, we could still lose the evidence, untested. And I actually found out when I started sharing my story publicly that this was an experience survivors all across the United States were experiencing and oftentimes also experiencing other things that were very unfair. So for instance, in New York state before my law passed there, rape kits were destroyed at 30 days. Justice should not depend on geography. Had I been raped in another state that had protections, then I wouldn't have to go through this. And what I felt was truly Kafkaesque was the fact that there was no standardized way of saving the rape kit. So even if they said, OK, well, at six months you still want to renew, there was no way to renew it. I had to track down exactly where my rape kit was, where...
CHANG: Right.
NGUYEN: ...The DNA evidence from my body was taken and then persuade the forensics lab to keep it.
CHANG: And what did it feel like to live under a constantly ticking clock at that point...
NGUYEN: Yeah.
CHANG: ...Like, as you put it, acknowledging every half birthday of your rape kit?
NGUYEN: Yeah, it was devastating. It felt like my entire life stopped, and the only thing that I could hear was this thunderous ticking of the second hand. Every single moment that my kit wasn't extended, it would be one second more towards the destruction of my evidence.
CHANG: Well, you set out to change the law, and it was striking to me that the U.S. Congress turned out to be the faster body to get a new law passed than the Massachusetts state legislature.
NGUYEN: Yeah.
CHANG: Who would have figured?
NGUYEN: Yeah (laughter).
CHANG: It was your first time talking to lawmakers when you were doing this. I have never lobbied for anything in my life before. What was it like to take this incredibly painful, traumatic experience and to share it over and over again as a part of a set of talking points to lawmakers? Did that change the way you personally processed what happened to you?
NGUYEN: A hundred percent - in the beginning when I started advocating for my own rights, I hid my story as a survivor, and I wanted it to be for the merit of the issue, the legal precedents, the statistics. And when I talked to these staffers, they just wouldn't look up from their BlackBerrys. And I figured, OK, well, I needed to tell them that this isn't only an issue in theory, that I am a rape survivor sitting in front of them. This happened to me. And as soon as I did share my survivor story, people would look up from their phones. And I realized, OK, well, I do need to be vulnerable and show that this is an issue that impacts a live human being right in front of them.
CHANG: Yes. Your parents were both refugees from Vietnam. You detail in this book some extremely difficult moments during your childhood - your father's violence towards you, his anger, and then his suggestion that you were partly to blame for your rape at one point. Does your father now see the enormity of what you accomplished in helping get this federal law passed?
NGUYEN: You know, I will say that my parents were not happy when I had a Harvard degree and decided to go into activism. But they've come around after I was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (laughter).
CHANG: It only took that to get the Asian parents on board (laughter).
NGUYEN: Exactly (laughter). Now, this is actually a conversation that I want to have, especially with folks in my community who I know often struggle with filial piety versus what they are called to, what their passions are. And so what I want to say is that your parents want you to be happy and healthy. They survived, and that's why their mind is trained in that survival mode.
CHANG: Yes.
NGUYEN: But you are the ultimate person that drives your life, and you have to survive for yourself.
CHANG: Amanda Nguyen's new book is called "Saving Five: A Memoir Of Hope." Thank you so much for coming in today and sharing this time with me.
NGUYEN: Thank you.
CHANG: I so appreciate you.
NGUYEN: Thank you.
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