The morning after Amanda Nguyen was sexually assaulted, as a Harvard senior in 2013, she walked out of the hospital that had just processed her rape kit and was handed a taxi voucher to go back to her dorm — where she'd just been raped. "I'm just standing there on the curb, holding this taxi voucher, wondering, where do I go from here?" Nguyen recalls.

For survivors of sexual assault, it can be hard know how to put one foot in front of the other in every sense, but especially legally. Choose to press charges, and you often face a convoluted, confusing system, even after a rape kit is performed. At the time of Nguyen's assault, Massachusetts law dictated that her rape kit would be kept on file for six months, after which Nguyen would have to petition the state every six months, just to keep it in storage. Nguyen was outraged by these options. After graduating later that year with a degree in government, she joined the Obama administration, first as a speech writer, and later as the deputy White House liaison to the State Department. Soon after starting in the administration, she began working on a side project — an advocacy platform that she framed as a civil rights organization, named Rise. In 2016, she left the White House to make Rise her full-time job.

Justice was like sand slipping through my fingers every six months.

The same year, Obama signed into law Rise's main focus, the Sexual Assault Survivor's Bill of Rights. The bill established five key things for survivors of assaults handled by the federal government: The right to a sexual assault counselor; long-term, organized storage of rape kits; a promise that these rights aren't predicated on a survivor choosing to take legal action; the establishment of a task force to help support survivors of color; and the promise that survivors will be informed of all these rights. Now 27, Nguyen is focused on passing more Survivors' Bills of Rights at the state level (the current bill applies only to cases that are handled by the federal government): 20 state-level laws have been passed so far. And she continues to be an advocate for 25 million survivors in this country — work for which she was nominated for a 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

Sara Gaynes Levy: Your parents came to this country as refugees from Vietnam. How did your upbringing shape your work now?

Amanda Nguyen: My parents instilled in me a value that freedom is not always free. That everything I was given in America as a citizen was hard fought. Also, being a woman in the community that I grew up in, in Southern California — there were a lot of roles, obligations, and stereotypes that were not empowering. I actually was thought to be a boy when I was still in the womb — and then I came out the 'wrong' gender. My name was supposed to be Theodore! That profoundly shaped the way that I was raised.



What is my place in the universe, and what am I going to do about it?

SGL: Before you started Rise, what were your career plans?

AN: I always had a love for the stars. I wanted to be a mission specialist at NASA. In human nature, there's a desire to keep exploring — space encapsulates that. I say this often, but the two burning questions that I have when I wake up are: What is my place in the universe, and what am I going to do about it? Both astrophysics and activism answer those same questions.

SGL: Why did you decide to leave government and focus on Rise full time?

AN: I cared about these issues [before I was assaulted], but I never knew the extent to which the criminal justice systems were broken [until after]. A critical moment for me was walking into the local area rape crisis center and seeing so many people in the waiting room who had gone through what I was going through. I had resources, and I was still struggling with the labyrinth of the criminal justice system. These people must be as well. Also, I had a burning deadline: Justice was like sand slipping through my fingers every six months. My evidence, and therefore my justice, could be destroyed. I realized I could accept injustice, or I could rewrite the law.



I realized I could accept injustice, or I could rewrite the law.

SGL: How did you come up with the Bill of Rights?

AN: When you look [historically] at civil rights being granted to minorities, it isn't based on morality. It's based on precedent. I wanted to maximize the amount of rights that could be passed, to build a first-step foundation upon which other incremental legal changes could be built. Perhaps the greatest critique that I get is that I'm not radical enough. It's a critique that I completely own. We worked hard to pull things together as first step, sensing a window of opportunity. So absolutely we compromised in the original law, but later on people passed other laws that expanded upon our original bill. [For example, California passed a version that requires emergency contraception to be administered at no cost to the victim; Illinois' requires all institutions of higher learning in the state to adopt a comprehensive policy concerning sexual violence.] That to me is an achievement that is radical and in of itself.



SGL: Before the Bill of Rights was passed, some places, including Washington, D.C., required survivors to pay for extended rape kit storage on their own dime. How does privilege affect survivorship?

AN: All who have privilege will carry that over into other aspects of their lives, including whatever happens to them. One of the most unfortunate realities is that people who have compounded marginalized identities face more obstacles in accessing a fair and just system. That's not exclusive to the criminal justice system, or to this issue, but we are a civil rights campaign because no other issue is treated this way. There is discrimination specifically against survivors of rape and sexual violence because they are not believed. And this added level is why we framed [our work] to be a Survivor Bill of Rights.

SGL: How does media depiction of rape and sexual assault affect Rise’s mission?

AN: Rape, notoriously, is used as a MacGuffin for storylines in a way that often flattens the experiences that survivors go through. Women and men who experience sexual violence are not just props in somebody else's story. A central part of Rise's mission is understanding that storytelling — especially in Hollywood — creates empathy. And [writers] curate the way people think about different issues. We've spent a lot of energy talking to storytellers, writers, and producers in Hollywood to help folks understand how to tell these stories with nuance and complexity.

SGL: With Finding Neverland in the news, how does Rise approach male survivors?

AN: One of the reasons I'm so grateful to Terry Crews [the Brooklyn 99 star who testified about his assault in Congress with Nguyen] is he speaks volumes about how it doesn't matter who you are, what you look like, what gender you are, or where you come from — sexual violence impacts everyone. His testimony sitting next to me was a critical moment, not only for survivors of sexual violence, but so many people within the communities that he identifies with. Those voices need to be championed.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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