800: Jane Doe

Ira Glass

Some things in your life you decide you're never going to talk about. For Jules, it was what her youth pastor did to her long ago when she was a teenager in Texas. She tried to put it aside -- tried to move on. But then #MeToo happened with so many more women reporting men who'd assaulted or harassed them.

Ira Glass

He never responded, so she wrote a blog post about it, thinking, you know, maybe 100 people would see it. That was not the moment we were in. It became international news, and because of #MeToo, there were consequences that would have been unimaginable just a year before. The former youth pastor resigned from his job at the megachurch.

Things changed for Jules, too. All of a sudden, lots of women were calling her for advice on how to handle what they were going through, and she found a lot of meaning in those conversations. She set up a nonprofit that funds therapy for women who've been sexually assaulted, but there were aftershocks from her #MeToo moment that she never could have guessed, like with her three daughters. There's this conversation a year or two after she came forward.

Ira Glass

Five years after the #MeToo explosion, some powerful and well known men lost their jobs. A few went to prison. Over 20 states passed laws to make workplaces safer. Some changed statutes of limitations so people have more time to report sexual harassment and assault. That change, by the way, is why E. Jean Carroll was able to sue former President Trump recently.

Lots of employers adopted new HR policies, introduced more trainings. There was a bump in reporting for a while, but you know what we haven't heard that much about? How this has played out in the lives of the women who stepped forward and went public with their stories. I and a few of my coworkers have been talking to women like that, and one of the things I thought was so striking was the small ways that the aftermath of coming forward continues to pop up in their daily lives. For starters, a few of them told me that any time they meet someone new, even years later, they do this calculation in their head -- what do they know about me? What have they read, if anything? It's stressful.

Take Tanya Selvaratnam. She says she felt tremendous relief when she spoke out in 2018 about her abusive relationship with the New York State Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, and he stepped down hours after her story came out. But in the time since then, she still gets reminded of it in certain kinds of social interactions.

Ira Glass

Calling around, we heard about women switching careers, falling into debt from legal fees, but we also heard specific things that were so individual to each person. An associate professor at Tufts dental school reported a coworker, and then after, she met with her supervisor about it, and the way that the supervisor responded was so upsetting to her that now, the clothes she wore to those meetings. She says she can't wear those clothes anymore or even look at them. One woman, a wildland firefighter with the US Forest Service, told us that she expected after she reported that her bosses would start training the staff differently. They didn't. So now that's something she does for her co-workers -- kind of DIY.

Another woman, a truck driver in California, Laura Zuniga, came forward with the expectation that something would happen to the man that she reported. When it didn't, when he kept his job, she shut herself in a room for a while, stopped cooking for her three daughters, stopped taking them out, stopped being a mom. They'd come to her door and she'd tell them to go make themselves cereal or a sandwich. She says it especially got to the two older girls.

Ira Glass

When Chanel Miller reported what happened to her, she wound up in front of a jury. It was a pretty well-known case. She was known as Emily Doe, and then came out with her name after #MeToo happened. A swimmer at Stanford University named Brock Turner sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious. She'd been drinking at a party. She says the experience of telling that story in a courtroom has stayed with her in a bunch of ways, including this one.

Ira Glass

Today on our show, we have the story of somebody who came forward, and what happened to her next has never been told. In fact, she's only been known as Jane Doe, and she's remarkable in a few ways. First of all, she is so young. She's just a teenager, and she spoke out about one of the most powerful people in her state. And in this case, the story that the public knows is very, very different from what actually happened to her. In some ways, the public story is the opposite of her experience of it. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One. The Intern.

So the person our show is about today was a 19-year-old intern in the Idaho state legislature, and I should say before I go any further that there is no way to discuss what happened to her without talking about sexual violence. Take that as a heads up for what's to follow.

In 2021, this teenager reported that a state representative twice her age raped her. She came forward with her story, and then so many things went differently than they would have before #MeToo. Idaho's state house had put in place a basic reporting system for complaints like this. The incident was investigated, there were consequences -- all within a month and a half. The house put on a hearing and came to a fast decision.

Ira Glass

The committee vote was unanimous. They then called for a vote from the full House to expel the representative. He immediately resigned. So you know, that's change right, post #MeToo? State legislators talked about how proud they were of their ability to do the right thing so quickly. They praised their colleagues around the hearing as masterful. One of our producers, Miki Meek, watched all this happen back then, and she had a question -- namely, what was all this like for Jane Doe? Here's Miki.

Miki Meek

I live just south of Boise, and the story of Jane Doe was all over the news. There was a public ethics hearing in the Idaho House. I watched her answer questions.

Miki Meek

The first thing I noticed -- Jane Doe was young. Just a teenager. Just out of high school. They had her behind these giant black curtains up on a dais at the very front of the room. These big black curtains that hung off some tall metal frames were supposed to shield her identity, which was weird because nothing was being done to disguise her actual voice. I couldn't stop thinking, what is happening here? It felt very Handmaid's Tale, like she was on trial.

Miki Meek

So that's a pretty intense thing to hear a teenager recounting behind a black curtain. And then here's the part that really made me wonder what this was all like for Jane. Something happened after she finished her testimony.

Miki Meek

After she exited the room, the mics picked up a faint scream.

[SCREAM]

It was hers. Some of the representatives conducting the hearing looked around in confusion for a split second, and then got back to work calling up witnesses. Watching this back in 2021, just four years after the #MeToo movement broke, I assumed Jane Doe was part of a younger generation of women who were reporting sexual violence. But who knows? She was literally invisible at the hearing. What was it like for her back behind that curtain and what was that scream? I wanted to find out more about what exactly happened to Jane Doe.

I reached out to Jane Doe through her lawyers after the hearing to see if she wanted to share more. Five months later, I noticed a couple of missed calls on my phone. I called back. It was Jane. She'd been calling me and not leaving messages, trying to reach me out of the blue because she worried I'd try to record our call without her knowing. She said she was feeling paranoid.

When I finally met Jane in person, she was very direct. She'd been seeing all these people talking about her and finally wanted to give her side of it. She had a lot to say about every part of the process that led her up to the seat behind the black curtain. She just turned 20. She was really funny -- a total goofball. She has a membership at a trampoline gym.

Miki Meek

Her favorite? The dodgeball zone.

Miki Meek

Jane's a big sister to many younger siblings. She's always teasing them with fart jokes. But the main thing that really stood out to me about her is just how much she loves nerding out about the state legislature.

Miki Meek

She pulled up a photo of the Idaho state flag hanging from the rotunda.

Miki Meek

Her favorite pictures were of her cubicle -- a big wood desk, swivel chair, and her own name plaque.

Miki Meek

The capitol had been a surreal place for Jane to find herself in. Just a few years earlier, she was a pregnant high school freshman trying to figure her life out. She started making money by working field jobs on potato and corn farms, and picked up a night shift at Panda Express. As a sophomore, she enrolled herself in a special high school for teen parents and started volunteering in domestic violence shelters. She quickly became the kind of model overachiever who gets voted most likely to become President of the United States.

When Jane was a senior in high school, she signed up to be a page in the Idaho House of Representatives. She ran errands for a special committee and was celebrated on the local news for it.

Miki Meek

Jane learned the steps on how to make a bill, and for fun, sat in on meetings of the Judiciary and Rules Committee. She liked tracking all the different drafts of bills that got introduced and seeing what happened to them. She'd grown up with an abusive dad and then had a boyfriend who was violent with her. Seeing firsthand just how badly the criminal process worked for victims, she wondered why it wasn't better. And now that she'd seen the work of a lawmaker up close, she decided that's what she wanted for herself.

So after the page program was over, after she graduated from high school, Jane decided she had to get back to the House. She applied for an internship, and to get it, she needed to find a representative who would sponsor her.

Miki Meek

She got an internship with a Republican representative -- not von Ehlinger, the one she reported for raping her. It was another one. She started at the beginning of 2021 -- a desk of her own on the ground floor of the Idaho State Capitol. She felt like this was the beginning of something much bigger.

Jane remembers running into Representative von Ehlinger pretty soon after the 2021 legislative session started. She wasn't interning for him. He was just another Republican representative -- a very new one. I reached out to von Ehlinger and his lawyer for comment, but didn't get a response. He hasn't been talking to the press. It was his first term in the House. He was a substitute teacher from Northern Idaho.

Miki Meek

He was holding some cookies shaped like Idaho.

Miki Meek

What did you make of that at the time?

Miki Meek

Jane adds that sir is the kind of male representative who would text her late at night about a non-urgent work question, who'd keep her in his office too long, and who she overheard talking with other sirs about whether she looked better in her tan skirt or her striped one. She told me there were a lot of sirs in the House. Sometimes she'd get this creeping feeling that they would look at her and think, wow, how exotic. Jane's Hispanic. Many of the other women working in the capitol were blonde and white.

After von Ehlinger gave her those Idaho-shaped cookies, Jane says he was suddenly walking by her desk multiple times a day to make small talk. He gave her his phone number. Food seemed to be the main currency of flirting for a lot of the sirs. Jane says they were constantly offering her snacks from their mini fridges or dropping off lunch.

At times, all this free food was nice. Jane's internship was unpaid. She was supporting herself and her three-year-old son with a second job. She worked the overnight shift at a domestic violence shelter for $8 an hour. When von Ehlinger eventually asked her out to dinner, Jane says she initially felt reluctant, but talked about it with her friends, who told her to go for the food. Remember, she was 19 -- only a year out of high school. He was 38.

Miki Meek

She wanted to grow her network. Von Ehlinger picked Jane up after she'd finished her internship for the day in a BMW he borrowed from his roommate, then drove her to a steak restaurant downtown.

Miki Meek

Von Ehlinger was supposed to take her straight back to her car at the capitol, but instead, he made a detour to his apartment, supposedly to run a quick errand. This is probably evident, but a heads up that this is where the rape happens, and I'm going to give some of those details. Jane gave me permission and felt it was important to lay out the specifics of what happened to her. After he parked, Jane felt pressured to go in. She says he opened her car door and reached for her arm. She felt anxious knowing that he sometimes carried a handgun. Once inside his apartment, Jane tried to keep some distance. She went and sat on his couch, but he picked her up and carried her to his bedroom.

Miki Meek

Jane kept saying no, but von Ehlinger forced his penis into her mouth. She pulled her head away so hard that it snapped back and hit the wall. He then climbed on top of her, pinning one of her arms under his knee, masturbating. Von Ehlinger was over 6 feet, 200 pounds. Jane's 5' 3".

Miki Meek

Afterward, she says, he told her, when I'm at this point, I just become an out of control man. He then acted like nothing happened and drove her back to her car.

Jane Doe had been assaulted by a state legislator. Now she had to try to figure out what to do next. Like the vast majority of sexual assault survivors, Jane decided she wasn't going to tell anyone. She wanted to get back to work. She tried to convince herself she was fine, but that plan fell apart when she showed up back at the capitol for work just a couple of days later.

Miki Meek

Kim Blackburn. That's who she talked to -- the assistant sergeant at arms for the House. When Jane was a high school page the previous year, Kim was her supervisor. It was hard to find a private place to talk, so they walked out to the rotunda and sat on a bench facing that big Idaho state flag. Jane told Kim that von Ehlinger had raped her, then she went to the bathroom and threw up.

Miki Meek

This is where things started going differently than they would have in years past at the Idaho Capitol. Jane didn't know this, but when she told the supervisor about von Ehlinger, she became the first person to publicly test out the legislature's brand new process for responding to sexual misconduct allegations. The assistant sergeant at arms was now required to share Jane's report with one of the higher ups.

She went to the top person in the House, the Speaker, who took it very seriously. Within minutes of receiving Jane's report, he notified the Attorney General's office, who then notified the Boise Police. They took her to a victim center, where a nurse gave her a rape kit exam. But Jane waffled about whether she wanted to move forward with a police investigation and decided she didn't want to press charges. She wanted to move on, focus on her work, and let the capitol deal with von Ehlinger so another intern didn't get hurt.

The new protocol at the capitol landed with the Ethics Committee in the Idaho House, but then what? While the legislature had a way to respond to sexual misconduct complaints, it did not have any guidelines for how to conduct this kind of investigation. Representative Sage Dixon, a Republican from Northern Idaho, chaired the Ethics Committee. He was the first one on it to see Jane's report.

Miki Meek

Most everything that happened next, Dixon and his committee had to make up. He had no training on how to run an investigation into a sexual misconduct complaint. His job outside of the House is running an electrical contracting business. So one of his first thoughts was we should talk to Jane. Jane was at the capitol when a secretary notified her to appear before the House Ethics Committee. She didn't know what to expect, so when she headed into that interview, she brought a lawyer who's also a sexual assault advocate.

Miki Meek

Dixon says he doesn't remember what they were talking about, but was certain they weren't laughing about Jane. Once Jane walked in the room, she saw the Ethics Committee was made up of Representatives she saw all the time at her internship. She felt ashamed. They were seated around a long table -- three men and two women. She took a seat at the end. Dixon asked her to recount the night von Ehlinger raped her, but as soon as she got to the part about him climbing on top of her, Dixon stopped her. He said, quote, "I think maybe the committee's getting uncomfortable, too."

Miki Meek

There are some well-established practices for interviewing sexual assault victims. Using trained investigators who know how to interview a victim without re-traumatizing them is one, and those investigators should be external and independent, not people who work together every day. I asked Dixon about that moment in the room. He told me after Jane left, a Deputy AG who was there told him you don't interrupt sexual assault victims in the middle of their story.

Miki Meek

The Ethics Committee doesn't investigate crimes. They had no protocol for what to do, but they did have this one thing -- something that was clearly in the purview of the Ethics Committee -- conduct unbecoming. Was Representative von Ehlinger's conduct conduct unbecoming? As they looked into it, reports started surfacing about other women he'd pursued and made uncomfortable in his very short time at the capitol -- a journal clerk, a security guard, and a lobbyist who said he followed her to the bathroom. All of them were younger than him.

The committee also discovered that the top leadership in the House knew about two of these reports. Instead of confronting von Ehlinger, they sent a representative to warn him to stop being, quote, "overly nice." Dixon and the committee brought these allegations to him and gave von Ehlinger the chance to resign quietly and to avoid any public embarrassment.

But he didn't step down. Instead, he told the committee he and Jane Doe had consensual sex. To them, pursuing a sexual relationship of any kind with an intern was not OK. It seemed like a clear violation of the rule -- conduct unbecoming. Since he refused to resign, the only option they had left was to convince two-thirds of the House that von Ehlinger had violated conduct unbecoming. Then they could get him expelled. But to do this, they'd have to hold a public hearing.

Once the hearing was announced, one of von Ehlinger's attorneys did something that shocked Jane and her lawyers -- he released Jane's name to reporters. It ended up on a far right news site with her photo. Jane was no longer anonymous.

Miki Meek

An ally of von Ehlinger in the House went after Jane, too -- a then representative named Priscilla Giddings. She posted Jane's photo on Facebook and emailed a newsletter to her constituents calling von Ehlinger Idaho's very own Kavanaugh and Jane a honey trap out on a liberal smear job. The hearing, she said, was part of a national #MeToo witch hunt. I reached out to Giddings, but she didn't respond.

Jane tried to keep going to work, but she hated that every time someone looked at her, they thought about the rape. She couldn't function and needed to get out of the capitol. Back at home, all she could do to get through the day was sleep. She couldn't keep food down and was failing all of her college classes except for one -- a criminal justice course.

Miki Meek

In victimology, one of the things they talk about is how victims are often re-traumatized by the very systems that are supposed to get them justice. If you're a victim of sexual violence, the trauma is about having no power, so any attempt toward justice -- police, court, or HR procedures -- should be designed to make sure the person feels a sense of control. For instance, before a victim even makes a report, they should know what all the possible steps of the process could be. That way, they can decide if they still want to proceed. And if it's a workplace like the state house, you want to give the victim the option to give their testimony in private instead of forcing them to retell and relive their assault in public.

In the Idaho House, the process wasn't designed with the sexual assault victim in mind. Instead, it looked a lot more like a regular criminal trial. Dixon talked a lot about von Ehlinger's right to defend himself, while Jane says she wasn't consulted about whether she even wanted to come to the hearing. They issued a subpoena for her to appear. I asked Dixon why he thought that was necessary.

Miki Meek

In the days leading up to the hearing, Jane's lawyer said they did everything they could to prevent the hearing from being a disaster for her. They asked if she could testify remotely and with her voice disguised, or even better, in a closed session that wasn't open to the public. They said the answer they always got back from the Attorney General's office was no. No one seems to have a clear answer on why this was.

One of the Deputy AG's running the case declined to comment. Dixon told me he never received her attorney's requests and says he would have been open to Jane testifying remotely. In the end, Jane's lawyer said the only protection that was offered up to her were those black curtains. She would tell her story in public, behind a black curtain.

Ira Glass

Miki Meek. Coming up -- the hearing and the protective power of tennis shoes. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today's program -- Jane Doe. Five years since #MeToo blew up and there are all these systems that are supposed to crank into action now when somebody steps forward, we have the story of Jane Doe, a teenager in Idaho.

Now to be clear, Jane Doe did not come forward because of #MeToo. Actually, when our producer, Miki Meek, asked her about it, Jane said all she knew about #MeToo is that it was something for celebrities. Nonetheless, the response to her was shaped by #MeToo. She was a test case of the legislature's new reporting system that they were making up as they went. We pick up our story with Act Two, The Witness. Heads up, this part of the story contains brief references to suicide. Here's Miki.

Miki Meek

The morning of the hearing, Jane woke up terrified. She had a full blown panic attack and threw up. She jumped in the shower and put on "Beautiful" by Eminem to try and pump herself up. She then put on a black dress. This was an inside joke to herself because she felt like she was about to attend her own funeral. Jane's mom picked her up and they headed to the capitol.

Her lawyers told me that nobody came up with a secure plan to get her into the building without people seeing who she was. So one of her lawyers reached out to a senator who met Jane and her mom at a private entrance outside the capitol, then led them through a series of tunnels and some back hallways until Jane finally got to a door in the hearing room. She looked at the curtains and a random bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln's head. Her chair was right in front of him.

Miki Meek

From her side, the curtain looked more sheer. She looked through it to a room packed with legislators and press. The people who could actually see her, though, included five Ethics Committee members, their counsel, a secretary, two Deputy AG's, von Ehlinger's attorney, and von Ehlinger. Jane had only seen him around the capitol a couple of times since he raped her. Her black curtain was slightly open to give those people line of sight on Jane during the hearing.

Miki Meek

Jane's voice was live-streamed. The hearing was broadcast online.

Miki Meek

That's von Ehlinger's attorney. Publicly cross-examining witnesses of sexual assault is certainly not best practice for this kind of thing. For instance, other state legislatures that have adopted procedures for handling complaints do not allow victims to be cross-examined in public, certainly not by the perpetrators. But again, they had no process for this in Idaho.

So von Ehlinger's lawyer adopted tactics out of a criminal trial. He predictably turned Jane into the defendant, following the usual playbook that gets used on sexual assault victims. He cast her as mentally unstable and a flirt, which was a thing Jane had felt around the capitol ever since she reported von Ehlinger. That she was being judged and cast, in her words, as a, quote, "gold digging, crazy Mexican pothead." Von Ehlinger's lawyer nitpicked tiny details to insinuate that maybe she was a liar.

Miki Meek

The supervisor who Jane had reported to is the one who accidentally made a mistake in her written report, not Jane. Meanwhile, von Ehlinger barely spoke. He kept pleading the fifth. When the Ethics Committee kept pointing out that this wasn't a criminal proceeding and it didn't apply, he still refused. What sucked up most of the time, though, was the core of von Ehlinger's defense, which was essentially, this was not rape -- we were dating, which is allowed. There's no anti-fraternization policy in the Idaho state house. Again, here's his attorney.

Miki Meek

He asked some version of this question more than 30 times to different witnesses.

Miki Meek

He's basically saying, tell me where it says a powerful, middle aged legislator can't date a 19-year-old intern, and always got the same answer.

Miki Meek

Von Ehlinger's lawyer did the same kind of thing with the other woman who testified about von Ehlinger's troubling behavior. Like a chief clerk who said one of her employees complained when von Ehlinger asked her out. His attorney's response to that was, she wasn't wearing a wedding ring, which of course, has nothing to do with whether von Ehlinger should have asked her out at work. His attorney charged ahead.

Miki Meek

This is an absurd thing to argue, but he's also arguing inside an absurd, incoherent set of rules. The Idaho legislature has a process for reporting sexual harassment, but not actually a policy against it in the rules for the Senate and the House. They don't have an anti-fraternization policy, but they have rules about decorum -- rules forbidding smoking, drinking, and eating on the House floor. A rule about conduct unbecoming of a state legislator, but nothing for sexual harassment.

The part of the hearing I'd always wanted to know more about ever since I first saw it was what happened when Jane finally walked away from that black curtain. She sat behind it for 40 minutes, answering questions.

Miki Meek

Jane told me that when she stood up to leave, she had a panic attack. There was a private exit she was supposed to go out of, but she was so upset that she pushed through the wrong door and landed out in a public hallway. That's when that scream came out of her.

[SCREAM]

Miki Meek

Some of von Ehlinger's supporters -- all women -- followed her out into the hallway. There was a local reporter with them, too. They crowded around her and started filming Jane with their phones.

Miki Meek

She was trying to get to a balcony in the rotunda to throw herself off. Her lawyers blocked her. Jane collapsed on the ground. Her mom held her while her lawyers pulled out an umbrella and opened it to try and block her face from the people filming her. It took several minutes before security at the capitol finally showed up and escorted Jane out of the building.

The hearing lasted two days. At the end of the second day, the committee recommended to expel him. He resigned just hours later. Representative Dixon, head of the Ethics Committee, saw this as a successful outcome. I told Dixon how traumatizing the whole experience was for Jane, and what happened after she ran out of the hearing room.

Miki Meek

This, of course, is impossible to know. Another member of the Ethics Committee told me they thought without Jane's testimony in person, von Ehlinger would still be in the legislature.

Miki Meek

So what happened to Jane after all of that? She never finished the internship she loved at the capitol, and after the hearing, never went back to her office with her name in all caps. Five months after the hearing, she was cleaning houses and she was a wreck. She'd lost 20 pounds. She couldn't stop replaying the assault and the hearing in her head. So much of her day-to-day now was a physical battle. She was dealing with severe PTSD.

Miki Meek

She was still getting harassed by von Ehlinger sympathizers who continued to publish her name online. Random strangers had shown up at her old apartment, asking questions. There was even a man who'd show up at Boise political events, mocking her, dressed as a woman, wearing a sash with Jane's real name on it. There were also people who sympathized with her, too, and that was also hard. When she was out in public, she never knew when someone was going to try and approach her.

Miki Meek

Jane started talking about herself in the past tense. I was high energy. I was spunky. I was funny. And her plans felt past tense, too. She no longer talked about being a lawmaker. She was sure she could never set foot back in the capitol, and was thinking about moving out of state. The state house had a process to take her seriously when she reported von Ehlinger, but after that, they had nothing. Jane felt like they weren't concerned with what the experience did to her.

Miki Meek

All Jane had wanted to do was work at the capitol, but after she got doxxed, she said everyone there who talked to her about job opportunities went silent. To make money, she started helping her stepdad out at his plumbing business and picked up work as a caregiver at a memory care facility. And then one year after the ethics hearing, Jane got a rare sort of do over of the entire ordeal with von Ehlinger. The District Attorney in the County for Boise charged him with felony rape.

This happened because after she got doxxed, Jane told the police she'd cooperate with the criminal case. She was so scared all the time, she felt like she had to for her own protection. This time, things went very differently. The prosecutors handling her case understood that they needed to deal with her with care. They walked her through each step so she always knew what to expect. They did not subpoena her. They intentionally built a whole case where she didn't have to take the stand. They had other witnesses like the nurse who did Jane's rape kit exam.

But Jane decided that she did want to testify against von Ehlinger. A Sheriff picked her up in an unmarked car and drove her to a secret courthouse entrance. She had a therapy dog named Yuko in the courtroom and a victim witness coordinator by her side. I was there, sitting a couple rows behind von Ehlinger, but even with all that support, watching Jane on the stand that day was harrowing. She looked like she was having an out-of-body experience. She stared at him blankly and could barely talk. When she tried to answer questions about how he'd raped her, she suddenly stopped. She pushed her chair away from the mic, stood up, and said, I can't do this. She walked out of the courtroom.

Miki Meek

The bridge, she says, because maybe she could jump. She was having a post-traumatic reaction. Same as at the hearing, Jane's first instinct was to do what she hadn't been able to do the night she was raped: run away. She'd torn a tendon and leaned up against a tree. One of her attorneys named Guy followed her out to try to calm her. Guy says when the police showed up, one of them grabbed her arm and dropped her to the ground. Jane was so distraught, she doesn't remember that.

Miki Meek

He was crying.

Miki Meek

During this brief pause, the police put a full body restraint wrap, a helmet, and handcuffs on Jane. They put her in a squad car and transferred her to a hospital for psychiatric care. She spent three days there. When she was released, her mom picked her up. As soon as they pulled on the freeway, a text showed up on her mom's phone.

Miki Meek

It was a text from one of Jane's attorneys. The jury in von Ehlinger's trial had just come to a verdict.

Miki Meek

It's true Jane is the best case scenario for what a rape survivor can get. Von Ehlinger was kicked out of the Idaho Capitol a month and a half after she reported. He was arrested, and a judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Less than 3% of sexual assaults ever result in a conviction or incarceration, but the lived reality of best case scenario for Jane hardly feels like a win.

Von Ehlinger still maintains he did nothing wrong. He's appealing his conviction to the state Supreme Court. His sympathizers continue to harass her, and she regularly sees a psychiatrist and a therapist for PTSD. She takes ice baths a few times a week to shock herself into feeling like she's back in her body.

More than two years after the ethics hearing, nothing is preventing another Jane Doe from going through almost the exact same process she did. This really gets to her. The Idaho House and the Senate still have not adopted a sexual harassment or anti-fraternization policy into their rules. They also haven't adopted a specific process for how to investigate future reports of sexual misconduct.

There are state legislatures that have adopted some best practices. Oregon offers confidential counseling for victims to help them decide what kind of action they want to take, and New York and Oregon use independent external investigators. Neither state requires victims to retell and relive their assault in public. The one improvement Dixon and other Ethics Committee members did make is stronger confidentiality protections for anyone who reports, so anyone who releases a victim's name could face consequences.

But at the same time, the committee also decided they can cover the legal fees of lawmakers accused of sexual harassment or assault. This is where we are more than five years after #MeToo: more awareness there's a problem, a more immediate sense that you should care and respond when someone reports, but nobody's invented new systems where what a victim actually wants and needs is at the center.

Miki Meek

Now, more than two years out from the hearing, Jane's been back at the capitol more than a dozen times. She says sometimes she gets random stares from lobbyists or male representatives who won't look her in the eye, but she doesn't care. In January, she went to the inaugural ball held in the rotunda of the capitol.

Miki Meek

A representative encouraged her to take a picture back on the House floor.

Miki Meek

Jane's thought about how different things might be, the alternate life she'd have if the rape had never happened. She'd still be working at the capitol instead of her stepdad's plumbing company. Maybe she'd be an attache, popping into committee meetings for things she wants to learn more about, like Health and Welfare or State Affairs. Instead, she's here -- somewhere between where she intended to be and the very dark place she's been in for the last couple of years. She's just now returning to her original plans.

Miki Meek

Jane's mapping out her path back: PTA, city council, and then the state house.

Ira Glass

Miki Meek is a producer on our show. If you've experienced sexual assault and want to talk to somebody, you can reach out to the National Sexual Assault Hotline. 1-800-656-HOPE. If you're having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. You do that by dialing 988 on your phone. That's it. Just 988. Fiona Apple recorded this for us.

["HERE WE HAVE IDAHO" BY FIONA APPLE]

(SINGING) You've heard of the wonders our land does possess, its beautiful valleys and hills. The majestic forests where nature abounds, we love every nook and rill. And here we have Idaho, winning her way to fame. Silver and gold in the sunlight blaze, and romance lies in her name.

Singing, we're singing of you, ah, proudly too, all our lives through we'll go singing, singing of you, singing of Idaho.

There's truly one state in this great land of ours where ideals can be realized. The pioneers made it so for you and me, a legacy we'll always prize. And here we have Idaho, winning her way to fame. Silver and gold in the sunlight blaze, and romance lies in her name. Singing, we're singing of you, ah, proudly too, all our lives through we'll go singing, singing of you, singing of Idaho.

Ira Glass

OK, so I know that we could have ended the show right here with this song, and in fact, we did plan on ending it right here, but then last week, I did this one more interview that just got to those of us who were putting together the show, and it's an interview with somebody who Jane Doe has been thinking about. A woman who, for a while, was known as Emily Doe. And so here is just one more thing before we go today. This is Act Three. Doe Meet Doe.

OK, so while Miki was talking to Jane for this story, Jane was reading this book called Know My Name, and Know My Name was written by a survivor who had been anonymous for several years, and then came out with her name. This is somebody who we had, actually, one quick quote from in the top of the show -- Chanel Miller is her real name.

Stanford swimmer Brock Turner sexually assaulted her in 2015, and then she wrote this victim impact statement as Emily Doe, and this statement went online. Millions of people read it. Eighteen members of the House of Representatives -- Democrats and Republicans -- took turns reading it out loud in Congress. It was a thing. And Jane Doe is thinking these days about whether she wants to come out with her real name, and so I talked to Chanel Miller about how she decided to do that, and also what it was like for her to be anonymous as Emily Doe for so long before she did.

Ira Glass

Chanel Miller. Chanel Miller's book, again, is called Know My Name. She's also a visual artist. She did the show art for today's episode that you can see at our website.

Ira Glass

Well the program was produced today by Miki Meek and Valerie Kipnis and edited by Chana Joffe-Walt. People who put together today's program include Chris Benderev, Phia Bennin, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Michael Comite, Aviva DeKornfeld, Alaa Mostafa, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Sarah Parrish, Nadia Reiman, Laura Starecheski, Lilly Sullivan, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu.

Our Managing Editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our Senior Editor is David Kestenbaum. Our Executive Editor is Emanuele Berry. Special thanks today to Annie Hightower, Erika Birch, Melissa Ing, Lindsay Meyer, Nora Cassidy, Kelly Boyle, Rachel Dissell, Michaela Myers, Maria Patrick from the National Women's Law Center, Rebecca Traister, Rick Rossein, Pilar Melendez, James Dawson, Robyn Semian, Andy Slater, and the DART Center for Journalism and Trauma. The musicians who play with Fiona Apple -- Amy Wood, David Garza, Sabastian Steinberg, and John Would.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He's been training at a boxing gym, doing some sparring. I keep telling him, stick to your own weight class, but he won't listen.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

["HERE WE HAVE IDAHO" BY FIONA APPLE]

(SINGING) Singing, singing of you, singing of Idaho. Singing, singing of you. Singing of Idaho. Singing, singing of you. Singing of Idaho. Singing, singing of you. Singing of Idaho.