Tornadoes touch down in Marion, Plainview

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

"I was both an observer and a participant in a teenage rape."


That sobering confession is how Don Palmerine began to tell his story publicly for the first time, at age 67, in a 

 published earlier this month about the part he played in a sexual assault.
Palmerine was a 17-year-old high school student when he attended a party and, according to his account, watched through a window as a young man raped a young woman. That was in 1969. As he described the incident in 

Over the next 50 years, Palmerine says, he did nothing and said nothing. But the guilt stayed with him.

Christine Blasey Ford testify before the Senate

His experience, he says, felt akin to the incident Ford described in which she says now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were in high school. (Kavanaugh has vehemently denied the allegation.)

"I felt it was genuine, and I felt she was really telling the truth," Palmerine tells NPR's Michel Martin. Palmerine also writes that, Like Ford, he struggles to remember key details about the evening:

But he also wanted to forget about the event, he says, which kept him from coming forward. "When you're guilty about something, you don't want to tell anyone ... I did something bad, I said in the article I committed a crime, and I did."

In the past year, the #MeToo movement has brought worldwide attention to stories about women and men who have survived sexual assault. And while some high-profile men have been convicted of their sexual assault crimes, rarely have men come forward about witnessing or playing a role in sexual abuse.

"I wanted to tell this story because I believe it's time for men to tell the truth about the ways they've abused women and what our role has been in creating a culture that tolerates this," Palmerine says.

He also writes that he wonders about how that night shaped the lives of those young women at the party — "If they remember this night. If they told their daughters."

As for the men, he says, he's unsure why they've been silent. "I think men should be part of the #MeToo movement. I think we should come forward and talk about what we've seen, what we've done — I think that should be part of it."


After talking to his wife and three sons (ages 11, 17 and 19) about what he had witnessed when he was 17, he decided to write about it for 

. But he hadn't told his wife about his participation in assaulting a woman later that night. "She didn't know that until this [

] article came out," he says. "It was tough for her to take."


Palmerine says his sons showed him comments from people who responded to his story on Twitter. "It's almost as if I was the first guy to admit this," he says.

As Palmerine wonders about what happened to those women, he says, "The only thing I can say [to them] is I'm sorry. I didn't help."

"You know, a few women called me a hero, but no, I wasn't," he says. "I would've been a hero if I helped these women then."

NPR's Lilly Quiroz, Gemma Watters and Rachel Gotbaum produced and edited the audio version of this story. Emma Bowman adapted it for the Web.

Crime, Law and Justice

Social Issues

Emma Bowman

Author

Michel Martin

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Don Palmerine, who witnessed a rape as a teenager. After keeping silent for 50 years, he wrote about it in The Washington Post.

He witnessed a rape in 1969. He's finally ready to talk about it

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox