New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram Monday night to explain what she went through during the Jan.6 insurgence at the Capitol, and disclosed that she was a sexual assault survivor.
She made her comments after she and her colleagues were told to "move on" following the Capitol riots and to abandon efforts to again impeach Donald Trump, saying it reminded her of tactics used against abuse survivors, CBS News reported.
"The reason I say this, and the reason I'm getting emotional is because they told us to move on, that it's not a big deal, that we should forget what happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the tactics of abusers," the congresswoman said. “I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and I haven't told many people that in my life.”
It was the first time the 31-year-old Bronx, New York, native publicly disclosed that she had been sexually assaulted.
"They're trying to tell us to move on without any accountability, without any truth-telling, or without confronting the extreme damage, loss of life, trauma," she added.
She said that what happened at the Capitol shook her to her core and brought up earlier traumas.
"But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other," she said. "Whether you had a negligent parent, or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experience any sort of trauma in your life, small to large. These episodes can compound on each other."
AOC said that she hid in her office bathroom and was also able to hide in the office of California Rep. Katie Porter as rioters stormed the building, Business Insider reported. The lawmakers were eventually brought to safety by Capitol Police.
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