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“I’m a survivor of sexual assault’ – US Lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emotionally reveals as she recounts her ordeal during Capitol siege (video)
Controversial US Lawmaker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has narrated her harrowing experience during the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, revealing that she’s “a survivor of sexual assault.” and she felt she was going to get killed that day.
In an Instagram Live video on Monday, February 1, Ocasio-Cortez popularly known as AOC, compared those denying the seriousness of the insurrection pushed by former president Trump to “abusers.”
“The reason I’m getting emotional in this moment is because the folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize, these are the same tactics of abusers,” she said.
“I’m a survivor of sexual assault,” she declared.
“And I haven’t told many people that in my life,” she continued. “But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other. And so whether you had a neglectful parent or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experienced any sort of trauma in your life … These episodes can compound on one another.”
Ocasio-Cortez also revealed an encounter during the siege where she said she and other elected officials “narrowly escaped death.”
She said she was inside her office, when she heard banging at her doors, and a man shouting, “Where is she?”
According to AOC, at least one of the rioters got into her office as she hid in a bathroom, thinking that she’d be killed.
“This was the moment where I thought everything was over,” she said. “I really just felt like, you know, if this is the plan for me, then people would be able to take it from here…. I felt that things would be OK and that I had fulfilled my purpose.”
At one point, she looked through the door hinges and saw a “white man in a black beanie” open her office door, walk in, and yell, “Where is she?” she said.
“And I have never been quieter in my entire life. I don’t even know if I held my breath,” she said.
When she came out of hiding, she was met by a lone Capitol police officer who looked angry and tense, but she didn’t know if he was on her side and couldn’t be sure of his intentions when he commanded she run to another part of the building.
“The situation did not feel OK,” she said.
Watch the video below.
