Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in an interview with CNN that aired Monday evening said she had fears of being raped during the Jan. 6 insurrection in which she recounted people banging on her office doors while she hid.
“I didn’t think that I was just going to be killed,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN anchor Dana Bash. “I thought other things were going to happen to me as well.”
The New York Democrat said that “white supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways,” and remarked on what she sees as the sexualization of violence.
When asked by Bash to clarify if she was worried that she would be raped during the storming of the Capitol, Ocasio-Cortez responded, “Yeah, yeah, I thought I was.”
The congresswoman, a survivor of sexual assault, noted the “misogyny and the racism” that “animated” the events of Jan. 6 triggered similar trauma.
About a month after the insurrection, Ocasio-Cortez revealed her past assault in an emotional Instagram live, during which she recounted her experience of hiding in her office during the attack as a man repeatedly yelled, “Where is she?”
“I haven’t told many people that in my life,” Ocasio-Cortez said after sharing her survivor status. “But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.”