Tarana Burke's New #MeToo Video Series Puts the Focus Back on Survivors

Tarana Burke, civil rights activist and the founder of #MeToo, launched a new series of PSA videos at Sundance over the weekend, giving voice to a diverse array of sexual abuse survivors. The poignant short clips—made in collaboration with design agency, Deutsch—are aimed at re-centering focus of the movement away from predators and back on survivors.

Burke told the Los Angeles Times:

"We haven't seen enough conversation about the millions and millions of people who have actually said, 'Me too.' And what has become painfully clear is that the world doesn't really understand the life cycle of a survivor. The people who volunteered to be part of this PSA are putting their stories out in the world very bravely, but they're also helping us to shift the narrative."

The participants include an undocumented immigrant, a male survivor of child abuse, a woman who lived with intimate partner violence, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews, who was assaulted by a Hollywood executive. Hear their stories below:

Daniela Contreras

“Many women go through this, and they have to remain silent because they are undocumented or because they don’t speak the language, because they don’t have anyone or they don’t know help is out there.”

Anonymous

“You will never be forgiven for this, but I don’t want to walk through life hating you because I realized by doing that, I was only hurting myself. I was only putting more negative energy on myself. I can’t carry that anymore.”

Emily Waters

"It took me a long time to realize it wasn’t my fault, but that was at least the seed of realizing that I didn’t have to hold responsibility for harm that was done to me."

Terry Crews

“For me to remain silent, I would have felt like a fraud. When this happens to you, you are trapped and you are not a victim that needs help, you are a problem that needs to be eradicated. In the year that’s gone by, I’ve learned that silence is violence.”