While discussing the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection on Instagram Live on Monday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) revealed for the first time that she’s a survivor of sexual assault. Ocasio-Cortez, who has spoken at length before about “narrowly escaping death” during the seditious riot, grew emotional as she described her harrowing experience hiding from the Capitol rioters.
“I started to hear these yells: ‘Where is she? Where is she?’” Ocasio-Cortez recalled, explaining that she heard someone storming into her office as she hid in a bathroom.
Recounting that the door she was hiding behind began to open, the congresswoman added: “This was the moment where I thought everything was over… that’s when I thought I was going to die.”
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“I’m a survivor of sexual assault,” she said with tears in her eyes. “And I haven’t told many people in my life. But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.”
She then said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republicans who supported overturning President Joe Biden’s election victory are using “tactics of abusers” by denying their own responsibility for the Jan. 6 insurrection and telling her to move on.
“They are now telling me to apologize for saying and speaking truth to what happened,” she said, adding that she is “not going to let this happen again.”
