Bearing Witness

How one survivor reframes recovery and healing from sexual violence 

May 2026

BY OLIVIA HINES

​Growing up around courthouses, jails and law offices in Dallas, Texas, JoDee Neil knew she would become a lawyer, like her father, when she was five-years-old. 

What she didn’t expect were the traumatic events that would happen before she even passed the bar exam—the ones that would shape how she prosecuted crimes, as well as the rest of her life.  

In her new book Outcry Witness, Neil brings together her personal history as a survivor of sexual violence with her 20-years of professional experience as an attorney prosecuting sexual abuse and Crimes Against Children cases with the Collin County, Texas District Attorney’s Office.

​Neil says the idea for the book emerged gradually. She’d kept personal journals most of her life, detailing her experiences with sexual assault. But the idea of revealing that information publicly had never been in her plans. 

“I didn’t really have traction in getting it written until I finally got to a point in my personal life where I needed to disclose my own personal lived experience in order to be free,” Neil says. 

From her book:

You may feel the need to keep things to yourself right now, and if so there are still many things you can do to start liberating yourself from the grip of pain. Before I could disclose my secret, my silence felt like shackles. No one—not me, you, or anyone else—can explore the full spectrum of their human potential while living a lie. The secret keeps us small. 

“I wrote Outcry Witness because there was nothing on the market like it,” Neil says. An outcry witness is a legal term used to describe the first person to whom a victim discloses details of abuse or assault. “I’m here to be your metaphorical outcry witness,” she explains. 

She recounts multiple attacks throughout her life in her book, including her first assault when she was 19-years-old. And another at the age of 26 when a former boyfriend stalked her and forcibly entered her home to rape her. 

Years later, after her divorce, Neil says she was raped again by a man she met on Bumble, an online dating app. 

This memoir-meets-self-help-guide delves into the complex relationship between sexual abuse and its consequences, including self-destructive behaviors, substance abuse, and the perpetuation of silence that allows harm to continue.

From her book:

I know that when I finally stopped drinking, I gained the clarity I needed to begin addressing what happened to me. Before that, I was paralyzed, unable to accept that I had been raped—more than once. My trauma was so profound that even the mere idea of disclosing my experience felt outside the realm of what I could handle. I could only focus on surviving from one day to the next, lacking the emotional reserves I needed to take on the work of healing.

“I’ve been in recovery from alcohol since July 3rd, 2022, and recovering from dating,” Neil says. “You know, that desperate pursuit to fill the void with something.”

She says she learned that the “void” was there because she was emotionally injured, and when she began to speak the truth about what happened to her that the “void” faded away. 

“I was able to finally heal,” Neil says. 

​Neil believes part of the healing from sexual violence starts with “being seen.”

She describes “being witnessed” as a critical step for survivors—a concept grounded not in formal therapy, but in human connection. ​“It’s sitting with someone who’s able to listen and witness you as a human being sharing your pain,” she explains.

Neil says despite her experiences with sexual assault, they haven’t changed her life goals—she still became a lawyer and a mother of two daughters—but they changed “the way I functioned inside my trajectory. I really struggled with my existence and the purpose of my life.” 

“I carried with me a deep, very quiet despair,” Neil says, describing her long-term emotional wounds. She refers to herself as a “high-functioning trauma survivor,” highlighting the disconnect between her outward success and private pain. 

“I poured everything into my practice of law,” she says. “And in fact, in many ways, it helped me survive.”

Neil says because survivors may blame themselves or absorb cultural messages that discourage them from speaking out, the healing process is often delayed or even frozen.

“We hear messages in our culture…and we internalize anything that we can that can keep us quiet,” Neil says. “When men assault girls, they often feel crushed under a sense of responsibility, that they ‘asked for it’ or put themselves in that situation.” 

In her own case, Neil says she remained silent for years not because she was told to—but out of shame. “I knew I should have reported it to the police, but I didn’t, fearing I would be blamed,” Neil says. 

“Shame is a silence multiplier,” she continues. 

“It takes a lot of maturity to get to the point where you can understand that perpetrators are a class unto themselves and they’re going to do what they’re going to do,” Neil says. 

From her book:

There will be good days and dark days on your healing journey. You may feel strong and empowered one day, only to be triggered and vulnerable for the next several months. This is normal, expected, even. What matters is that you keep moving forward, even if it’s at a snail’s pace.

Neil uses her professional experience to inform the book’s perspective. She says she was assigned early in her career to prosecute child abuse cases and the work deeply affected her.

“I cried every night for a month,” she recalled of her first major case in which a father sexually abused his biological daughter. “I just couldn’t accept it. And even today I have trouble accepting that we live in a world where flesh is just flesh to certain people and they don’t care who you are to them.”

She found that her own experiences helped her be more empathetic to other survivors. She immersed herself in their stories and felt heartbreak and hope alongside the children and families she represented, forging bonds drawn from shared pain.

“I really took empathy to a new level,” she says. “I went inside their haunting horror stories and lived it with them as they were describing it to me.”

​Her experience also revealed the limitations of the justice system she works in when it comes to protecting victims. While Neil admires survivors who step forward, she describes the justice process as difficult to navigate—and sometimes painful. 

“It took me a long time to get to the point where I could admit that the system that I loved and worked inside of is abusive to people,” she says. “It just is.”

Neil cites the notorious case of Gisèle Pelicot who was drugged and raped by her then-husband Dominique, and 51 other men, at her home in Maran, France. In order to prepare for trial, she had to watch the videos taken by her husband of her multiple assaults that happened between 2011 and 2020. 

“I cannot accept it,” Neil says. “Why people think that that’s appropriate to do.”

Neil also reminds all women to always keep in mind the horrifying statistics involving sexual assault and rape.

“We all hypothetically know that there’s a danger, right? But we also tend to give the benefit of the doubt and think that all people are good and that happens to other people, not to me,” Neil says. “Well, that’s not what the data says.”

According to the CDC, half of all women in the United States have experienced some form of sexual violence. More than 1 in 5 women have been raped or endured an attempted rape in their lifetimes. One in four girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18, and one in three women have been sexually harassed at their workplace or in a public place.

“There’re a lot of perpetrators out there,” Neil says. “And you can’t go on to dating apps, hoping. Hope doesn’t keep you safe,” she says, referring to the fact that a Prince Charming might turn into a Jack the Ripper. 

“I was a big believer in ‘The One,’” she says. 

But she claims ‘The One’ might actually end up being the one “who is trying to get access to your body very quickly so that you can then be disposed of.”

For Neil, sharing her story publicly through her book is both personal and practical—a continuation of the advocacy work that has defined her career.

Her ultimate goal, she says, is to contribute to a larger, urgent dialogue while standing beside individuals as they confront and transform their own pain.

“Being witnessed,” Neil said, “is the beginning of healing.”

Outcry Witness  is available to purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Texas A&M Press. 

If you or someone you know has been the victim of a sexual crime, help is available:

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network

800-656-HOPE (800-656-4673)  

Advocates are also available to chat 24/7.

National Center for Victims of Crime

855-4-VICTIM (855-484-2846)

StrongHearts Native Helpline 

844-762-8483

Olivia Hines can be reached at oliviaannette2@gmail.com