Who is Repaving Waverly?
Activist, public speaker and artist Marnie Goodfriend has become a construction worker of sorts. For over a decade she’s given her voice, words, and counseling to several sexual assault and violence intervention programs. Just two months after Marnie and her roommate were sexually assaulted in their New York City apartment, she received two grants to fund a mixed media installation so people could “see”rape. Marnie found a mentor in RAINN’s former Executive Director, Debbie Andrews, who taught her how to use her voice to engage and inspire others. A photography graduate from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Marnie has donated photography and art work to several benefits and silent auctions across the country. In 2003, she became an on-call ER advocate for survivors of sexual assault for Mount Sinai’s Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention (SAVI) program. Today she has spoken to DA’s, doctors, detectives, social workers, advocates, survivors, high school and college students, produced fundraisers, and assisted with community healing and safety. She also co-produces public service announcements and consults TV and films with rape story lines.


What does Repaving Waverly do?
Marnie speaks across the country, works with other advocacy groups on their efforts, and produces events and fundraisers. Her message is to educate, inspire and urge both men and women to recognize and re-define our cultural definition of rape as not just a women’s issue, but a human crisis. She believes that education and inspiration are the keys to unlocking the activist in all of us.


Who needs Repaving Waverly? Everyone. Sexual assault has affected you or someone that you love. We need to learn how to change cultural behavior, protect and change our current condition, educate and strengthen necessary laws that will assist survivors and stop rapes from occurring.

Sometimes I struggle to put on a brave face for fear that the less than perfect pieces of my life as a survivor will be unwelcome in a space I've created for others to be safe, to rally, to live. The truth is that every day is not so perfect, every safety net has failed me more than once, and I am not free of physical and psychological wounds. They are gashes to the bone that reopen and bleed. Tattoos of bravery, ugly scars that that oftentimes cover the brave face I share. Last week I was in the hospital for cyst that burst open. After seven hours of testing, they couldn't find the source as they do not have medical equipment to see the quietest and most invisible crime tear one's insides out.
Two days from now will be fifteen years of being a victim of a crime that has no voice save those who survive it and the few who take notice, the fewer who fight wars for change, one small but significant step at a time. Did you ever think of your life, or a part of your history, as a story? Does it make sense that the rape is your "story", like a confession, a cautionary tale, a crime that wants to crawl all over you and define you then and now? And those who read or hear "your story": the dissection, the doubts, the what if's, the maybe if you just's, the blame, the blame, the blame.
To deliver an unwavering, eloquent, soul crushing and inspirational story every time you speak like you've been training for the Olympics is not honest. It is not real. I know, you know, sometimes words fail and silence screams from your lips. If we are going to change and call for a course of action for a human crisis, we need to be brutally honest.
I can promise that I will be nothing but real to you which is to say that I do not wake to song birds every morning nor am I lulled to sleep every night by the sound of the ocean. Many nights it is the sound of silence that is deafening. Many mornings the sun looks like someone's else's morning, someone else's story to tell.
On this fifteen year mark, I am writing down the silence page by page, and slap a hard cover on to the book ends. That is to say I am writing a memoir. I am creating a kickstarter account on November 18th. Let the flood gates open wide. Let me give you hope, let me be the change we so desperately need by talking about the real.

On a blistering red nosed January day, I crossed Court Street to put my arms around two hearts wrapped inside one cozy woolen body.  I was in town to shoot a few sessions and help David with some NYC exteriors for "The Collectors".  In what should have been the coldest week in the history of my life, Kristin and I spent more time together than we had since 1996. She warmed my heart in a way no one else could.  As we stood outside of a cafe, big beautiful snowflakes fell off her eyelashes and collected on her baby belly.  What kind of photographer was I not to have a camera by my side I thought. I also knew that this moment was only possible to see with my own eyes and nothing else between us.  I'd have to remember. So much had come between us.  That is one fact I could never forget. She dug her hand inside a bag and handed me a wrapped gift. My face went red; I had nothing to give her.  When I returned to my friends house where we were staying, I carefully opened the wrapping paper revealing Patti Smith's "Just Kids".  I stared at the bookstore's bookmark and wondered where I would keep it.  Like the wet cold falling from the sky and disappearing into the earth, I am still deathly afraid of losing any part of Kristin.  Even a paper placeholder. If I could sew her inside my heart, I would do that.  All the tearing apart at the seams almost killed me.  Like her gift said, we were just kids. A few days ago, I went to check out a book from my living room's library that holds many books I haven't read yet.  "Oh" I said aloud to no one as I rescued the black and gold paperback from dust and neglect.  120 pages later, I found myself visiting New York again. I could relate to being homeless, the kindness of urban strangers,  the innocent promises of two kids vowing to never leave each other. Kristin and I never made such a vow but we lived together, took care of each other, and almost died together.  On the same day I cracked the spine of "Just Kids", Kristin wrote "spent half the morning thinking today was sentencing anniversary. Perhaps that is a good thing!??"  It is only now that we have the luxury of not needing to remember every detail of November 18, 1996.  That is a good thing but even if we tried, it does not let us forget most everything. What do you wear, I asked myself, to the second most important day of your life? It was a sticky summer and our ADA Martha noted that my lavender boho blouse that I wore to our meetings at the NYPD SVU unit's dank offices was probably not the best choice.  I headed down Broadway below Houston scouring the bright happy skin revealing storefronts for a dark suit.  I had looked in Los Angeles but came up naked.  I settled on a dark brown and cream pinstriped suit and a short sleeved baby blue shirt with tie around the neck. For the life of me I still cannot figure out why I chose a shirt that was a blatent reminder of the ties and the knife to my throat.  I wasn't making a statement. I liked the color.  I've never worn the shirt again but I can't seem to part with it.  At least these clothes will not end up in a crumpled brown paper bag for almost a decade.   I clearly remember the day of the verdict, but walking into the courtroom for the sentencing is hidden in somewhere deep in my bookshelf.  While we were not allowed to be in the same room when we testified, we gave our impact statements separately together.  I think Kristin and I have grown into the women we are very much separately together.  I wrote my statement at think Cafe on Mercer Street; my brain challenged to tie words together to say to the judge and to the criminal.  Kristin and I both split up our statements addressing the court, then the criminal.  I stood in front of the judge with the criminal to my right.  I asked the court if raping one person wasn't enough. One woman, two women, three, four or five that we know of - Kelly and her roommate, the mother to be, Kristin, me -  only he knows how many lives he shattered.  I prayed that this victim's impact statement did in fact made a significant impact.  Not merely in the hearts or tear ducts of those who sat in the courtroom that day but in numbers, years, no parole.  The sentencing of a criminal who hands should be taken away so that he may never touch another human being.  Inside the crumpled bag were the clothes that I wore on November 18th, 1996 back when I walked home from the 1/9 on Christopher Street: a black polyester turtleneck dress with a quarter length skirt, black stockings, a navy slip with pink, yellow, orange poppies, and black shoes that clicked down Waverly Place.  What a strange and awkward reunion with my second skin I wore at age 22. I used to say I could find my way around NYC blindfolded.  I never thought I'd find my way out of near death blindfolded.  Kristin was wearing a Wonder Woman t-shirt.  She had always been my super hero.  An audacious beautiful woman with a sharp sense of humor.  One of those people you wish you could be a little more like.  She filled a room with her smile and laughter.  I have a copy of her impact statement in my "trial notebook" filled with notes, numbers, thoughts, coffee stains from think, and doodles of stars and hearts.   Five years today Leroy Johnson was sentenced to two consecutive 25 sentences without parole.  I often get asked what that day was like and notice how many liken it to a book - the end of a chapter.   There may have been some relief but mostly I felt sad.  Sad that I was a victim of a crime and the irreversible effects it had on me and Kristin.  Sad that this rapist had a daughter.  Sad that anyone could hurt another person - two people - the way that he did.  It was right and I was grateful for Justice White and her sentence because you just don't see those kinds of sentences for this kind of crime in the US.  That made us one of the "lucky ones" again by the sheer fact that we were in the minority of those cases that are solved, go to trial, receive a proper sentence.  It may have been almost a decade later but we relived it all there that summer when the US made a splash (and then a dive) at The World Cup, where I took a leave of absence from work and lived in the city for a while to do the right thing. For those who will never have the chance to stand in front of a judge or address the criminal.  The NYPD SVU unit  never forgot us and I simply won't forget them - ever.  One of my detectives held my hand as I walked to the courtroom to testify in a fatherly way and in that moment it meant everything.   Five years ago, we waited for the sentence.  It's a very long sentence with short word count.  Like a tweet you pray will be trending.  Reliving Waverly Place was not something I ever imagined but for a few months we went back.  We were just glitter kids with dyed hair in polyester bell bottoms sitting on a banana yellow futon couch.  We were just post college kids with half patina painted walls who hung out at The Lemon Drop Shop.  We were just kids in big platforms ready to grow up bright.  And then someone ripped the sun out of the sky.  On June 26, 2006 the sky was almost blinding. Almost.  It was as bright as you could possibly stand.  We put the sun back in the sky that shone bold and bright. 

As some of you know, I have been working with KaDee Strickland on her portrayal of a rape survivor on ABC's "Private Practice". While I have spoken to the media and opened my online world even wider since Charlotte's brutal attack, I haven't written in my own space other than the screenplay. Until tonight. "I'm holding up a corpse of Charlotte" says Cooper (so dead on thanks to Paul Adelstein) and it is only months later, for just a moment, I see myself. Just a little. It always takes what I must have done, seen, been, looked like to the people I cared about the most that reminds me of that sad skinny girl. That 22 year old record label manager who dug her heels into a pair of black platform shoes, pulled on a pair of textured stockings and a black polyester turtleneck dress plucked from a Salvation Army in Philadelphia over her head and headed off to work. It was the same Salvation Army that I bought a white french phone with a rotary dial to add to my vintage collection of clunky things that weighed down my tiny bedroom with its half painted patina walls. And because all of the life lines were cut by the same knife that was held to my throat for hours, it was the phone that my nerve damaged hand used to dial neighbors, an ex-boyfriend who lived on Greenwich and 12th, and finally my boss down on White Street where Jean-Michel Basquiat used to pick money off the floor at The Mudd Club to buy Cheese Doodles, answered my call. The textured tights I wore that November morning had been tied around my wrists so tightly that my fingers could barely curl around a metal claw to dial 9, then a 1, twice. What's your emergency? I didn't know. As my roommate sat shaking beside me in darkness, it occurred to me that it was not just my emergency. That's all I knew. There is no doubt that bringing the real to Charlotte has reminded me of some dark days and endless nights. The graffitied "RAPE" over the stop sign at the Waverly/Christopher street intersection. I liked to think it was Jean-Michel's angel painting the red white as I'd been working on the soundtrack for Julian's film. The magenta poster with JM and the lucky duck. That lucky duck did nothing for either one of us while we were alive. The dead little girl that moved east to 2nd and 5th avenue who had little regard for herself. Oh but you'd never know. Every bit of that broken heart went to helping others. Make no mistake of this, that girl was a victim of a crime. Judge not, that same girl was still very much a prisoner curled inside herself. Dancing barefoot over broken bottles from Ludlow Street to the East Village. She laughed a lot, lived around recording studios, music venues where very good musicians made lots of 90s noise that drowned out the sound of her own heart beating out of her skin. She wore angel wings and had red hair on fire. She was everyone's best friend except her own. No one saw the emergency. They did not dial 911. I was what I told them: okay, fine, good, totally fine I smiled. Go help them break their silence. Those still silenced. I never looked at myself plain in the face. I did not want to hear my own sad story. I did not want to hear that I was brave or strong or that they were proud of me. I wanted nothing to do with me. A year later my 80 pound self wore a string bean green lace dress and matching platforms to attend a RAINN benefit (I promise to never look like a vegetable again at any benefit). I was a wandering spirit pretending to be so alive. It took a long time to build flesh to the bone. My husband knew me when I didn't want to know myself. He was one of my best friends. He has seen and felt it all and does not feel like a co-survivor. What have I survived in this? he says. He deserves a medal bigger than this world. The helplessness, the hurt, the anger, the place where there aren't enough walls to put your fist through. The pride he has in me, has had for so many years since I've been a survivor, watching me go through it all over again in a NYC courtroom. Last October we were married under a big oak tree where John Hancock was married. The British burned the house down and it was rebuilt. Sometimes you need to burn the whole house down to find love and laughter and yourself at your most beautiful under a giant oak tree. If there is message from me today, it is to give yourself time, and care because you need it, you deserve it and it's there for you. It did not happen overnight. Sometimes it stings, and I cry, and yes you better believe I call 1800656HOPE. There is nothing past-tense about that phone number for me. I will speak for and with, write, rally, and assist in reducing the number of crimes in the most fragile place you could ever be attacked and live through: your soul. I hope that Charlotte feels real to you because she is. A little piece of Charlotte is the girl who lost her life at the stairwell of 160 Waverly Place. And here I am on the other side of that last sentence. Did you wonder why it is repaving Waverly? Because you need to dig the whole thing up before you can figure out what created such an inexplicable crack in the earth the way rape tears the world apart. I fell through that crack and came up out of the earth chewing gravel. I am unbelievably lucky for love, support, sunshine and RAINN, for my writing hands again, for my voice, my husband, my rock star friends who all fill my sky with the light that brings me back home every day. I have a whole lotta love in my heart for KaDee and Shonda for being the real. These are not stories; these are real lives. You put a live one out there and thousands come out of the hurt where their earth fell flat. You gave them the real that extends the edge of the earth and makes room for help and healing and growing in to everything that they were made to be. Anything that was taken, they can take it back. For helping me help others and see how much I've grown to love myself.