Every woman faces the threat of sexual assault. In 2023, there were 127,216 reported rape cases in the United States. Of those, only c.34,000 will result in a rape conviction. An estimated further c.217,000 rapes went unreported. And those numbers do not include ‘unforced’ statutory rape or other sexual assaults. The crime is so prevalent one in five women will be raped in their lifetime.
In 2019, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said, during a debate on adding rape and incest exceptions to a bill banning abortions in South Carolina, that she had been raped as a 16-year-old. On Monday, she took to the US House floor to accuse four men — including her ex-fiancé — of rape, sex trafficking, and other sex crimes against her and other female victims, which she called “some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable.”
It is not my place to judge the truth of her words — that is for a jury to decide after a criminal trial (if the authorities uncover the necessary evidence to indict her alleged attackers). Nonetheless, given the statistics, it is no stretch to say that her accusations could well be true. But whether she is telling the truth or not, as a citizen in a position of political power, she has both the platform and responsibility to help sexual abuse victims receive justice and the psychological care and comfort they need.
So when she displayed a large poster with the message,
VICTIM
843-212-7048
HOTLINE
it should connect victims with professionals who can help them. That’s the point of a hotline. Instead, when people, many likely desperate, call the number they get an answering machine telling them to leave the details of their situation and wait for a callback.
Sadly, that is not the extent of Mace’s potential damage. Julianne McShane of Mother Jones covers the harm of her congressional speech in an article headlined:
Please Don’t Use Nancy Mace’s So-Called Victim Hotline, Advocates Say: No one picks up. That’s not a hotline—it’s Nancy’s answering machine.
The piece includes this:
Mace began her speech on the House floor standing next to a giant pink poster with a South Carolina phone number advertising a “victim hotline.” The purpose of the number—whether it was for any victims of domestic or sexual violence, or only meant for people to share information related to her allegations—was unclear, and Mace’s spokesperson didn’t clarify when I asked.
Nonetheless, Mace has continued to promote the number, sharing it across her social media channels and urging people to call (some of her posts suggest that many of the callers are from her district, and that they’re sharing information related to her case).
(Bolding mine)
McShane continues by describing how she called the hotline three times, only to reach an answering machine announcing:
“Hi, this is Congresswoman Nancy Mace, and you’ve reached our office victim hotline. Please note your information is confidential. Please leave a detailed message and we will contact you as soon as possible. You may also text us at this number.”
McShane reports she did text the number on Tuesday with the inquiry, ”Hi is this Nancy Mace’s victim hotline?” After 45 minutes, she received an answer to her question but nothing else. To wit, “Yes it is,”
On Wednesday, McShane received a fuller reply. However, it was not helpful. She reports:
On Wednesday morning, I got a lengthier text from the number, unprompted. It said that the office was “focused on taking the calls from victims of the event Rep. Mace described in her speech on Monday,” and added that, due to an unspecified House ethics rule, they couldn’t help anyone who doesn’t live in their district.
But this is not how Mace’s own website describes its purpose—it makes it sound far more general, promising to “listen and support” victims of sexual assault or domestic violence. And the far more limited focus makes clear that it’s not actually a hotline—yet as of Wednesday morning, Mace’s X and Facebook accounts still had banners advertising the number as such.
This is a screen grab of the top of the landing page of Mace’s website.
Mace may talk about “potential survivors” in a general way. But the next paragraph makes clear she isn’t much interested in rape victims unless they can help her build a case against the four men she accused of assaulting her.
Only after this — if the misled victim is still on her page — does she list the resources for assault victims who cannot help her. This high-handed self-dealing is harming the victims of sexual assault. McShane reports:
Deborah Freel, executive director of Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S., a sexual assault center in Charleston—part of Mace’s district—that operates its own 24/7 hotline, said her staff spent Tuesday testing out the number only to reach the voicemail whenever they called; they also fielded calls from community members concerned that Mace’s number was going unanswered, she said.
“It isn’t a hotline,” Freel told me. “It’s not connecting a survivor or someone with a concern to the resources that they need in that moment, which is really challenging. If the intention was to get them those resources, then it would be better for them to be directed to either a local or national resource.”
Freel added: “Her address invited everyone who hasn’t gotten justice to call, not just those involved with her case. And they have been. How are they handling, or not, those who aren’t [related to her case]?”
McShane reports on another professional who thinks Mace is a callous dilettante only interested in ‘me, me, me.’
Laura Hudson, executive director of the nonprofit South Carolina Victim Assistance Network, said she felt that Mace “set us back about 25 years” by not directing survivors of abuse to proper resources—whether it be law enforcement or hotlines with specially-trained, trauma-informed staff.
Victim service providers who answer domestic and sexual violence hotlines, whether paid staff or volunteers, go through hours of professional training and often get certified through their states; Hudson’s staff who answer calls, she said, are all certified by a program for victim service providers at the South Carolina attorney general’s office—the same office Mace lambasted in her speech on the House floor.
Mace is the quintessential MAGA — selfish, opportunistic, and principle-free. She is also nuts. In an interview with Laura Ingraham, she celebrated Trump’s blunderbuss spending cuts. The conspiracy theorist offered as an example (as always without evidence) a $10 million Democratic federal program for “making animals trans.”
In Trumpian fashion, she has also monetized her bigotry by selling $35 tees celebrating her anti-trans in Congressional bathrooms purity push.
If any sexual abuse victim believes that Mace is fighting “to protect women and girls across America,” they should review the evidence. She has prioritized her needs over those of rape victims as a whole.
And this one-time supporter of LGBTQ and abortion has made a political decision to veer toward MAGA bigotry.
