Colorado Therapy Programs Help Rebuild Shattered Lives : Victims of Violence Confront Fear in Wilderness, Learn to Trust Again

Wendy Greenberg hugged the rock face high in the Colorado Rockies and began to relive the lowest point of her life.

Five months earlier, her neck had been broken in a savage rape and beating. After weeks in a hospital, she was physically well, but the emotional wounds remained raw.

As she clung to the mountainside, she realized that the Colorado Outward Bound leader on the other end of her rope resembled the man who had raped her in his pickup truck.

“I had to trust this guy with my life. Basically I went into a flashback and I was back in the truck again.”

200 Women Attend

Greenberg was on the first wilderness therapy weekend coordinated by Ending Violence Effectively, a therapy group, and Colorado Outward Bound, a branch of the nation’s largest outdoor-skills school.

Since that weekend in 1982, about 200 women, as well as men and children, have attended the three-day programs at the Leadville base camp, nearly 10,000 feet above sea level and about 100 miles southwest of Denver. All are victims of rape, incest or battering.

The programs’ philosophy is that by forcing themselves to rappel off a cliff or fall backward into waiting arms, victims can face and overcome fears and insecurities and learn to trust again.

With 14,421-foot Mt. Massive as a backdrop, the participants talk informally and in long, often grueling group sessions.

Teacher and Biologist

Greenberg, now a 27-year-old teacher and biologist, was 23 when she was raped. Her assailant had offered her a ride in his pickup truck after she became stranded at a ski town bus stop.

After that she didn’t feel safe anywhere. “I was so messed up I couldn’t sleep by myself at night,” she said.

She soon began conventional therapy but, “I just wasn’t progressing,” she recalled.

Anxious about the climb and the man who resembled her attacker, Greenberg had a blinding headache as she started up the rock face that weekend. She scrambled up and down quickly, “because I didn’t want to trust anybody that long. I think the second I got down was when I really lost it.”

She cried, she vomited and she described the night in the truck to a counselor.

‘It All Comes Up’

“Being outside like that can put you under so much physical stress that it all comes up at once,” she said.

Mary McHugh, a founder of the Denver-based EVE and herself a rape victim, said Greenberg “really believed if she remembered her assault out loud, that she would die.”

“Women (who have been attacked) tend not to show their fears and anger, not to compromise their safety by revealing their feelings.”

But the moment was cathartic, said McHugh. The headache melted away. “Everything came easier after that for her,” she said.

Wants to Help Others

Greenberg used to be an introvert who was afraid of public speaking. Today she, like other wilderness therapy graduates, wants to help other victims. She teaches self-defense and talks about her rape to high school classes.

Outward Bound offers similar weekend courses for other “special populations” such as drug and alcohol abusers and cancer victims, but the Colorado branch is the only one offering a program for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

EVE staffers and clients say the three-day weekends--each costing about $200 and designed for a group with similar characteristics--can be worth six months of conventional therapy.

McHugh and EVE co-founder Carolyn Agosta say wilderness therapy forces a confrontation with the “victim mentality,” the feeling that one’s control over mind and body have been taken away.

“The level of fear that we don’t see in therapy comes out,” said McHugh.

Two Stories Up

For many women who attend, even wearing hiking boots feels alien. But while climbing rocks or crossing a log two stories in the air, a woman may find “I can do things even when I’m frightened. My body’s shaking, and I can still trust my body. It still works,” McHugh said.

McHugh calls it empowerment--”taking back the power that was taken away during the assault.”

Wilderness therapy uses Outward Bound’s confidence-testing ropes course--a series of ropes and logs high in the trees. Another standard task is figuring out how the group of 10 or 12 can scale, one person at a time, a 13-foot-high plywood wall without using equipment. That builds trust in others.

For some, trusting others is the hardest part.

Close to Suicide

Robin D’Haillecourt, 23, was raped by a hitchhiker in Denver in the summer of 1983. A basketball player for the University of Wyoming, she had figured she could take care of herself. She had not figured on her attacker having a knife.

She told few people about the rape, initially not even her parents. She returned to school 3 1/2 weeks later but no longer cared about basketball. Never before a quitter, she thought of dropping out, of suicide.

She went along on a wilderness weekend “because at that point I was just grasping at anything and everything.”

At a group discussion that weekend she was finally able to say the word rape.

“When I had to get in touch with my feelings, that made it more real--yeah, it did happen to me. And it really hit me,” she said.

“That whole weekend actually turned night into day for me. I was able to see this happens to other people.