Part 1: The Silence After Reporting

This post is part of a short series on reporting, silence, and accountability — and why the Sword & Shield Acts exist.

I didn’t write The Sword & Shield Acts because I wanted to talk about policy.

I wrote them because I reported my childhood sexual assault again in December 2025 — and now I can’t even get the San Antonio Police Department’s Special Victims Unit to return my calls.

No explanation. No response. No acknowledgment.

After reporting, the silence is often the loudest response.

Just silence.

I did what survivors are told to do. I reported. I documented. I put everything on the record — in court, under oath, at enormous personal cost.

And the system responded by disappearing.

That silence isn’t new. It has a paper trail.

This is the institutional failure the Sword & Shield Acts are meant to stop.

The Shield exists because government does not get to keep its authority while abandoning its duties.

Silence by an institution with power is not neutrality — it is abdication.

The Sword exists because authority cannot be used — directly or indirectly — to protect harm through inaction, procedure, or intimidation.

What Happens After You Do Everything Right

After I put everything on the record, after I invoked Crime Victims’ Rights, after I spoke publicly about what happened to me, I was met not with accountability, but with pressure to be quiet again.

That is not justice. That is a system protecting itself.

This is not theoretical for my family.

My husband lives with the consequences of what was done to me as a child — and with what has been done to me since by institutions that were supposed to help. He watches me make calls that go unanswered. He watches me relive trauma just to be told it’s “too late.” He watches the government close ranks while survivors are left alone to carry the cost.

That is why this is deeply personal for him.

Not because it polls well.

Not because it’s political.

But because this is our life.

The Sword & Shield Acts are built on a simple principle:

If the People show up, the government must show up too — especially when the person standing there is vulnerable, traumatized, and asking, again, to be heard.

Silence is not consent. Trauma is not a procedural defect.

And this silence didn’t start in 2025.

This is Part I.

In the next post, I’m going to show you the document that explains why this silence keeps happening — and why it’s not an accident.

It’s only one page.

And it explains everything.

Because silence was never consent.