Berry Bryant’s mother describes her as an ordinary, “all-American girl.”

“She wasn’t the smartest, the prettiest, the fastest or the slowest,” said Sharon Bryant, when describing Berry last week.

Berry, then a Northwest College student, was brutally raped and murdered north of Powell 20 years ago, on Oct. 5, 1996.

Berry was very trusting, Sharon Bryant said. Her killer, Levi Collen of Ten Sleep — also an NWC student at the time — used that trust to groom her as a victim, and ultimately, to end her life.

“I tried hard, and I really did feel like I had sent my daughter off with all the right stuff to do well in this world,” Sharon Bryant said. “But none of us is clairvoyant; none of us can dodge the bullets that are out there waiting for us.”

She added that Collen “got more than he bargained for.” Bryant said she and her daughter had attended a self-defense class in which the instructor explained that someone being attacked by a person with a knife could grab the knife by the blade, if needed, to protect themselves. It would be better to lose a finger or a hand than your life, he had said.

Berry followed that advice; her hands showed the cuts she received as she fought for her life — a battle she ultimately lost, Bryant said.

She cautioned that anyone can be a victim of sexual assault — young girls; older women; young boys and even men.

“This subject is very personal to me,” Bryant said. “I was molested as a child. Unfortunately, I did not have family support when I reported what happened to me. It was like, ‘Oh, well; go play.’ And I have carried that anger forward in my life, too, that I apparently was not worth standing up for.”

Later, “I married a man who groomed me for marriage and took advantage of me,” she said. “It took me seven years (to leave him) and I barely got out with my life. ... It had gotten to the point of kill or be killed.”

Bryant said her husband had worked hard to isolate her and make sure she didn’t have any resources at her disposal, making it very hard for her to leave.

After she escaped her husband, Bryant said, she returned to her hometown of Riverton, where “I guess I relaxed. I felt I was safe in my community, and my children were safe. It was quite a shock when I sent my daughter to Northwest ... We never had an inkling.”

Bryant stressed that she does not blame Northwest College; what happened to Berry could have happened at any college.

“How would you ever think this would happen to your daughter? There’s nothing you can do to fix it, so you move forward,” she said.

An audience member asked Bryant how she got past the anger.

“You never do,” Bryant replied, but said you learn to deal with it.

“I guess that, having been through a rather ugly marriage and divorce, I learned the harm that can come from carrying the hate and anger with you,” she said. “If you start behaving and acting out your anger, then in effect, that perpetrator has won; they have taken over your soul.”

Education is an important component of preventing sexual assaults. It should take place in homes and in schools — everywhere, she said.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Bryant said. “We are teaching our children not to bully ... but somehow, it doesn’t make the leap from the schoolyard to adulthood; a lot of that verbal battery is bullying, is it not? And now we have cyberbullying, where you can be anonymous and kick the crap out of somebody when you wouldn’t do it face to face.

“We’re teaching our children not to bully, but we’re still becoming an even more violent society, so there’s a disconnect.”

Bryant said the number of deaths from domestic violence is increasing, and that distresses her.

“After Berry was murdered, they started a silent witness program,” she said. “We went to Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1997, and the mantra of this movement was ... zero domestic violence deaths by 2010.

“Well, we’ve gone backwards. Every year, it’s a ping up.”

However, there is good news as well, because people are more willing to step up and address the issue of sexual violence instead of remaining silent. As examples, Bryant cited people reporting assaults on children within the Catholic Church and at boarding schools.

“It had been hidden for years, but it started to leak, and once somebody poked a hole in that dam, it just poured out. And I think we’re going to continue to see this,” Bryant said. “It’s not that it wasn’t there all along; it’s just that these leaks now mean something, and people are running with it.”

But attitudes still need to change. Too often, the victim is blamed, Bryant said.

“Some blamed my daughter for her own death,” she said. “My daughter didn’t cause her own death; she was groomed, and she was too trusting.”

Factors in sexual assault sometimes include victims’ feelings of low self worth, Bryant said.

“Sometimes, people want so badly to be liked by someone that they are willing to put up with crap,” she said. “Sometimes, we will endure a whole lot to think we are being accepted.”

It’s important to nurture children, to teach them to have self respect, to be kind, to be good leaders and to be resilient, Bryant said.

“All you can do is your best and hope your kids radiate what they have learned. ... It does shed on those around them,” Bryant said. “My daughter wasn’t necessarily a leader, but she influenced people. We all have those kinds of people in our community, and we want to be like them.”

Photo courtesy Jayne Johnson