Your Stories
*Trigger warning*
may contain sensitive content
M's Story
I was sexually assaulted, whilst lots of people were there too. It’s funny because I didn’t tell anyone for months because he made it feel like it was just a naughty experience we had (I continuously pulled away and told him to stop). I trusted him. I stayed silent.
For about two years, this was the one thing that truly haunted me. I told myself I had made it up, and I was exaggerating. I told myself that I was asking for it, I mean, we always did flirt. I told myself I was to blame and so I avoided him. He avoided me. You could literally see his hate for me when we were in the same room. I was honestly terrified of him.
A's Story
Before I could fully climb off of him, he grabbed both my arms and slammed me down on the bed. I screamed and tried to get up, but I couldn’t break loose from his grip. That’s when I completely froze. The next part of it I still can’t remember, ten years later. My brain has still completely blocked out the most violent part of the rape. The next thing I remember is finally hitting him, breaking free, grabbing my clothes, and running to the bathroom to get dressed. I’ll never forget looking in the mirror and seeing my entire chest covered in bruises and blood from his bite marks. I’ll never forget crying to myself in the mirror—but this time, crying to someone who I didn’t recognize. That was the night that I became a new person.
ALEX's Story
As far as I know, he’s never learned better - he’s never learned the pain and the aftermath of putting someone in that sort of situation. I think that a lot of people hear stories of violence and they get angry and I’m angry too but my expression of anger is just not in the form of punishment. It’s not to take their life, it’s not to dehumanize them. We have such a reaction to say “go arrest people”, “go put them in jail”, that you know, “that’s where they should rot”. That’s a human and at the end of the day you haven’t changed their heart, you haven’t changed how they view things, they haven’t understood the gravity of what happened.
