This is Why Survivors Can Never Un-Know
By: Rachel Thompson
Tags: Relationships, Life, Mental Health, Abuse, Life Lessons

There are certain words survivors can’t ever seem to escape:

“He said, she said.” “There’s her side, his side, and the truth.” “She’s just in it for the fame and money. Nothing REALLY happened.” “She put herself in that situation. She should have known better.” *

How many times must we read these persistent, blame-filled statements that dismiss, minimize, and assign fault to victims of sexual assault and rape? The language here puts all the emphasis and responsibility on the victim instead of the criminal who perpetrated the crimes.

This one, however, might be the worst:

“Why did she wait so long to report? It must not be true.”

How does one equal the other? Many victims choose not to come forward out of shame, fear, reputation, power, loss of relationships with loved ones…any number of reasons.

Sexual crimes are so incredibly invasive — people love to tell us what they would have done, yet they cannot imagine what it’s like to live with these memories and triggers daily…of someone sexually invading you. Imagine what that’s like. You probably can’t. Which is why many people make these ridiculous statements.

The truth is, there are very real reasons why survivors don’t report crimes that’ve happened to them. Here are just a few.

Self-Blame

Many survivors feel complicit — we blame ourselves. How could we put ourselves in a situation to be assaulted? How could we ‘let’ it happen? Self-blame is rampant among sexual assault victims, made worse by others blaming and shaming us.

Sex complicates things. It’s an intimate act. For an outsider, if sex is involved, they make assumptions:

How do we know she didn’t want it?

How do we know she didn’t truly consent?

How do we know she isn’t lying?

How do we know she doesn’t have ulterior motives?

When, in actuality, sexual assault and rape aren’t about intimacy — they’re about violence, control, and power. Invasion. Criminal acts. We are discussing crimes, here. Why is the victim required to prove our innocence?

For the victim whose entire life is now changed forever, these questions are not only invalidating as well as presumptuous, but they’re also almost beside the point. Almost. Our worldview that people, especially men, are inherently good, has changed.

(You can #NotAllMen us — and by all means, feel free — because we already know that there are good, even great, men who would never hurt us, and if you’re reading this, you’re probably one of them. I’m not talking to you or including you in this conversation. This isn’t about you.)

The Rape

I haven’t previously shared my own rape story; I’ll do so here for the first time. *Trigger warning.

I met a man for sex, something, as an adult, I’m allowed to do. I’d separated from my ex and wanted to explore, so I did. We’d met twice before, and it was good. Complete opposite of my ex — big guy, skillful. We discussed upfront what I was okay with and what I had no interest in. He was smart — he built trust.

I trusted my instincts. My bad.

When he became violent with me, engaging in painful sex acts I never consented to, I froze. I dissociated. Despite my desperate pleas to stop, he ignored me and continued on till he finished.

As a lay limp as a rag doll, he picked me up and put me in the shower, washing away all possible evidence, and then walked me to my car, ordering me not to tell a soul or he would send his brothers after me and my kids.

Terrified and shaking, I don’t remember how I made it home — only what happened. I couldn’t un-see it. I kept replaying it all in my head. This is a common reaction to extreme trauma: our brains are flooded with chemicals during any kind of intense, traumatic situation, in particular during a sexual assault. I went into survival mode.

(Source: Daily Cardinal)

I shut down. I didn’t share with family or friends. I stopped dating, my body recoiling at the thought of any kind of touch. My skin crawled with every flashback. I cried constantly.

It took me months to share with anyone, and even then, only my therapist. I didn’t use the word ‘rape,’ because I blamed myself.

“I put myself in that…situation. It’s my own fault,” I tell her, voice shaking. “How can I call it…rape?”

“It’s not your fault, honey,” she soothed. “You went there for consensual sex, agreed to in advance. He gained your trust. He didn’t gain consent to hurt you.”

Self-blame. Humiliation. Embarrassment. This is why many of us don’t disclose. I still feel like it’s my own fault and yet from a logical, even legal perspective, I know it’s not.

I did not rape myself. I did not perpetrate criminal acts on myself. I am not a rapist. He is.

Should I have reported him? Tough one, and here’s why I didn’t — terror. For me and my children. Judge me if you want — you can’t possibly reach the level of judgment I’ve already placed on myself.

Sharing this here with you is like a betrayal of my heart. I’m waiting for the fallout.

Mental Health

It’s no secret that many sexual abuse survivors wrestle with mental health issues as a direct result of the trauma we experienced. As a childhood sexual abuse survivor at age eleven, I experienced panic attacks, anxiety, hypervigilance, and depression — not understanding or knowing these terrifying feelings had names (or even a diagnosis of PTSD).

What many people have no understanding of is exactly how trauma, especially sexual trauma, affects the brain of a survivor. Which is why, when the more uneducated among us, tells us to, “just get over it already,” we’d love to. Alas, our brains, our very cells, don’t comply.

“Comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis of 37 longitudinal observational comparative studies including 3,162,318 participants found an association between a history of sexual abuse and a lifetime diagnosis of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, PTSD, sleep disorders, and suicide attempts.” (Source: NIH)

Multiple studies in epigenetics show that the brains of trauma survivors actually change as a result of these experiences and can even be passed down to future generations.

Triggers

You may be familiar with this word as a funny kind of game trolls play on social media. For survivors, it’s something else entirely. We can be going about our day and then BOOM!, we’re hit with a flashback, scent, or news story that brings us right back into the trauma we experienced.

This is our brains on trauma. Despite every effort we’ve made to “just get over it and move on,” we cannot control triggers that pop up out of nowhere.

Officially defined, “a trigger in psychology is a stimulus such as a smell, sound, or sight that triggers feelings of trauma. People typically use this term when describing posttraumatic stress (PTSD).” (Source: GoodTherapy)

For any survivor, this makes sense. For any non-survivor, I can tell you from experience, this makes no sense.

Example: my kids love horror movies. I do not. They recently played music from a horror movie after dinner, and I suddenly jumped up and yelled:

“Turn it off! Turn it off right now!”

“Okay. Geez. What’s your problem?” my daughter asked, wide-eyed with incredulity (you see, I am not a yeller).

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know! Just make it stop!” I answered, shaking uncontrollably. I left the room, bolted upstairs, focusing on my breathing till I calmed down.

Even I had no idea why that bothered me so. Talking it through with my guy helped. Hearing that scary music put me right back into that mind space of waiting to be victimized as a child. Waiting for the bad guy to get me — again. Of being that innocent child who had to hold that horrible secret — again.

It wasn’t conscious on my part, yet that music became a trigger for me, bewildering my children.

Consciously, I didn’t know. Subconsciously, I cannot un-know.

The #MeToo Movement

The #MeToo movement has opened the doors for many survivors to come forward after years, even decades, of not saying a word about what they experienced. Most childhood sexual abuse victims don’t disclose until well into adulthood — if they disclose at all — with a median age of 48 and an average age of 52.

(Source: ChildUSA)

Hearing others’ stories creates a compelling sense of courageous bravery we haven’t seen before, a sort of receptiveness we hope will make a difference in how we’re treated. As we’ve seen, sadly, this is not always the case, particularly, when famous men are involved (Jackson, Kavanaugh, Cosby, Weinstein)…just to name a few.

Sharing Our Stories

Yet, if you’ve read my previous books, Broken Pieces and Broken Places, or any of my blog or Medium posts, you know this about me: I write what scares me. I tell uncomfortable truths. I want other survivors of rape and sexual assault to know they’re not alone.

I’ll be the voice.

I am the voice.

Despite non-survivors telling us how terrible we are for coming forward years later, or not reporting, or attempting to blame us for lying or gold-digging or fame, we know.

We were there.

We live it daily through PTSD, flashbacks, nightmares, holding our bodies rigid and primed for another assault. Through not trusting, not giving people a chance, never fully relaxing. Through anxiety, panic, depression, migraines, and a host of immune disorders we’re much more susceptible to because of extreme trauma.