“I told him to stop. He thought I was joking. I froze.”
Kristina Erickson, Beloit College (Wisc.)
“I was like, ‘No, please stop.’ He was like, ‘No, you’ll like it.' ”
Female student, Queens University of Charlotte
“I don’t know why guys just think, ‘If I just do it, she’ll do it, too.’ ”
Saalika Khan, Towson University (Md.)
“I woke up the next morning without any pants on, and without any recollection.”
Female student, University of Pittsburgh
“Definitely there’s an awkwardness to saying no.”
Male student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“I had no intention of sleeping with this woman. I kept telling her.”
Daniel Episcope, University of the Pacific
“Thinking people would have found a way to stop it if they didn’t want it is victim-blaming,
and it is as ridiculous as telling a victim of a robbery that they
would have stopped a robbery if they really didn’t want it to happen.”
Female student, Northern Illinois University
The student at Northern Illinois University had an appointment in
Chicago and needed a ride. So she arranged to stay that night in April
2013 with a friend who could drive her into the city the next morning.
“She
picked me up on campus and took me back to her place after my classes,”
the student, now 23, recalled. “The night was uneventful, but when it
was later, and I was getting ready to sleep, she started to kiss me. I
froze and didn’t reciprocate.”She said she didn’t know what to do.
“She told me not to be such a prude and said that she knew I wanted it and kept on kissing,” she said. “I turned my head away but she didn’t stop. She started touching me other places. I still didn’t say anything. After a bit she stopped and called me a prude.”
The next day, the student, who is a lesbian, told her then-romantic partner what had happened.
“All she said was, ‘If you didn’t want it to happen, you would have found a way to stop it.’ . . . I didn’t talk about it at all to anyone over summer. I cried a lot and felt dirty, and just gross. I felt like it was my fault and like I was broken. I felt like I had been unfaithful to my partner because I didn’t stop it.”
During the next school year, the student said her grades plunged, and she had a hard time focusing on classes.
“I had to take two incompletes in the fall and it just felt like I was crying all the time. Everything felt like a blur and I felt dirty, small and numb,” she said. “I felt like a zombie.”
The student did not report the incident.
“The person that did it never had repercussions for her actions,” she said. In the past year, her grades have improved and she is starting to heal. She said she wants to tell her story because too often sexual assault within the LGBT community goes unnoticed.
“For me, it almost felt like there was an extra additional component of shame,” she said. “Logically, I know it is not my fault. I know what happened was sexual assault, but I still do struggle with feelings of guilt and being dirty. I want people to know that the culture and beliefs we have about sexual assault in this country are not healthy. Thinking people would have found a way to stop it if they didn’t want it is victim-blaming, and it is as ridiculous as telling a victim of a robbery that they would have stopped a robbery if they really didn’t want it to happen.”
Female student, University of Michigan
She was flirting with a guy at a
fraternity party, getting drunk on cheap vodka, when he invited her
upstairs to his room. They started making out. The 19-year-old student
at the University of Michigan remembers that much.
“I consented to that, but I don’t remember consenting to anything else,” she said. Her perceptions got “blurrier and blurrier.” She blacked out and woke up later on a couch downstairs. The woman didn’t know exactly what had happened, but suspected things had gone way too far.
“I was kind of freaking out,” she recalled.
Another man at the fraternity, whom she considered a friend, relayed to her a couple days later what he had heard: That the guy said he had sex with her. This friend said the woman’s judgment about what happened was wrong: “There’s a difference between having drunk, regrettable sex and being raped,” she remembers him telling her.
The woman said they are no longer friends. She decided not to report the incident to authorities, in part because she didn’t know how intoxicated her attacker had been that night.
“I didn’t want to start an entire thing,” she said. “I didn’t want that whole frat to have a backlash against me.”
Now, the woman said, she is leery of fraternity parties, excessive drinking and “the whole hookup scene.” She is a women’s studies major, and she wants to get active in sexual assault prevention. “I’m a big advocate for ending this.”
The woman said the university should do more than teach bystanders to intervene in risky situations. “The people who are committing sexual assault are the people on this campus,” she said, adding that they need a clear message: “Don’t assault people.”
“I also feel like there should be harsher punishment,” she said. “I think these boys think they can do it and nothing will happen to them.”
Those were a few survivor story what about the people who don't survive .. beware of your surrounding and take care of your loved ones because you never know who the wolf is..
“I consented to that, but I don’t remember consenting to anything else,” she said. Her perceptions got “blurrier and blurrier.” She blacked out and woke up later on a couch downstairs. The woman didn’t know exactly what had happened, but suspected things had gone way too far.
“I was kind of freaking out,” she recalled.
Another man at the fraternity, whom she considered a friend, relayed to her a couple days later what he had heard: That the guy said he had sex with her. This friend said the woman’s judgment about what happened was wrong: “There’s a difference between having drunk, regrettable sex and being raped,” she remembers him telling her.
The woman said they are no longer friends. She decided not to report the incident to authorities, in part because she didn’t know how intoxicated her attacker had been that night.
“I didn’t want to start an entire thing,” she said. “I didn’t want that whole frat to have a backlash against me.”
Now, the woman said, she is leery of fraternity parties, excessive drinking and “the whole hookup scene.” She is a women’s studies major, and she wants to get active in sexual assault prevention. “I’m a big advocate for ending this.”
The woman said the university should do more than teach bystanders to intervene in risky situations. “The people who are committing sexual assault are the people on this campus,” she said, adding that they need a clear message: “Don’t assault people.”
“I also feel like there should be harsher punishment,” she said. “I think these boys think they can do it and nothing will happen to them.”
Those were a few survivor story what about the people who don't survive .. beware of your surrounding and take care of your loved ones because you never know who the wolf is..
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