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Break the silence that surrounds sexual assault, sexual harassment, interpersonal violence, relationship abuse, stalking, hate crimes, and identity-based violence. Share your story here on our anonymous blog.

To speak about an experience with any form of interpersonal violence is difficult, but it is also empowering. Breaking the silence reduces shame and helps others to speak out about their own experiences.

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We are holding our spring Speak Out! on April 16th, 2018 from 7-9 pm in The Pit. For more information, check our Facebook page.

Because this blog features stories of interpersonal and sexual violence, we offer this *content warning* as a way of caution. We also ask that you do not reproduce any of the content below, as the authors of these personal stories are anonymous, and cannot give consent for their stories to appear anywhere other than this blog or at a Project Dinah-led SpeakOut event.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

We weren’t even dating. We had been an on again off again couple my freshman year of high school. He was older than me and I thought that was cool and that made me someone to have someone older like me. He had randomly called me one day and asked me if I wanted to hang out. I was all for it--anything to get away from home (my parents were in the process of dragging out a long and bitter divorce. They were still living together at this point). I just thought we were going to drive around and talk, which we did…initially. I wasn’t paying attention to where we were going, just spilling my guts out to him about how miserable I was. Next thing I knew we were pulling into some sort of truck holding area (a year or so later I discovered where he took me). We were talking and next thing I knew he was telling me how much he missed me and was trying to pull me closer to him. I was guarded since we weren’t dating and kind of just ignored him. He begged me for oral. I told him no. He pulled my head down to his crotch. I sprung back up and tell him no again. He told me he wasn’t taking me anywhere (aka back home) until he got what he wanted. I felt so trapped. After a while and after more repeated requests, I did what he asked and he drove me home. We never went out again needless to say. I felt disgusted with myself. Maybe if I had waited him out longer none of it would have ever happened. I should have known what he wanted calling me up like that. I was naïve and stupid. I told my mom what happened. She used it as ammunition against my father; lying to him and telling him that I said he was cut from the same cloth as that guy (I’m not a fan of my father at all but I never said that). I only learned about that after my father confronted me about it. I felt betrayed all over again, this time by my mother who I told that to in confidence and she swore she wouldn’t tell anyone. Then my issue disappeared and they argued amongst themselves again. A few months (probably closer to a year) after it happened I get a call from the guy. Evidently he had been at my dad’s house and my dad had told him how that was unacceptable behavior (how you have a civil conversation about that, I’m not sure). The guy called me and cussed me out and said he did nothing wrong and that I was a willing participate. All I could say was “no means no” and I hung up the phone. I still had to see him around school and unfortunately he hung out with the same people I did, so I saw him even after he graduated. I’d like to say I’m over it. I’m not over it, I’ve just moved past it. I still think about it from time to time which makes me mad at myself to even let him and that situation enter my mind. It’s almost like he still has the control, even when I haven’t spoken/seen him in years.

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