It was a couple of days after my birthday and halfway through the first week of classes. How would you feel if one of your “so-called” best friends brought up the worst thing that ever happened to you, blamed you for it and pretended like it was the hot gossip of the week? That was me, except it wasn’t some childish gossip…it was one of the two singly most traumatic experiences that has ever happened to me. I was sexually assaulted in my ninth grade year of high school. Did I know that? No, but I felt uncomfortable. I thought I was helping one of the closest friends I made at school with a crisis. I thought he was going to get abused by his uncle if I didn’t help him. It was just his way of deceiving me. My “friend” had also done this to other guys at our high school…and he even got a restraining order placed on him. Where was I when all of this happening? Hiding. I was trying to dissociate myself from my assault. I was afraid of being blamed, feeling stupid, judged and knowing that I shouldn’t have let that happen to me. I didn’t know that was me. “How did you not know?” Said my “so-called friend” that goes here. All of us were in the same friend group. My perpetrator confided in you. He told you everything that he did…and you took his side. AND you blamed me!!! I have struggled with having two of my closest, best, whatever friends stab me in the back (over and over again with two machetes)…and just wanting everything to go back to normal. I have been depressed. Experienced suicidal ideation…like every other day on a weekly basis. My grades and academic ability have suffered. I have felt worthless, ashamed, stupid and victimized. Thanks my “so-called” friend for being the only other person to know and hurting me just the same. However, I am not going to let either of you curtail my road to success anymore! I thank God, because I wouldn’t have made it without Him and the angels he’s placed in my life. Yeah, this year has royally sucked. Yeah, I have felt like giving up. And yes, I have felt l was trapped and alone. But I am not alone. I am a survivor. I’m making it. I am thankful for growing this year…and being able to reach out now. If there’s one thing I can be grateful for…is that my pain doesn’t have to destroy me. I can help other people understand that if I made it…so can you. 

I don't know if I've experienced sexual violence, and I haven't known for about five years. 
I was thirteen years old going into high school, soon to turn fourteen, and eager to make friends. I laughed at everyone's jokes even if they weren't funny, and I tried my best to get along with everybody... even the obnoxious 16-year-old sophomore boys in my "Fundamentals of Technology" class, which was really just wood-shop. Maybe I was an easy mark to them, these three sophomore boys in my class. I don't remember the names of the other two, but one I clearly remember... blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skinned and short. 
I don't remember much, so I can't tell you much. I know that for the first few weeks they gave me attention, talked to me, and joined my group projects. I know I wanted to be "the cool kid", I wanted to be likable. I know it gradually got worse and worse. He would come up behind me when I wasn't expecting it and touch me, even while I was having conversations with other people. Every touch happened so quickly, so that one moment he was there and when I turned around he wasn't. I remember one time when he held me down and touched me while his friends took pictures. I'm sure I could've escaped his hold, if only I had put up a bit of a fight, but I didn't. I hadn't yet been taught how to say no, firmly, audibly. 
I remember coming into class early one day to finish some homework and leaning over the sharp edge of the wood-shop table, writing answers. I heard him come in with his friends, and I felt him as he pinned me against the table, my legs pressing into the sharp edges. "This is how you rape someone", he said, and he laughed, and they laughed... and I think I laughed. I laughed and laughed. He fumbled with the back of my shorts. I laughed. I laughed and I struggled, and I kicked the table so hard with my thigh that I thought I'd bleed. And I laughed. 
Maybe if I laughed, then it was a joke. 
It didn't feel like a joke. 
The teacher came in and he ran away, back to his own table to laugh with his friends. Within thirty minutes I could barely stand on my right leg, a baseball-sized bruise swelling on my thigh made it difficult to walk. My mother picked me up from the bus stop. When she asked about it, I told her I had just tripped and fallen, oh so clumsy. Over the next few days it became more difficult to ignore, and she stopped buying my clumsy story. In embarrassed thirteen-year-old words, I told her some of what had happened. She demanded I go talk to a counselor, seek punishment and justice for what had happened, and so I did. The counselor asked me where he had touched me, and I looked down as I gestured meekly with my hands. The next day, I was called into the Vice Principal's office to discuss the situation. 
He told me, "We want everyone at this school to feel safe... so I need you to not talk about this with anyone else". After I left he called in the Sophomore Boy, and threatened him with detention. He was told exactly who had complained about him. Me. And when he came into class later that day, he laughed.
He laughed.
It's been five years. I am not laughing anymore. 

I wrote my story out for Speak Out in the fall. I attended the event and sobbed as I heard my words read back to me. It was simultaneously healing and heart breaking. I just barely got through that semester, and I'm on my way to finishing this one. I can tell you that 5 months later, I am doing better. Not all the way back to where I used to be, but I've grown. In the last 5 months, I have taken a trip to Europe by myself- a trip that helped me prove to myself that my rapist wouldn't scare me away from the whole continent of Europe. I was able to reassert some power in a continent where I lost all of mine. That would be my big win of the last 5 months. But I also recently was able to look in the mirror while I brushed my teeth for the very first time since my rape. I have finally gotten to the point where I can leave my door unlocked while I sleep- the next goal is to leave it cracked. I've met someone that makes me believe that not all men are the same. A man that I've only known for a short time but has already showed me such kindness and tenderness. One that didn't try to be physical the first time we met, but when we were finally intimate was so incredibly gentle, I couldn't even begin to compare the two experiences. 

I guess why I'm writing this is to let the people in the crowd that are probably feeling exactly the way I did 5 months ago, recovery doesn't get easier, dealing with triggers doesn't get easier, but you become stronger. Suddenly the little things that used to be incredibly difficult to deal with, feels like chump change. I have a long way to go, but I can't even express to you how excited I was the first day I looked into the mirror while I brushed my teeth. How small it may seem to some, but what a huge victory in my eyes.

So survivors that are sitting in the crowd, you are absolutely loved and so brave to be fighting through each day having any experience with sexual assault weighing on your heart. You can step backwards and then forwards and then backwards and then forwards, but eventually you'll get to a place where you can handle a lot of it. You'll have your days, but you will be able to handle it. You are so so loved, and so so brave. Take care of yourself and find people to surround yourself with that will remind you of what an incredible person you are, because you are worth it. 

My rape didn't happen on campus, but my road to recovery did. I was just about to leave to study abroad here at UNC when I was sexually assaulted. I had been drinking but nothing out of the ordinary. We were in an LGBT nightclub so I was less wary than normal, less precautious. I felt safe. I was wrong to. My friends say I wandered off (alone) in the direction of the loos and they didn't think too much of it until I didn't come back. The first thing I remember I was at an ATM with a guy I've never seen before standing over me, waiting on me to withdraw cash. I didn't know where I was or who I was with. I know I shouldn't have but I was drunk and confused and I didn't know where I was or how I got there so I told him my address and trusted him to get me home safely. I thought if I pretended to be asleep he would leave me alone. He didn't. All I can remember is the pain. Saying "stop, you're hurting me" over and over. It was as if I wasn't even there. I felt so guilty for so long about why I didn't kick or scream or punch him. I just lay there, paralysed with fear. At some point I managed to run from him and lock myself in the bathroom. I also managed to write my flatmates a note for when they returned from the club, asking them to help me make him leave because I was in so much pain. I don't know when I did that - all I can remember is laying there, not fighting back, just whimpering about the pain. When my flatmates found the note, the male one of them came in and made the guy leave. The next part was the clearest of it all. He said "Did he make you do anything?" and I just cried and nodded my head as my other flatmate watched. My flatmate then took chase after my assailant, who had the nerve to stop and give my friend my purse back which he had obviously tried to steal as he left. He thought the theft was why he was being chased. My friends tried to make my call the police but for some reason I had been doing the health forms for student blue and they ask if you had ever been sexually assaulted and I didn't want to not get my visa to come here so, not thinking straight I didn't call. I spent the next 3 days crying and showering. I had to sleep on the sofa in my friend's room because I couldn't bear being alone. It was at this point, after searching everywhere for my keys that I realised my rapist had them. This is when I called the police, went to a sexual health clinic and rang my landlord to have my locks changed.

The initial police team were not the sexual assault specialist team. The main cop kept telling me that I was embarrassed, took my male flatmate's statement but not the female flatmate's, did not take the evidence that the lady from the sexual health clinic had told me to provide, and as I found out the next day when I was contacted by the specialist team, he had written in his notes that the sex “was consensual”. I didn't go to class at all for a couple of weeks but my university was understanding.

I had a pretty rough break but was okayish until I moved here, that was when I had my first panic attack. CAPS have been fantastic. When I initially seen this thread I was reluctant to share my story. However, I recently found out that one of my good friends in my home city had been raped last month, just 2 months after me. She didn’t tell me, because I hadn’t told her about my experience, until she was hospitalised after attempting to overdose. I was so ashamed that my own fear stopped me from helping her.

I know it is not my fault that this happened to me, nor is it my fault that it happened to others. However I feel guilty to have not been there to provide my knowledge and experience of the aftermath process. Groups like this are so very important and I am grateful and proud of all the women and men who have survived through ordeals of this nature and used their pain to make change and help others. Thank you guys so very much, you’re inspirational. 

It's sometimes hard for me to recognize my right to say that I've been sexually assaulted. I think that's because the person who did it to me was a woman, because I didn't really fight back, and because my story isn't as violent as the others that I often hear. But through the help of others and of hearing more diverse stories, I've come to accept what I've been through. When I was just getting into my teenage years, my "best friend" found out that I was bi and decided that she wanted to experiment with me. I was okay with it at first, but it kept going on. It became more than just kissing or exploring. I started to feel ashamed and didn't know how to ask for it to stop. Because I was never really educated about same sex relationships, I didn't even really know where the sexual boundaries between two women were. This lasted for years and to this day I don't really know at what age I lost my virginity, I'm just sure that it happened during that time. I had no one to talk to when it was happening. I still believed she was my friend and she manipulated me so I had few others to go to. My parents were already rocked by my sexuality so I didn't want to upset them by telling them about this development. I became withdrawn and anxious. I found out much later that I've always had an anxiety disorder and that those events caused me to have a severe bout of depression. Thankfully I got out of it. With the help of other friends who I still had and being able to gather the courage to reach out to my family I was able to separate myself from her and from what happened. Though it was really only when I came here to UNC that I started to accept that those years and that friendship consisted of sexual assault. Repeated and manipulative sexual assault. I was pleasantly surprised to find new friends and lovers who understood that I had suffered but not to think less of me. It was hard for me not to think less of myself. But somehow, I've been able to separate myself from what happened to me. I realize I just didn't have the skills or the knowledge to really avoid what happened. It was her that had started it all and who had taken it so far. I don't think I hate her, but I'll certainly never trust her again nor even associate with her if I can help it. I still think about it and it does still affect my relationships, but it doesn't control me anymore. I am so grateful to have found strength and support. To any other women out there who have suffered sexual assault at the hands of other women, you're certainly not alone and you have a right to say that it happened to you. All of us survivors, no matter our identities or who hurt us, have the same rights and we all deserve to move on and in time we will.