General Discussion

Many women never share their experiences with anyone. Our society is still set up to believe the man, to demand cold hard proof where there often is none because if the mature of the crime. Every woman has seen this happen and it serves as a warning to keep quiet or be accused of lying (either about it happening or about our lack of consent) or of asking for it.

I shared my fourth story immediately with my family, and my mother's first comment was, "were you doing something you shouldn't have been doing?" The police arrested the man who raped me, put him in jail overnight to give him a scare, but declined to press charges, even though they knew I was the 13th victim with a nearly identical story.

It was at least a decade before I shared my first and second story. I never shared my third.

It took a couple of years before I shared my 5th story - I delayed that because we were members of an affinity group. I was in a leadership role. He was about to be appointed to one and the thought of him being in a role in which part of his responsibilities was to help ensure that all physical and emotional intimacy was consensual. But for that appointment, I would have just kept staying out of his way

Determining when and who to tell doesn't have rules, partly because the reaction to our stories can do a lot of emotional damage at a time we need to be healing; partly because society convinces we were the only one: partly because society convinces us nothing will be done to the abuser so why bother. And sometimes, something happens that makes remaining silent a worse option than speaking up. Other women come forward and we realize that if we had spoken up he might not have had so many b victims. And sometimes, like me, as to my 5th abuser, the need to speak up is triggered because the person who abused me is about to rise into a role we can't bear to think of him in