Why don't they speak up?

As Mr. Trump says, why don’t women speak up when they’ve been sexually harassed or molested or downright attacked? The question begs analysis. I’ve spent a lot of time lately asking myself this question. Why didn’t I speak up when it happened to me?

~ Age 10, at my father’s employee picnic in a forested park. A middle-aged man offers me money in exchange for physical contact. I freeze. Then I run. I tell no one.

~ Age 16, I'm walking alone down a busy road in the middle of the day, a car pulls up next to me and the driver, a lone male, asks for directions. I glance into the car and see that his pants are down and he is masturbating. I tell my girlfriends but not my parents. It never occurs to me to report him to the police.

~ Age 21, third year at university. I chase a peeping tom out of the women’s locker room showers. I tell my boyfriend. I vaguely remember thinking I should report it to campus security, but I worry no one will believe me. To this day I regret not speaking up.

~ Later in my 20s, during two job interviews male interviewers offer me work other than that which was advertised, if you know what I mean. I am so rattled I leave their offices with no intent of returning. I tell my husband.

~ In my early 30s, a sports therapist begins stroking my hair during an appointment for joint pain (located nowhere near my hair). I am so shocked at the intimate contact that I forget about the pain and skedaddle out of his office. I tell my husband. And no, I don't tell any authority. I think I thought then that hair stroking wasn’t overtly sexual and I’d sound excessively sensitive (“imagining it all” they’d say) to anyone in authority. Times have changed and I’ve grown up. Today I wouldn’t hesitate to file a formal complaint.

This list doesn’t begin to cover the catcalls, being followed as I walked down the street by strange men in cars, being followed my groups of young men in cars while driving with my girlfriends, the leers.

In most cases I didn’t know the men’s identities and I had no evidence, no cell phone video to share with police. Reporting would likely have been a fruitless exercise in humiliation, and there wasn’t much at stake—but that's because I was thinking only of myself and not future victims.

But this I know: If one of these men were running for president now and he had pulled any of these stunts on me years ago, believe me, if I knew his name I’d be yelling it from the housetops. Much is at stake now, far more than my humiliation.