YouTube: I Won’t Be Quiet Anymore

A day ago, I read about Rehtaeh Parson and made a video in which I vow that I won’t be quiet anymore. This video has already gotten 320 views and I am sincerely hoping it gets a whole lot more. I know a lot of people who really need to hear this message, if not from me, then from someone else.

An excerpt follows.

This scares the hell out of me, that we keep it all to ourselves. We’re so ashamed and we’re in so much pain and we all think it’s our fault. Almost every single child who’s been raped thinks it’s their fault. They’re terrified—terrified of speaking up, terrified  to hurt their family, terrified of being accused of being a slut, terrifed that no one will believe them, terrified that when they seek help it won’t be given to them. And this is exactly why those of us who have been raped or sexually assaulted are so fucking scared, because when a girl does go for help, even after being gang-raped, and had pictures taken of it, is not given any help, in fact, not only is she not helped, but her entire community turns her into a pariah. It boggles my mind, it boggles my mind—where were the adults and what kind of humanity or lack thereof is present in these other children, these girls, these supposed friends of hers who are sending her notes calling her a slut and what about these boys, these boys are sending her notes and asking her to have sex with them, “Will you fuck me,” they ask. Are you kidding me? Really? What kind of humanity or lack thereof is happening here, where the police are doing nothing, the community is only harming the girl who was gang-raped?

I had to sit with this for a few hours and think about how to answer to it. What I thought about was that after I wrote Ripple, I asked a friend to help with the elevator speech or logline of it. I told her that a 15-year old girl is raped by her father and the mom kills the father and they run off to a safe house. And she said, well, are you sure this is a realistic storyline.

And immediately I felt this shame, and this anger and this, this—I felt like a freak. That’s what happens over and over again. We feel like freaks. We feel like no one gives a shit. Because when someone says that’s not believable, what they’re saying to us who have been raped and sexually abused is that they don’t believe US. I swear it’s like being raped a second time all over again and it’s even worse because we feel that much more abandoned, that much more alone, we feel as if the crime that happened to us is being denied, and therefore in some fundamental way our worth is being denied. The pain we’re feeling is not worthy, we’re not worthy—I could go on and on.

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I wish you peace. I hope you know you’re loved, no matter what happened to you. I hope you know if you were abused, it was not your fault. I hope you know that if you reach out for help, it will be given to you. I hope you know that are very much loved, that you are very special just the way you are, that no matter what anyone else did to you, it does not destroy the essential beauty you were born with.