I couldn’t find an existing thread for this; maybe I’m not searching right.
I thought the Pit was the right place, so people can let go and curse if they wish.
Why didn’t I report? I really did not think anyone would have done anything. I was probably right.
Apropos to whatdafuck?
Just saw a relevant headline in The Onion.
“Trump Asks Why Kavanaugh Accuser Didn’t Just Immediately Request Hush Money”
#WhyIDidntReport
When I was a teenager last century, sexual assault was actually par for the course. I know some of you younger folk will find this incredulous, but there really was no such thing as NO. You might have evaded an actual rape if you were lucky, but in the meantime, groping and other invasive practices were the norm at parties and other teen social gatherings, especially where alcohol and other drugs were used. Young girls and women were just considered part of the offerings.
No, it wasn’t right. Yes, I am glad that the social mores are changing and that women and men, young and old, can refer such incidents to the LE authorities.
And I have at LEAST a dozen instances where I was an unwilling participant in sexual activity that I didn’t report. It’s not unusual for women to blame themselves for being unable to fend off the unwanted attention from horny young blokes. I mean, surely, if you’re in a situation where you are being sexually assaulted, you’re just asking for it, right?
:dubious:
The WhyIDidntReport hashtag trend (oh sorry coffeecat, didn’t see you there).
I thought it wouldn’t be taken seriously because he let me go when I pulled away from him and got out of there (and my own bf didn’t seem to think it was anything much, so, you know, :rolleyes: ). And I thought it was maybe somehow my fault :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: for using (with permission) the toilet in an unoccupied student apartment where a facilities repairman was working because my own student apartment’s toilet was out of order. I just hope he never got away with doing worse to some other startled young woman on campus because he happened to be alone in a room with her.
I don’t mean to be a debbie-downer. But it’s still happening to girls in high school and college. I get direct reports from my college girl. She and her girlfriends call it ‘running the gauntlet’.
Yeah, I was trying to be optimistic, with a hope that young women (and men) might have moved past the terrible debaucheries of previous decades.
Obviously I’m wrong. Goddammit.
It’s sadly, consistently ironic how the people that scream about why didn’t someone report an assault always go on to say things that make it obvious why someone didn’t.
Aside: surely there’s another picture of Blasey Ford the media could use?
Oh, I did report!
And my mother called me a liar. If the same teacher hadn’t assaulted 11 other kids in the same day, nothing would have been done other than me getting a verbal lashing on lying. Because, you see, every time I had any kind of problem with a person in a position of Authority, I was clearly lying!
Then I spent the next 5 or 6 years getting random people telling me how impressed they had been at how calmly my parents had dealt with the whole thing. Nevermind that Dad never knew I was one of the accusers (Mom having pushed the notion that no names should be named) and that Mom was just happily convinced that we all lied. It took her 30 years to understand that yes, the accusations against that teacher were real. I have no idea how could she think it was more logical to believe that 12 kids who didn’t attend the same class, have the same groups of friends and who in a couple of cases were known to be on the indifference side of hating each other’s guts had come up with the notion of accusing the new teacher of doing something we didn’t even know was possible! (Hey, we were sheltered kids; we knew there was such a thing as “people touching you wrong” but we had no idea that could include teachers).
So yeah, next few times I didn’t report it to the people who officially were supposed to be in charge. What the fuck for?
Oh, and then there was that time years later that I tried to ask for help because Grandpa was… shall we say, not so much overstepping my boundaries as trying to polevault them? And Mom’s response was “if your father hears a single word of this you won’t set foot in my house again!” “B…” “You will never see your father or your brothers again. Your grandfather is like this, deal.” OK. I dealt!
And to anybody asking “but why did you go to your mother”? One, she was the person in charge of raising us (I didn’t know this at the time, but at one point she’d threatened with getting an annulment if Dad tried to oppose her views on child raising in public; hey, she was the one with the teaching degree). Two, that time with the teacher, she’s the parent who was home when I got there. And three, for Granddad? The mantra had always been “conflicts with each side of the family go to the parent from that side”. So, call it 18 years of conditioning, excuse me, education by a woman who shouldn’t ever have been allowed to either become a teacher or have children.
And that time two people tried to get me into a car. Rental plates. I mean, maybe there wouldn’t have been many red Ibizas with rental plates in Barcelona, but with that kind of experience and no record of the actual plates, would you have gone to the cops? What for?
And… and… and…
What the fuck for?
I did when I was 14. I reported the rape to the small town sheriff, and was told “You hang out with welfare families. Better you than one of our decent girls.” Then he said his father hunts with the county judge, best to keep your mouth shut. I did for 42 years. Every day for the next year and a half I had to face him and his smirking, taunting buddies in school. Until the day I turned 16 and could legally quit. I quit school and moved away from that cesspool of a town.
Thanks, my bubble was showing.
I should have done something, even if it just meant the next person might have been believed. But then I hear those stories of people who did this for decades, or got light sentences lest their lives be ruined, and accept that it might not have mattered. Not to imply my life has been ruined.
I have no love for Kavanaugh. And I doubt if I could ever be realistically accused of what he has been. But I can certainly see, especially in the passage of time, a mild attempt at sexual persuasion morphed into a brutal attack in someone’s mind, whether intentionally skewed or not. Memory isn’t perfect and confabulation abounds.
Fuck off. This thread is not about you or what you think of the Kavanaugh situation.
Because he was my ex-father-in-law, my kids’ grandfather, and the shit show that would have ensued wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t rape, just incredibly creepy assault. I never saw him again.
Because I was embarrassed. And I still got a B in the course. My parents scolded me a little bit because given my proficiency in the subject and my intended career path, I should’ve gotten an A. Like I did every other semester.
And I’m sure if I had told anyone that my teacher had told me that there was no way he was giving straight A’s to someone that refused to sleep with him, he would’ve claimed he was joking. And he would’ve found some deficiencies in my course work to justify the lower grade. And I would’ve looked ridiculous and “full of myself” for making a big deal about getting a B instead of an A.
Because we were joking around and, to be honest, it didn’t bother me that much. I think I even laughed. And I considered the guy to be a friend and I didn’t want to hurt him or his career. He was a celebrity, after all. But years later when all these other women claimed he did the exact same thing to them, I KNEW they were telling the truth and that he was lying. And no one believed them. So I decided to speak out.
The first one is true. The second one isn’t but it’s something I’ve thought about because the incident did happen ( he came up behind me at an event and grabbed and squeezed my breasts )and while I’m not going to publicly revisit it out of nowhere, if other women came forward and were disbelieved, I’d speak out.
And me. I reported at 11. To Mom of course. Who called me a liar and blamed me. So I never reported again, not even when my Uncle pinned me up against a door and felt me up, my teacher always asked me to join him on his side of the desk so his hands could wander under my skirt, my granddad (who I adored) grabbed my baby boobs at probably 13, and never ever mentioned my father’s visits to my bedroom when she was away. There are many reasons we don’t report, but if the first one gets you, a little girl, in trouble, you will probably never report again.
Why I didn’t tell about the two relatives: Because I thought one might kill me. And because the second one was my only “ally” in the hideousness that was my family. I didn’t tell on him because I thought I needed him to protect me from others.
When people did find out, it was way, way worse. The shame of people knowing was just soul crushing.
Why I didn’t tell about the four different family friends that groped me to varying degrees - some very violent: Because this was just normal shit I knew I had to put up with.
Why my sister and I didn’t tell about the man who exposed himself to us when we were five and six years old: Because… I don’t exactly know, but neither one of us said anything to each other or anyone else, ever.
I can tell you this, I was five years old for the last one and I remember it VERY vividly. It wasn’t violent, but it was traumatic.
Or a little boy
I reported a coworker for something else - not sexual assault or harassment - and got the standard “There’s really nothing we can do …” response, and I said, “You can listen to the next person who reports it.” I don’t think they will, but I feel less of a spineless fucking coward.
Thank you. A grand total of 12 posts before someone felt the need to try to flip the conversation, FFS.
This thread is intended for people who have been sexually assaulted to explain why they did not report, for those who did report to describe the results, and to fight the ignorance of those who have never been assaulted.
If you haven’t been assaulted: Stop. Listen. Think. Thank you.
Because I figured, on some level, it was my fault.