I wasn’t going to respond because I DID report the worst one–14, sexually assaulted by a stranger in broad daylight. I told my parents after several hours of hoping I could leapfrog over what had happened in order to get back to normalcy. I told them because I was terrified he was still out there and would attack again. My parents took me to the cops. The cops said this guy must have been stalking me for days. They never caught him. If they had, he would have walked: no witnesses, no evidence.
I partly posted this because this seems like the safest thread to discuss sexual assault. I’m incoherent with rage at so many of the comments on other threads, notably the “11th hour” one in IMHO. Oh, my freaking God. We don’t tell because we won’t be believed, and the evidence is all over this board. People wonder why women are leaving the SDMB? This is why. And excusing it with “We don’t want to stifle speech” or “We can’t fight ignorance if we don’t allow people to express it” is pure, enabling bullshit.
Fuck. I’m crying as I write this.