"Can you blame him?"

I dated a guy in high school for two years. He was manipulative and abusive, but I still stayed. 

Towards the end of the relationship I was pushed and guilt tripped into doing things with him I wasn't completely comfortable with. About two weeks after we broke up after a really nasty altercation in the hallway at school, he begged me to come over so we could talk, so I did. He drugged and raped me. I felt all of it, but I couldn't move. 

Two days later, he and his mom moved away without a trace. Only a few people knew where he had gone. I stayed quiet about it, but finally broke down to a really close guy friend of mine. I will never forget how he looked me dead in the eyes and said, "Well? Can you blame him? I would, too! I've thought about it a few times myself."

"It is always the woman's fault."

When I was entering puberty, a man brutalized me. When I told my mother, she said that I'd better get used to it, because in our society, "anytime there's a disagreement between a man and a woman, it is always the woman's fault." 

She listed examples like rape and domestic violence, and literally told me, "the faster you get used to it, the better." I argued with her, but she told me to pay attention every time there was a serious issue in people's relationships to see how it turned out. 

I hung on to her words and swore to myself that I'd find a situation in which this wasn't true, and show her that the world isn't that dark.

I'm nearly 30 now. I'm a domestic abuse survivor from an ex, and I've been raped multiple times in my life. Recovering led to me specializing in rape and domestic violence as a health care professional, thus I see a lot of serious cases and am involved in many court battles. 

To this day, I'm still waiting for that one example when it isn't socially deemed the woman's fault so I can tell my mother that she was wrong.

"No big deal."

I've been sexually assaulted multiple times in my life, but I've only come forward one time. The first time. When I was 13.

I was sexually assaulted at a party by a neighbor's friend. I was so afraid to tell anyone, and kept quiet for two months, until I finally wrote to a close friend about it. My friend accidentally dropped the note it in the hallway and it was discovered by the school social worker. 

The social worker called me into her office, confronted me, and called my mom. My mom told my dad, who told my stepmom.

My mother told me that she'd "been through worse" and that it was "no big deal" and that I "could've ruined his life." 

My stepmother told me "it's all right because we all think he's gay" and "he didn't mean anything by it." 

And what did my father say? Absolutely nothing. 

Because of this, I've stopped coming forward. 

I haven't been able to get my parents' words out of my head, and it's been almost a year and a half.

"You lead older men on."

When I was 15, I was stalked, molested, and sexually assaulted by a 46 year old man who my parents were good friends with.

I tried to keep everything hush hush because it was humiliating, but my parents found out and confronted me about it. My father was sobbing and trying to understand what happened. My mother was furious and drilled me with questions. 

The whole scene ended with my dad and me sobbing together while my mom yelled, "I never thought my 15 year old daughter would be a whore. You lead older men on. On purpose!" 

To this day, I struggle to have a relationship with her. It is swept under the rug. We don't speak of it. 

I will always feel betrayed.

"He's such a nice boy."

When I told my favorite teacher that another student in our class had raped me, her response was, and I quote, "Oh, Jason*? That doesn't seem like something he would do. He's such a nice boy." 

*Names have been changed.
 

"Even though you didn't really want to."

I was cuddling with my boyfriend one day, and he wanted to get intimate but I didn't. He told me to just give it a go, and he pushed my hands onto his privates. Every time I moved my hand away, he held it back there. Eventually I gave in.

Later, he asked, "So did you enjoy what we did earlier? Even though you didn't really want to?" 

I was stunned. He knew I didn't want to, yet he still made me do it.