There was something predacious in the way he looked at me. My childish, Bambi eyes stared at him as he peered down at me from the top of the hill, and something in his gaze was just wrong. It was a look I was unfamiliar with. For me, that time had not yet come. I froze like a deer in headlights until my mother rounded the corner; it was only then that I realized this would be an event that would affect me for the rest of my life.

Fast forward to my first year in college. I’ve started developing my own sense of self, a feat that was much easier away from the social pressures of a small town. I immersed myself within art, more specifically, artistic and self-expression. The obsession of observing how people chose to portray themselves, both intentionally and unintentionally, came on strong.

Facets of the persona was one of the main reasons I took an interest in psychology during my early college career, and that paired with the fact that being in a new place and surrounded by complete strangers meant that I could become anyone I wanted. I could become a new version of me without the collective memory of my peers who had known me for at least half a decade.

This led me to do my own experimentation with who I was comfortable with being. I grew my hair longer, dyed it lighter and tried new styles that would be considered scandalous or provocative back at my home of coal and summer block parties. I had developed a love for vintage pin-up styles, such as high-wasted shorts paired with long-sleeved shirts, and classic rock era inspired pieces, such as black pleather pants and red lipstick. What I considered natural for myself, they considered obscene.

It’s an inevitability I can never escape. No matter where I go, city or small town, I am always aware of the collective eye that is upon me. It is not because I am conceited, and it’s not because I’m paranoid. The reason I always have this nagging voice in the back of my head is because it’s how I’m trained to be.

During my orientation week of college, the school had a seminar about sexual assault. For me, it was considered a nightmare topic and something that no one really talked about. To be sitting there in a crowd of my fellow students and hearing an account from a survivor made me shift uncomfortably. It always seemed like one of those things that always happened to someone else on the news or in the city; it just didn’t seem like reality.

Unfortunately, the truth is more staggering than that. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center states that 25 percent of women will be sexually assaulted while attending a higher educational institution. Naturally, this made me feel sick to my stomach, and I wondered how something like that could ever happen or how people could get away with it. Unfortunately, the answer was gradually revealed to me over time.

When I would return home with my new found individuality I would get my fair share of “You’re going out in that? People will talk!” and “What crowd do you think you’ll attract wearing that kind of shirt.” I shrugged these remarks off because I refused to let the fear of others keep me caged.

It was almost closing time at a local sports bar I waitressed at between semesters. The air conditioner had yet to be installed, and that, paired with the heavy dinner rush, left me with an aching, well, everything, and a layer of sweat covered my face. Needless to say, I was not a pleasant sight to see. My hair was disheveled with pieces poking out from my ponytail, my make-up had all but melted off, and a dot of wing sauce stained my powder blue shirt. My outfit wasn’t anything to stare at, just hand-me-down denim shorts that were loose enough for me to move around quickly in and a large sized t-shirt even though I usually wore a medium; I was not dealing with any clingy fabric in the heat of mid-July.

I went about my usual closing routine and made sure each table had been wiped down. The bar had a decent crowd buzzing about and I had a single table left that was finishing up its meal. I was relieved to be able to leave on time that night, then cursed my luck when a party of about eight walked in and sat down at the largest table we had next to the waitress station. It looked like I, as well as the kitchen staff, would have to stay another hour after all.

I put on my best server smile and distributed menus while asking what they would like drink. At first they were very friendly, they asked about personal recommendations for what to order and, since I didn’t differ much in age from them, about why I decided to work there and what I was studying in school. The conversation was nice, I found out that they were all from Maryland and were visiting a friend for the week, but all I could think about was my dinner waiting for me in a to-go box and my plush bed to ease the tension on my back.

As it neared midnight, the fatigue took over even more. After making sure all of their drinks were refilled, I worked on ringing up the second-to-last table left, at the customer’s request. At this point, we didn’t have registers at the waitress station, so we were equipped with a copy of the menu and a calculator to come up with a total. As my eyes scanned the menu for the first item on their ticket one of the men from the late party walked up and stood next to me.

He towered over me, which is saying something, considering I stand at about five-foot-seven, and was broad shouldered. That being said, he wasn’t intimidating. His blonde curls hung loosely over his blue-green eyes, and he had a smile that seemed to reveal nothing but friendly intention.

“You’re a really good waitress,” he complimented. “What are you doing after you get done your shift?”

I glanced at him and gave him a friendly smile before turning back to my calculations while answering that I was going home to rest because of having work the next day at another restaurant in town. It was a lie, but questions such as the one he asked usually lead to some type of invitation that I did not feel keen on accepting. I instead tried to nip it in the bud and avoid the process altogether by saying I was busy, but he was more persistent than that.

“You should come and hang out with us. We’ll show you a good time,” he offered, causing me to shake my head yet again with a mumbled apology.

“Here,” he said as he took my ticket out from underneath my pen, causing a long line of ink to go across from it. He took the pen from my hand and scribbled his phone number down on the back before handing it to me, in case I changed my mind.

I accepted the paper to be polite, but on the inside I was very irritated. I would have to make a whole new ticket for my other table because of what he did, and I already wasn’t overly thrilled about having to stay an extra hour-and-a-half because of them. My intention was simply to rip up the ticket once they left and throw it out, and I thought that this would be the end of our conversation. He still stuck around.

“You have really pretty blue eyes. Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

“I do, actually. We’ve been together for almost a year now,” I said with a smile as I grabbed an unused ticket and began copying the order down. At this point in the conversation, I was answering without looking in an attempt to convey that I had other things to focus on.

“Okay. Call me if you change your mind about going out. Have a good night, Molly.”

I finally looked up to tell him to have a good night as well and that I hoped he enjoyed his visit to Pennsylvania. After all, being rude never got anyone a good tip at the end of the day. My focus returned to the ticket and from the corner of my eye I saw him walk away, or so I thought.

I suddenly felt him press his body up against my back, pinning me up against the waitress station. My body froze in fear as one of his hands wandered up and rested on my hip. With his weight on me I was powerless to try and wiggle out, and my voice caught in my throat as his lips connected with the nape of my neck. I almost blacked out as my thoughts went back to that night near the railroad tracks so many years ago.

There was something predacious in the way he looked at me. My childish bambi eyes stared at him as he peered down at me from the top of the hill, and something in his gaze was just wrong. It was a look I was unfamiliar with. For me, that time had not yet come. I froze like a deer in headlights until my mother rounded the corner; it was only then that I realized this would be an event that would affect me for the rest of my life.

The grown man stood there, eyeing my eleven-year-old body in a Catholic School Cheerleading Uniform. He turned to my mother, but was, thankfully, too far from me to be able to distinguish the expression on his face. I’ll never forget what he looked like, though.

“Hey, lady, you’ve got a hot daughter,” he slurred drunkenly as he began descending the hill toward me.

My mother rushed me inside and immediately called my stepdad down from upstairs and contacted the police. There was little I remember about the rest of that night other than my mom kneeling down in front of me to see if I would be able to tell the police what the man said, the dissatisfied look on my mother’s face when the police said that they’d incarcerate him for the night but wouldn’t do anything further, and how the man apparently claimed that he wasn’t a child molester but that his uncle was.

I don’t remember my stepdad running out of the kitchen to chase away the inappropriate customer for I was still too stuck in my own mind to notice. He had noticed the look of complete shock and discomfort on my face and immediately came to my rescue. Thankfully, my boss, a good family friend, and the other employees were kind enough to finish serving the table (or what was left of them since half left with their friend) for me as I hid back in the kitchen.

Once they were gone, I entered the bar where a previous co-worker asked me what happened. I explained to her the situation, and she simply shrugged and said that I was a pretty girl and asked me what I expected with the way I looked.

The question threw me. The only thing I expected was respect. Too often, I hear people say that, when a girl dresses a certain way, it’s confusing to anyone who might deem her as sexually attractive. I, personally, never found it a hard concept to grasp; if you don’t have outright consent of someone saying it’s okay you don’t touch them, especially if it’s someone you’ve just met.

This enabling and pretending that these actions are acceptable is the root of a much bigger problem. I wish it were an isolated instance, but too many things have happened to both me and my friends that prove the normality of it. I could talk about the time someone snapped a picture of my chest with their phone angled to look down my shirt while my head was turned. My boyfriend at the time blamed me for wearing a shirt that should be worn in the bedroom, even though it was simply a low-cut halter top that had been bought at a regular retail store.

There was every time a customer or person at a bar or party had made a grab at any part of my body as I walked through the crowd and succeeded, or the two boys who I made clear I was not interested in but bragged to my friends about what they were going to do to me once I wasn’t in earshot. Perhaps I should bring up sitting in my dorm with the windows open and hearing a group of men, who may or may not have been students, chanting “No means yes! Yes means anal!”

We feel like prey any time we go out; my friends and I walk in a protected herd that looks out for each other and helps when a potential threat is encountered. Though it’s nice to know that they have my back and for them to know that I have theirs, it is bittersweet because this type of protection has become a necessity. Society teaches us how to not get raped, which is useful, yet we hear less about telling people to not rape.

Who am I to say anything about rape when I have never been sexually assaulted? This was a question I grappled with for a while because I felt like I had no right to speak about such issues. However, I believe that’s part of the problem. Most of the time, incidents of sexual assault are covered up or victims choose not to speak out. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, it is the most under-reported crime in the nation, with over half of the victims remaining silent.

Why does this happen? Many of the times, people who do choose to come out are met with victim-blaming. Some of the first questions asked are “Were you drunk?” or “What were you wearing?” If the victim answers yes or happened to be wearing something that could be deemed as sexy or provocative, their credibility drops greatly.

It’s hard to determine the truth in a case where it’s one person’s word versus another, and too often people either accuse the victim of being a liar or try to brush it under the rug as if it were no big deal. In reality, the number of false rape accusations is somewhere between two percent and 10 percent (according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center).

Sometimes, other survivors have to become the voice for those who are speechless, but why should we just leave it to them. This was another thought that I mused for a while. Why is it that the only people who we hear talking about this issue are survivors?

The Civil Rights Movement in America had multiple nationalities join in their cause, and there were significant men that propelled Women’s Suffrage. Just because a cause has a primary group of people doesn’t mean that they have to be the alone one’s. They don’t have to speak alone.

When telling a friend about writing about this topic, she shared with me that she began sharing different online articles pertaining to sexual assault after the release of a documentary titled “The Hunting Ground.” The film focused on the issue of campus rape and how it is often covered up and would rightly make anyone feel either enraged or sick to their stomach. After sharing about two or three articles, she was approached by her father and asked if she had anything that she had to tell him. Her sudden involvement led to the familial suspicion that she had become a victim.

Before things can change on an institutional level, they have to change on a personal level. No one is ever “asking for it” and clothing isn’t some type of equation that can be thought out to determine whether or not the assault was justified. Replace blame with sympathy. It remains a quiet plague because of the personal nature of the crime, and over half of serial offenders are being allowed to find more victims (so says the National Sexual Violence Resource Center). One of the most sickening things about this is the fact that it doesn’t have to be this way. Change could come if we can get rid of one simple phrase;

They were asking for it.