With every article I read and every video I see in regards to rapists getting far-less-than-deserved prison sentences, I am equally enraged, disgusted, and saddened by our justice system. So much so, that I can’t even fathom how victims of sexual assault must feel every time they read or hear about our justice system failing yet another victim.

One in every six women in the United States has experienced attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. There will be people in this world who won't care. They won’t care if you can remember what happened to you or not. They won’t care if you were left for dead or if someone found you soon after your attack. They won’t care if you were completely inebriated or if you were stone-cold sober. They won’t care if you cry yourself to sleep every night or if you’re too numb to feel anything at all. They won’t care if you seclude yourself from everyone who loves you or if you find yourself jumping from stranger to stranger to avoid your pain. They won’t care if you’re emotionally stable or if you’re tearing your hair out because you’re so distraught. Some people just won’t care.

Screw those people.

If your answer to their question is not a yes, then it is a definitive no. If you were too incoherent to fully consent to what was being done to you, then it nevershould have happened in the first place.

Rapists across America, such as Brock Turner or Austin Wilkerson, have been granted leniency in sentencing from judges in fear of ruining their “bright” futures. Instead of focusing on Brock Turner not being able to swim or Austin Wilkerson not being able to graduate on time, why are judges not focusing on the traumatic experience and aftermath of their victims? Why are the perpetrators being shown mercy when their victims received none? Why does our justice system continuously fail the ones who rely on it?

Judge Robin Camp of Canada questioned a 19-year-old rape victim, asking her, "Why couldn't you just keep your knees together?" He went on to tell her rapist, after acquitting him, that "I want you to tell your friends... to protect themselves, they have to be very careful." Instead of reprimanding him for forcing a young woman's legs open on a bathroom sink, he told him that him and his friends needed to be careful and he needed to protect himself.

For those of you who defend rapists, the next time you hear of a woman being sexually assaulted, please ask yourself: How would you feel if it was your daughter? Your mother? Your sister? What if this was your best friend? Or your girlfriend? Or your wife? Would you be so quick to come to the defense of the one who hurt them? Would you claim that they "had it coming" because they had been drinking or were showing skin or walking home in the dark? Would you claim it was important to be sensitive to their rapist's future because "one bad decision" shouldn’t have such a long-lasting effect on their future? Even though that "one bad decision" has forever changed the way their victims view themselves, others, and the world in which they live?

Rapists, unlike their victims, have a choice. They choose whether they violate another human being, whereas their victims don’t choose whether they are violated. Stop defending and taking pity on them. Those who say that the victim "had it coming" have it the wrong way; it is the rapist who "had it coming" when they made the conscious decision to rape an innocent woman.

Some people won’t care. But I do, and there are so many others who do. We know that you did not provoke anything, and that none of what happened to you was your fault. You aren’t alone, and I am so sorry you have endured all that you have.

I am also sorry that our justice system has let you down in such a tremendous way. You’re worth more than what happened to you - you are more than what happened to you.

If you are in need of help or resources, please call 1(800) 656-HOPE.