Trigger warning:
Rapists chummy yearbook photo all over your Facebook wall.
Absence of mug shot.
Trigger warning:
Rapists are not just the scary stories they tell you when you are young.
They are not just the shadowy form in the alley.
Trigger warning:
Rapists look like upstanding young men with shiny teeth and scholarships and legs that can kick really fast in water.
Trigger warning:
Media calls her drunk.
Asks her what she was wearing.
Asks her if she led him on.
Trigger warning:
Media calls him an all star.
Trigger warning:
Rape cases always lead victims back to their own crime scene.
Trigger warning:
6 years old.
Trigger warning:
Kind teenage neighbor.
Trigger warning:
7 years old.
8 years old.
I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans.
The first time.
Trigger warning:
Dumpsters and purple doorknobs and yellowed teeth and blood on the kitchen floor.
Trigger warning:
No one will believe you.
Trigger warning:
I will kill your family.
Trigger warning:
You are worth nothing.
Trigger warning:
Sprained wrists.
A water bed, "Scary Movie" and wrestling.
6 months in prison.
I have spent 12 years in the prison of my PTSD after what was done to me.
That is a sentence that I did not choose.
Trigger warning:
She said yes at least once.
Trigger warning:
Passed out means NO.
Trigger warning:
Drunk means NO.
Trigger warning:
They will call her a slut.
They will say that she got lucky.
But being a victim of rape is like having handcuffs around your lungs,
like caution tape wrapped over your mouth.
They do not want to hear you.
That's why so many rape kits are abandoned in police storage.
It's why so many victims say nothing.
Why Brock Turner was only given 6 months in prison.
Trigger warning:
Sleepless nights.
Daytime makes for a perfect blanket of safety.
Trigger warning:
Parties are as dangerous as Russian roulette.
Trigger warning:
The panic attacks will come for you when you least expect.
When you are at work in your quiet office.
When you are sipping bubble tea at the coffee shop.
When you are lying in bed at night almost asleep and
the darkness shape shifts into his face.
Your own personal nightmare re-crafted for you every time you close your eyes.
Trigger warning:
Rapists don't look like anything.
Trigger warning:
They look like your best friend's brother, like your teacher, like the police officer.
like your neighbor or uncle or aunt or boyfriend or stranger.
Trigger warning:
There is
No warning.
