Why didn’t you . . .
Why couldn’t you . . .
How could you . . .
These are questions that survivors of sexual assault hear time and time again. They hear it from family members, friends, investigating officers – there are countless times when this question is asked in the days after a sexual assault.
The one person who asks those questions most often, though, is the survivor.
It’s been 38 years since my attack, and for the vast majority of those years I have replayed the moment in my mind with completely different scenarios and outcomes.
I’m sure, if somebody were to invent a contraption that would allow us to turn back time and undo that which was done, we’d jump at the opportunity to go back to that moment in our lives and replay the situation using the knowledge we have gained and the experiences we have been through SINCE that fateful day.
But here’s the thing – we can’t. There’s no way that we can spin the clock in reverse, put the dates back on the calendar that have fallen away, and go back to that moment in time when we were assaulted and change the outcome.
Many times, the questions are asked as if we, as survivors, are somehow to blame for what happened to us. Is there something we could have done DIFFERENTLY to prevent the attack from happening? Is there something YOU could have – or, as they like to accuse (without saying it), SHOULD have – done to prevent this attack from occurring?
And the answer is, quite simply – no.
When I was attacked as a 9-year-old boy, I didn’t have any of the life skills that we teach our kids today to avoid contact with strangers or evil people. The idea of Stranger Danger wasn’t something that our school officials thought needed to be taught in a small town of 800 people like the one I lived in.
Maybe my naive nature as a little boy was to blame. I trusted that people who said they were going to do something would back their words up with action. If you said you were going to be home for dinner at 5:30, you were home at 5:30. So, in my mind, when my attacker wouldn’t give up my bike and offered to give me a ride home, I assumed he would ride my bike back to my house and then walk home from there.
When we came to a stop behind the swimming pool – several blocks away from my house – I realized that not everybody did as they said. My attacker held all the cards in that moment. He had all the power. He was a foot taller and much bigger than I was. I could run, but he would catch me. I could scream and kick, but he would easily silence me. The threat of my life being taken from me made me an easy prey for him.
In other words – there was NOTHING that I could do to prevent the attack from happening. It’s a reality that took me a long, LONG time to grasp and understand – and it’s a reality that you, as a survivor, need to understand . . .
TODAY!
RIGHT HERE!
RIGHT NOW!
It took me the better part of 35 years to come to terms with the fact that what happened to me was not my fault. You can not believe the freedom that came when that weight was lifted from my shoulders. When I finally was convinced that I shared zero blame for what happened, it felt like being let out of my own personal dungeon of darkness and despair.
You also share absolutely ZERO blame for your situation. The blame falls ENTIRELY and UNEQUIVOCALLY upon your attacker. Nothing you can do, say or feel will change what has happened.
However, there is something you CAN do to change the situation . . . and you can begin right now by accepting that unquestionable truth that IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT.
— It doesn’t matter what the relationship was (or is) between you and your perpetrator.
— It doesn’t matter what the circumstances were at the moment of the attack.
— It doesn’t matter what their social, financial or religious standing is (nor yours, for that matter).
ALL THAT MATTERS is this – your perpetrator is 100 PERCENT to blame for the experience that you two share. It is ENTIRELY on the perpetrator, and there is nothing you could’ve/should’ve/would’ve done to change that.
We can not go back and change history. Nothing we can do, say or feel will alter what has happened.
What we CAN do, however, is change the way we view ourselves in what happened, understand that what happened is not our fault and move forward with our lives and understand that life happens and we can only live it forward and comprehend it in reverse.
You did all that you could do – now do something for yourself and leave the blame where it deserves to be placed – on your perpetrator.