Trigger warning: Talk of sexual assault and suicide.
*Names changed to protect privacy
All I knew about *Celine was that she was a “slut.”
She had slept with most of the guys in our college and even had a gangbang.
On campus, people gave her a side eye and gossiped. They scooted to the side as if she were a virus.
One time, our eyes met for a brief moment before she quickly looked away. As she hurried past me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had missed an opportunity to help her.
But I didn’t help her, and I should have.
Little did I know I would be the next victim.
Believe me
My boyfriend’s circle of friends were your typical college bros who drank beer, watched football, and hit on girls.
Their favorite pastime was standing on the campus hallway, rating girls as they passed by. Sometimes, they would dare each other to ask a girl out.
That’s how I happened to meet my boyfriend.
I was an easy target, having never had a boyfriend before. Later, I discovered that a few hundred dollars was riding on whether I would accept a date from him or not.
By the end of our two-year relationship, I had lost a handful of friends, myself, and my reputation.
It was like he had groomed me to be the woman he wanted me to be — the obedient, submissive, and agreeable girlfriend of his dreams.
I didn’t know it then, but it was going to get worse.
It was the Super Bowl season. My boyfriend had left to visit his family abroad, so one of his good friends, *Cody, invited my girlfriends and me to his house to watch the game.
After half-time, my girlfriends and I got bored of the game, so Cody invited us to smoke a blunt in his room, something we had done before.
We chatted, laughed, and watched animations on his computer. After that, my memory is fuzzy.
Next thing, I woke up in my dorm room with a huge headache and a sore vagina, and a flashback of Cody between my legs as his friends egged him on.
There were numerous missed calls from my boyfriend. When we finally talked, the first thing he said was,” “Cody told me everything. You cheated on me!”
I told him about the flashback and that I tried to lift my head and my body to stop him, but I couldn’t. That after that, I blacked out.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Don’t ask me why I said sorry. I regret it to this day.
That day, my boyfriend broke up with me, but not before hurling every degrading word imaginable.
I now became that girl branded a slut around campus. I couldn’t bear the mean eyes, the snickering, the whispers.
I transferred to another college to get away from it all. I repeatedly dreamt about the assault, feeling the helplessness of being unable to move my body.
I told no one and erased the incident from my memory.
It took me six years to graduate instead of four. Meanwhile, no one pointed a finger at Cody and his gang. Their deeds were neatly swept under the rug.
It wasn’t until the #MeToo movement went viral in 2017 that I realized what happened to me was sexual assault, most likely rape or even gang rape.
It dawned on me that Celine was dating a guy who ran in Cody’s circle. Maybe those groups of guys targeted naive college girls.
Now I knew what she had gone through. Perhaps no one believed her, like no one believed me.
Perhaps she, too, was sexually assaulted and made to believe it was her fault. Perhaps her girlfriends abandoned her like they did me.
Alcohol doesn’t rape or sexually assault. Men do.
I wish I had reported the assault to the police.
But back then, I was ashamed of what happened. I thought I brought this upon myself by drinking and smoking with the guys.
Besides, I knew the cops wouldn’t believe me. Cody was charming and convincing. He was studying law and had a knack for persuasion.
My story is in no way unique. My assault happened in the early ’90s, but we continue to see this pattern of victim blaming today.
Alcohol is a “contributing factor” in a large majority of sexual assaults on college campuses.
This means that the most likely scenario for sexual assault on campus is men taking advantage of women who are incapacitated by alcohol. That was the case for me and I’m assuming for Celine.
Sure, if a woman didn’t drink in a place surrounded by men, perhaps she wouldn’t get sexually assaulted.
But sexual assaults don’t happen because of the alcohol. They happen because a man decides to sexually assault a vulnerable woman.
And focusing on the alcohol consumption of the woman is victim blaming.
Just because a woman is incapacitated doesn’t mean she’s giving consent or that it’s an invitation for sex. It’s an invitation for someone to drive her home so she’s out of harm’s way.
Sounds like common sense to me.
The reason why I didn’t associate Cody with sexual assault is because many victims don’t associate rape or sexual assault with someone they know.
I trusted Cody and his friends. They were my boyfriend’s close circle of
Called unacknowledged rape, a whopping 1 in 6 female college students have experienced it.
But, get this, most victims know their attacker.
All this creates a false perception of consent, leaving the victim feeling like it was their fault for drinking alcohol. It’s made worse by those around her who invalidate her experience.
If I were raped by a stranger in a back alley, it would be more believable than if it was someone I knew. Both are horrific crimes, of course, but you get the point.
You might have heard of Audrie Pott, an American assault victim, who was featured in a Netflix series called Audrie & Daisy in 2016.
In 2012, Audrie was 15. She went to a party where she got drunk. She was dragged upstairs and into a bedroom, where three or more teenage boys sexually assaulted her.
They also used markers to draw and write on her body. They took her pictures and distributed them via their phones and social networks.
Audrie was relentlessly bullied by those who saw her photos and hung herself a few days after the incident.
Three teenage boys were arrested and served in juvenile court. They received no more than 45 days in prison because they were minors.
A civil case was filed by Pott’s parents, and they reached a settlement with the boys. Per wikipedia:
Two of the boys were required to verbally apologize in open court, admit again to the sexual assault, admit to their role in the death of Audrie Pott, agree to being filmed in a documentary, pay a combined $950,000, support the petition for an honorary diploma for Audrie Pott, and give ten presentations on sexual assault and sexting.
Bravo to her family.
I’m glad it went that far because most cases don’t. Countless cases like this leave me wondering what women must do to be believed.
Like it’s not enough that survivors feel tremendous shame and disbelief after being sexually assaulted.
Believe her
If I had received education about sexual violence in school, I would have been better prepared to recognize it.
But the bigger issue is that society continues to view rape as a minor problem and still believes survivors are, in some way, partially responsible for their assault.
I didn’t help Celine. No one helped or believed me.
If survivors were believed, they would be more willing to come forward. But, somehow, the woman’s actions are magnified while the guy’s crime is negotiated.
As of now, our society is still not ready to take sexual assault or rape of a woman seriously.
Just ask Audrie Pott, Daisy Coleman, Amanda Todd, Tiziana Cantone, Koo Hara, Kauan Okamoto, Pramila Tharu, Rehtaeh Parsons, Mikayla Bragg, Damilya Jussipaliyeva, Maksuda Begum, Nika Shakarami, and all the other thousands of women victims of male violence.
June Kirri is the founding editor of Bitchy. She writes about feminism, women, and motherhood.