Why rape should be talked about.

“People out there must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it's the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves, as I have done.” – Tori Amos

Rape should be talked about because silence kills people.

Rape itself causes shame, guilt and self-loathing. When a rape survivor is pressured by society to keep quiet, because it’s ‘not a nice subject’ for people to hear, this adds tenfold to the survivors shame. Shame that, the rapist should feel, not the survivor.

I want to talk about my experiences with rape for a number of reasons; I don’t want it to ‘win’, I want to show other survivors that they can pull through, I don’t want to add to the silence. I was disowned from my family because I was raped.

My greatest achievement in my life so far, is winning a rape court case. In my case, they gave me a 2% chance of winning, and that was after I actually managed to get my case past the preliminary hearings; where most cases are thrown out. I made 13 charges; out of which 10 were eventually thrown out as part of a plea bargain.

5% of rape cases are actually taken into court. 1% are convicted.

During trial you have to retell every scrutinizing detail of your rapes with complete strangers over and over again, and have your every word pounced on and made to seem like a lie, while they try to argue that you were a 7 year old lolita whore.

I only won my case by finding a childhood friend I’d told on the schoolfield when I was 9, and by her agreeing to testify. Then the defence went on to plea bargain.

People think that because rape is supposedly a ‘sex crime’, that it shouldn’t be talked about. It isn’t; it’s about power shifting; the idea is that the victim is left powerless.

I'm a rape and incest survivor. I lived in an abusive home for 13 years, until I was willingly kidnapped out of it. I lived with my father, a single parent and my brother. My Dad slowly grew more unstable, and I grew more responsible for him, often making simple moral decisions for him when he was unable to. We were close as he was emotionally manipulative, and I felt more and more like his parent. I ended up taking him to court when I was 17, managed to get my case through with no evidence, and the other girls that he'd hurt wouldn't stand up as witnesses, yet expected me to win the case. My Dad's family took his side and I lost most of them as they didn't believe me, yet had known all along what had been going on. The father I'd grown up with and loved more than anything, claimed in court that I was a lolita whore. I won with 2% odds with me, after a surprise witness from my childhood showed up. Still, the case had to be settled through a plea bargain, and 10 charges out of 13 were dropped!

I want to show survivors that it's possible to come through these experiences and still be strong. I want to speak out, as I've seen through friends who've shared similar experiences, that silence and shame can devastate people. And I refuse to add to that statistic.

Even after I destroyed my father's life, I'm sure he'd be proud of me. He always told me I could do anything, and I'm always going to believe that.