I have about six draft posts I am working on at the moment about various different things however this is something that is more important. I am seeing an increasing amount of posts about mental health and sexual assault on my newsfeed and every time I see one my heart breaks a little more, for the men, women, and children that have experienced these things, it is heart-breaking and as a society we need to start doing something rather than blocking it and pretending it is not an issue. Sexual assault affects too many people; it is the time we start doing something about it.
Sexual assault is something I avoid talking about, I can count on my hands the number of people I have talked about sexual assault too and that isn't because I don't see it as an issue. It is because I see it as a massive issue but sometimes the hardest things to talk about are the things that you have experienced. I was sexually assaulted six and a half years ago. It took me six years for those words to even come out of my mouth and it took me five years to get help. That night my life changed forever and it is something I will never get back. I have avoided talking about this for all this time on eve type of social media because I didn't want people to know, I didn’t want it to affect friendships or potential relationships, it was something I was ashamed of for so long and I shouldn’t have been because it is not my shame to carry, it is his. If people don’t want anything to do with me because of what happened that night and because I am speaking out against it then so be it, I don't want anything to do with them. I have met some amazing people because of the position I was put in and I have seen sides of people that are caring and supportive because I have told them. Although some people have asked why I didn't report him, why I don’t report him and the reason to that answer is simply because I do not want to, I don’t want to put myself in that position. I have laid awake at night thinking about whether I will report it, I have talked to friends and gotten their opinions and some responses where "what if he does it to someone else?" people have asked that question as if I have never thought of it, as if I hadn’t laid awake at night thinking but what if, but at the end of the day I can't answer that question and I have to do what is best for me. I have learned that some people will have that what if response but some people have had the best response I could have asked for and told me to do what’s best for you and you need to do what will give you closure.
I have no current interest in reporting what happened to me or pursuing legal action simply because I don't want to and that is enough of a reason for me. I have to focus on myself and I have been doing that. I still struggle every day with what happened in ways that some people can’t even imagine, I don’t get nightmares anymore, but that isn’t to say I will never have them again, I still get anxiety going into places he may be but that doesn’t mean I will always have that. There are people I am close to that are close to his family, and that is hard to deal with, but at the end of the day, my safety and my mental and physical health will always come before any friendships.
This is the letter I wrote to the boy who sexually assaulted me. It is a private letter I wrote around a month ago in the early hours one morning, it was hard to write and I shed a lot of tears. It explains some of my pain and forgiveness and it is the most empowering and difficult thing I have ever written. There is life after sexual assault, and there are people that care about what happened to you. Speak out, don't stay silent. Sexual assault is not okay.
Dear the boy who sexually assaulted me,
I call you a boy because that is what you were, and it hurts me to say your name whether it is you I am referring to or not to say your name it physically hurts. You were a boy; I was a girl. The concept of sexual assault wasn’t something I understood, I didn’t understand that it could happen to a twelve-year-old. I didn’t think a fifteen-year-old could do that. I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand what you did. Now I understand what you did but I don’t understand why you did it, I won’t ever understand. I didn’t know if you knew what you were doing. You told me that your brother said it was okay; so it must be but you knew I said no, I said I didn’t want you, I begged you to stop, but you didn’t, you thought you had a right to take that from me, you thought you had a right to take my body away from me. I begged you to stop. I have never begged anyone like I begged you to stop. I remember trying to push you off of me, I remember you touching me, I remember you putting your tongue in my mouth. You took that away that from me, not only my first kiss but everything that comes after that as well. Now, when I kiss somebody I get flashbacks of that night, you not only destroyed that night for me you destroyed every kiss after that night, but with you, it wasn’t a kiss. I don’t know what I would call it, but it wasn’t a kiss.
It was a nightmare. I remembered for months afterward trying to convince myself that is was a bad dream, that it was a nightmare. I tried to convince myself you hadn’t done anything. I remember the first time I told anybody, it was my sister we were driving home to Te Arai and I asked her if she had ever had a guy force himself on her, she said no, have you? My reply was a simple quiet yes. She asked me to repeat myself, she pulled over the car and explained to me that what you had done, what you did to me was sexual assault, what you did to me was wrong. I already knew it was wrong that what you did to me wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know it was sexual assault. I was ashamed of what happened I didn’t tell anyone for years, not until we had moved away from you. (Edited)*** When I’m driving past my old house my mind is flooded with happy memories but (Edited)*** I am reminded of all those times you were in my childhood.(Edited)*** I knew you for my entire life, and you gave me every reason to trust you and within one night you took all of that away, I will never trust anyone completely again, my childhood my life was changed that night.
I have never felt like my body was completely mine since that night. Some days I feel so dirty, so disgusting that I want to just sit in the shower, I want to lay in the bath. I just want to disappear into it because it is the only way I feel clean, it is the only way I can get you off my skin, and the only way that I can take away that feeling of your touch. The water is one of the only places I feel safe and free from your grasp. I want to take off my skin, I want to unzip my skin and lay it down beside me as if it were a jacket as if my body was a piece of clothing. I want to scrub the feelings of your hands off my body, I want to wash my mouth out until I can no longer feel your tongue down my throat. I want to press delete on the pain you caused me, I want to delete every childhood memory I have that you are in. I want to delete some of my happiest memories because you are my worst memory.
Sometimes I wish I was never born I wish, I didn’t exist. That wish almost become a reality twice. You may have found out, that I tried to kill myself, twice. I self-harmed for years, and I only recently stopped. Suicide is something I still think about, I still think about the first time I cut my skin, that day I felt like I had gained a little part of my body back because I was inflicted the pain. I could control the pain I was receiving and for me, that was taking ownership of my body. You can’t see many of my scars now but the scar that left the biggest mark is one you can’t even see and that is the scar you caused, the pain you inflicted on me because you wanted validation from your brother.
I feel sorry for you; at times I hate you. There is a massive part of me that forgives you, hopes you are doing better and feels sorry for you but there will also always be a part of me that hates you, a part that doesn’t understand what you did, a part that hopes you suffer and you feel the pain that I have felt. But that part that holds that hate is so much smaller than the part that feels sorry for you. I hope you get the help you need, it whichever way that may be. I hope you get a job, earn a living, maybe even buy a house but there is no part of me that hopes a wife and family for you. I fear for your future wife if you do get married, I fear you will hurt her and she won’t be able to get away. I fear that you will have children and take away their childhood, I fear that they too will also want to step out of their bodies and leave it behind like a jacket. I ask you for me do well, get a job, get help sort out your life, but please don’t hurt anybody else. Don’t put anyone else through what you put me through.
I will never forget you, I can never forget you. You have shaped me into the person I am. I have many of my ambitions because of what you did to me, I want to help people because of you. My relationship with God is stronger than it ever was before because of you. I am stronger, kinder, more ambitious because of what you did, but it wasn’t because of what you did it’s because of the way I reacted to the situation you forced e into. The help I have gained, the people I have met, the experiences I have had, the pain I have suffered is because of my reaction to the situation you put both of us in.
You and I are the only two people that know exactly, what happened that night. As much as I try to forget that night it will forever be etched into my mind. I will be struggling for a long time to come to terms with what you did, I am prepared to fight the nightmares and anxiety for the rest of my life if it means I can help just one person, whether that be helping a sexual assault victim or perpetrator. I promise the lord I will help to make this earth a better place and provide people with the tools and support they require in order to make peace with themselves, I promise to forever acknowledge my past and use it in order to help others. My experiences that you have caused have made me stronger, so thank you for that.
Good Luck,
Paige
There is so much I have learned after writing this letter and so much I want to add, but by adding those things, it would be in many ways obvious as to who he is which I have no intentions of doing. This is to help victims; this isn't revenge towards him. Everyone deserves to have inner peace and to be happy. He may have taken that away from me but it is only temporary, my feelings towards him hold a lot of hate but I am not going to destroy someone as they have attempted to do to me. I have been working with my therapist going through this letter and I have made a lot of realizations and there are things I am working on overcoming.
I am sorry if you have ever experienced sexual assault. Please get help because it is out there, people do care and what happened to you, is not your fault.
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