When I was 15 I ended up in an emotionally abusive relationship, I didn't realize till many years later that being manipulated into doing things you don't want to do is wrong. "If you love me you'll have sex with me" is not a sign of a healthy relationship.

When I was 18 I got my first job, a waitress. I spent the next 5 years being both physically and verbally harassed by chef's and customers alike. I lost count of the number of times I went home in tears because someone had grabbed my butt.

When I was 23 I was raped by one of my friends. At the time it happened I didn't even realize it was rape. I didn't say stop or no but I also did not react in any way to what he was doing. I lay perfectly still on his bed and watched the movie we were supposed to be watching together over his shoulder, too scared to move. I cried in his bathroom afterwards because I hadn't wanted it to go that far but didn't know how to make it stop. It wasn't till 8 months later when a guy I had met on tinder had refused to have sex with me because he could tell I was uncomfortable that I realized guys could tell that if you didn't want to have sex with them. It took me 8 months to work out that someone I had known for 10 years had raped me.

When I was 23 an employee at a popular tourist spot put his hand down my bikini bottoms while I was swimming in a lagoon while on holiday. We had never met before and we hadn't even spoken before this happened.

When I was 23 I was asleep in the bed belonging to a guy I had just had sex with when I felt him spread my legs apart and start getting ready to have sex with my sleeping body. He only didn't because I woke up.

When I was 24 I was molested and assaulted while I was passed out drunk on a couch at my friend's place. I woke up part way through and cried and begged him to get off me but he didn't move.

When I was 25 I woke up one night at a friends place to find a guy who swore he had feelings for me on top of me trying to get me to kiss him.

When I was 25 I was cornered in a bar by one of the managers at the company I work for. He pressed my back up against the wall and forced me to kiss him, I tried to push him away but he was twice my size and wouldn't move. I cried in the uber home.

In my last year of school I decided to get a driving license. Everything was sort of ok from the beginning. Me and a group of people would go to the driving theory lessons and because I was with a bunch of other people I wouldn't care as much about the sexual jokes that the teacher kept on telling. I just knew that I was feeling really uncomfortable. So I thought that it is all ok. Then, after a week or so we started having one-on-one driving lessons. I tried being positive about the fact that I will have to sit in a car with an older man that I barely knew. With a man who constantly enjoys making me feel uncomfortable being around him. He would always laugh or smile after making nasty jokes even though he could always see that that stuff is not funny to me. One day he asked me to get out of the car and while walking around the car he would ask me questions about it, he would show how the car worked and it felt like a nice practice-learning moment. Or so I thought. I answered the questions correctly and he spanked me. I was in a shook. I didn't say anything. I didn't do anything. I continued going to the lessons even though I always felt unsafe and disgusting. After some time I started having nightmares about him doing even worse things to me. Somehow I felt like I was slowly going insane. I started asking myself constantly all these questions about it. Was it my fault? Was I wearing something revealing? Did I make him feel like it is ok to touch me in this or any other way? I couldn't stand myself anymore so I went to the driving school. He wasn't there this time. His wife was. She worked there with him. I told her that I didn't want to continue learning in their school. She kept asking me why and I couldn't hold all of it in so somehow I just told her everything. I started crying and she kept on whiping away my tears till I calmed down. Then...she asked if it all was just in my head. She didn't believe me and said that maybe I just didn't understand his joke. She made me feel like it wasn't even real. That it didn't even happen. I walked out of the school feeling even worse about myself. Even worse about what happened. When I told my family about it they started asking similar questions. I can't even express how lonely it all made me feel. I still feel like that and I don't know if it will ever change. I am still afraid to see that man in my hometown. I don't know if I will ever feel safe there or anywhere else.

Nineteen, brace yourself this is a big one… I came home, I was visiting family and my best friends. I just bought a brand new outfit, we were going to a ranch party after all. Cute, girl you got this! A black pencil skirt, a cute corset, black vans (cause the punk girl in you was still there, you were just a baby), and a black cardigan because it was a cold night and you hated your arms. Trash can punch? Sure I’ll try it—oh it’s actually pretty good, has one red solo cup. “Hey Steph, can you get me some more punch?” I place my second cup down- it’ll be okay it’s for a quick second, no one will do anything there are cups everywhere. Why am I so drunk? I only had 2 cups. Jake walks up to you, oh no not jake the ex you were so madly in love with, he asks, “How are you?” with those dimples you can’t get over- what he has a bottle?, no you’re too drunk, but there no way you only had two. He offers you a shot, you take it, why not? You’re not drunk there’s no way… what seemed to be minutes later. “Steph, Steph, are you okay, it’s me jim?” I’m crying, I’m on the hood of a car I can’t remember it’s faint. I hear from a distance “get eve- that’s her best friend” Me telling myself get up you’re fine but I knew deep down I wasn’t fine. Eve comes, “guys help me- pick up her top, pull down her skirt, why is her thong to her ankles help me get them on her. Who did this to her? Why is her face scratched up? Wasn’t she with josh? Where is he?” My cardigan gone, shoes missing, cellphone forget it---- eve tells me “I’m so sorry, I’m taking you home you’re okay now”. It continues to be a blurr, I’m home now, eve wakes my sisters up, my mom, they tell her “she’s okay we’ll watch her now thank you”. I’m violated, I’m checked it doesn’t look like she was raped maybe touched but not raped (my sister’s words). I go to sleep, wake up what happened? Oh you just got too drunk at a party, Eve texts me explains what happened how they found me and who found me. I’m in denial I’m fine no biggy I was too drunk, I leave back to San Antonio I’m fine- I tell my friend Katie, she takes me to the hospital, tells me this isn’t normal and requests a rape kit. I panic I didn’t want to know I told her I couldn’t I just couldn’t. She understands we leave. The dreams start to come, it’s that night all over again, I lost jake where did he go? I’m looking for him he said he would watch me, I’m looking saying I love him, a black car a guy telling me I’ll help you I know him. Get in back its cold we’ll wait here for a bit. I get in –stupid Steph whyyy. What are you doing please get off of me, again I froze, tears running down my face in that black car that stupid black car. Holding my mouth so I can’t scream, but I couldn’t scream, I’m frozen. I wake up. The same dream, it never changes till this day I’m haunted.

I'm 83 but the trauma of being sexually abused by an uncle when I was 15 is as fresh as if it happened yesterday. I remember every detail. It traumatized my self respect which I have never totally regained and it definitely imposed a negative element into my 20 year marriage.....fear I'd be found out by my husband as though it were my fault. I was afraid to say anything...a 15 year old girl up against this war hero that the family idolized. oddly enough he died the month I met my future husband and it appeared to be a suicide. go figure.

I have been molested, harassed, assaulted stalked and raped.  

My earliest memory is of being molested on a changing table at 18 mos old. My mother came into the room, the lights were off, and a foster brother told her he was checking my diaper. She left the room. Thirty some years later during a very difficult conversation she told me that she suspected that he was molesting me in that moment. This foster child continued to molest me while he continued to live with us for several more years. Eventually he was moved to a new home and the reason given was theft. He was invited back to our home regularly for holidays and even vacationed with us several times over the years for weeks at a time.  

As a teenager and into my early 20’s I was stalked, threatened and assaulted by the son of a friend of the family. He would drive 200 miles to wait at my car in the university lot, park himself across the street from my house, show up at my vacation home. He threatened me, my father and attempted to kill himself multiple times. My father lay all blame on me. I must have led him on. Somehow that made all of his actions acceptable.  

Eventually I heard that he had been hospitalized. Then I heard that he was married. My parents went to his wedding. Upon returning home my father joked, “I guess you were right. His wife looks just like you…”

In my 20’s, any number of times, I have been groped, grabbed, sworn at and/or threatened while out with friends or walking a main street. Men I had thought I had known well enough to trust often made assumptions and pushed themselves on me, stopping just short of assault and angry.  

At a good friend’s house party I was met by a member of her crowd with a smile and a, “Hi, I’m Tim and this is my penis.” as he exposed himself and shoved his penis towards me. He later asked me to his sister’s house to walk her dog. I declined. Another man I met at a different house party followed me home from the party, to the point where after making many evasive turns he was still behind me after I pulled in to the local police department’s lot, getting out of the car and declaring that he ‘really liked me’ and ‘only wanted to talk’ until I walked inside the police office when he left quickly. In the first case I was told to lighten up. In the second, chastised for overreacting. John was a super nice guy and I could have gotten him into trouble. I should have known that he was harmless. I was a snob because he was overweight. 

Again in my 20’s I was raped at a dude ranch on vacation in Upstate New York. I was away with my girlfriends, riding horses during the day, drinking and dancing at the bar in the evenings and of course flirting with the cowboys, all around. I had too much to drink. My friends left me at the bar with the cowboys and eventually I came to in the bunkhouse with him on top of me. I struggled and said no, attempting to get him to stop and get away. I felt lucky when he stopped attempting to force sex on me and instead forced his penis into my mouth.  

The next morning was a blur of teasing comments about the time I got back to the room and how jealous the girls were that this cowboy chose me. I was a virgin. I was embarrassed and shamed. I was called a stuck up bitch when I couldn’t look at him the next day. I never let on that he had forced me.  

It wasn’t until 20 years later, just after the election of Trump, when I was telling my husband about this incident, that I acknowledged and recognized it for what it was. Rape. Despite the fact that I would have immediately known it as such, had any other person told me this story at any time….  

Over and over and over again I was not protected by people I should have been able to count on for protection. My parents, over and over again. Friends, again and again.  

Me too. Me too. Me too… Over and over. Again and again.