It’s touched me so much that so many people recognise his crime and aren’t taking it lightly.

As a teenager, I went through a similar thing (twice, with two seperate people) but I was not raped and I kept it very quiet because those that I did confide in had responses such as “so he didn’t actually rape?”, “well you shouldn’t have got so drunk”, “if you were unconscious, it’s not like you really knew what was going on anyway”..

I’m not going to go into details, but what happened to me shouldn’t happen to anyone.

It doesn’t matter if someone gropes you or rapes you, sexuality assault has serious psychological affects on the victims. If someone is restraining your arms behind your back, ripping your clothes and throwing you on the ground after you tell them you’re not interested.. that is not consensual and just because you ‘don’t get raped’ it doesn’t mean that you should take that incident lightly.

I wish I knew then what I knew now and I didn’t blame myself or let other people tell me that I was the problem because I was too embarassed to speak up and tell the actual story. Instead, I let the boys tell their own story, how they wanted to tell it and obviously they made out it was something that I wanted.

It did affect me for a long time, not just because the experience was traumatic, but because of the nasty words and comments I received because I was too quiet to stand up for myself.

I hope that sexual assault and consent can be taught to kids because not every sexual experience is consensual and I wouldn’t want anyone to go through the same thing I did.