Climbing Out of a Deep, Dark, Hole
Hi everyone! I am very excited to join Lauren in this adventure. It has been my dream for some time to help bring awareness, healing, and hope to real live people, and I am happy to say that I am
WYR welcomes blogger Elizabeth Halpin!
I’m excited to announce that When You’re Ready is no longer a one woman show – and to welcome Elizabeth Halpin as a blogger on whenyoureready.org! Elizabeth will be blogging about her own experience as a survivor of sexual assault and also collecting stories from around the web and posting them here.
JKL’s Story: Naive and Hormonal
I still find it hard to not think it was my fault, to not think I was leading him on, to not think I was stupid to be there alone and perhaps I was but a normal person would not have date raped me…..they may have taken advantage in a "normal" fashion but I would have been coherent and able to fight it off, call for help, run away…whatever.
WYR Partnership with the Pixel Project
The When You're Ready Project is excited to announce a partnership with The Pixel Project. During the month of May (in honour of Mother's Day) the Pixel Project will feature 5 stories from the WYR Community as part of their Survivor Stories series which features daily stories from survivors (with links back to our community).
The Pixel Project has been around for over 5 years and raises awareness and funds to end all forms of violence against girls women: not only sexual assault but domestic violence, female genital mutilation, human trafficking and others. It is an amazing organization and I highly recommend you check it out.
#TheresNoPerfectVictim
I started writing this post last Wednesday – the day the hashtag #TheresNoPerfectVictim was trending. That was almost a week ago. My intention was that, at this point in the post, I'd list the top 10 (of many more) reasons why I didn't report. And now I realize I'm not ready. Like so many survivors, there is more to the story that you don't know – that you may never know. Fifteen years later, I'm not even ready to tell you why I didn't report.
K.Y.’s Story: Twice, never reported.
The next day I left to my own city and got a rape kit done. The clinician there informed me that because alcohol was involved " it would be more harm than good to report this to the police." " You'll just end up spending a year or more in court reliving the experience, and you likely won't get anything from it"
A Jacobs’s Story: The Abuse was Bad – the Opinions Even Worse
When I did crawl into bed he started to stir, I mentioned that I was home and safe. As soon as I had made a comfortable little cocoon for myself he was pinning me to the bed with his knees forcing himself in my mouth.
Elizabeth’s Story: I Hope Everyone Can Heal From This
I spent eight hours in the hospital getting evidence documented, there was an 18-month "investigation", and no charges were ever laid. I was told that because I willingly went to my attacker’s apartment, it would be too hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
Anonymous Story: Scared Little Girl in the Basement
Turning off the lights and putting on the movie Speed, she retreated to the living room where she completely forgot about us. How the event came about is a mystery to me, but the four boys eventually ran out of things to occupy them and decided to experiment with me. Some older and some younger than me, they pinned me down, removed their and my underwear and simulated a gang rape.