Tell Someone: Why you should 'Come out' about Sexual Assault

Please take the word 'should' in the title loosely. I do not believe in telling trauma-survivors what they should do. However, when it comes to suffering in silence I have a strong opinion; don't do it.

Coming out about my sexual assault in a national campaign, #ShoutOut4Survivors, has had me thinking a lot about survivorship and all the twists and turns I experienced after my rape. In particular, I've been re-experiencing the time I told one of my best friends that a man I was dating had raped me a week before.

I talk to people about rape every day it seems. As a counsellor specialising in trauma, sexual trauma is a common 'presenting issue' with the clients on my caseload.

I have worked with two major grassroots, community-based victim services, which are contracted by the Ministry of Justice to support the healing and needs of victims of crimes.

Like so many people I too carry the visceral knowledge of what it is to have survived rape. I have experienced countless incidences of gendered violence in my lifetime. I see it everywhere, and yes, I talk about it every day.

I continued to date my rapist after the assault. I was young and woefully ignorant of the realities of rape: I thought a rapist was a stranger, I thought a rapist was someone I would never date. I thought a rape was something horrifically physically violent and you'd know it happened because you'd be covered in injuries. When I was 18 and this man raped me, I had no idea that the myths of rape listed above would paralyse me from action. In my paralysis I became ashamed, self-blaming, and alone.

It wasn't long before the pain and dissonance of this got me away from him. It was very jarring on all levels, I was in a state of shock about who he was, who I was, what life was about. I felt deeply scarred and humiliated. My body felt strange, I had uncomfortable sensations often, which I know now are anxiety.

Telling my friends helped. I had people who knew. They knew and they didn't ask me why I kept dating him and question that I waited until I ended things to tell them what he had done.

It's incredible to me now what a perfect reception this was. I mean, I do sometimes wish that one of us had known about women's centres or counselling, something that would have sped up aspects of my recovery process. Really though, these people respected me. They gave me space, heard me, were sorrowful,

and were THERE. I see now from media coverage of rape cases, and from the social alienation some of my clients face that support systems are not always adequate to provide the caring response that I received.

When I spoke to Charmaine de Silva on the Simi Sara show last week I wanted to show how imp0rtant it is to know the realities of rape. Our communities need to know what's really going on in order to both prevent and respond to sexual assault.

First: most of us know our rapist. It's our dad, our husband, our brother, or our friend. Knowing the person often entails have feelings for them that are not straightforward, which  causes immense difficulty in processing the reality of what happened.

Secondly: most of us go into survival mode during the assault and don't realise it. The most common survival response is not fighting back, and dissociating in some way from your body. Our bodies and minds act in ways that are not guided by our thinking or intentional action: this is the neurobiological reality of much trauma. It's after the fact, sometimes years later, that we piece together how survival kept us safe during the rape.

Thirdly: a huge proportion of rape and sexual assault is drug-facilitated. Rapists and molesters know that alcohol, some prescription drugs, and illicit drugs make it easier to control another person's body. They use this to their advantage.

Fourth: survivors experience a vast and endlessly diverse set of reactions after rape. Rape Trauma Syndrome describes this well. There is a lot of self-blame, a lot of chaotic feelings, confusion, or in some cases no feeling at all. In some cases survivors minimise what happened and question if it was consensual sex or not. This is all healthy and normal. It's rape. Things that are this horrific cause intense disruption.

When my boss asked me to be part of Faces of Courage #ShoutOut4Change I had mixed feelings: fear, excitement, responsibility, joy, curiosity, and the list goes on. What would happen if my trauma history was known to more people?

What has happened since I've come out? Two people in my life have come out publicly as survivors. Two people who told no one. It takes my breath away. I've gotten to thank the friends who heard me back when I was a teenager. I've gotten to open up about my survivorship to friends and family who didn't know, allowing them to understand me better and know more parts of who I am. And perhaps most importantly, I have had a larger arena in which to address the realities of rape.

The greatest gift that I've received from being part of this campaign? I see that I am resilient! I am capable of healing, year after year, in new and beautiful ways. If this campaign is any indication of what is to come, I have more love, respect, care, education, empowerment, and support to look forward to.

This is why you should come out about sexual assault. Pick the person well, maybe it's someone like me who works in the victim service's sector and knows how to provide the kind of care, respect, empowerment, love, education and support survivors deserve. Maybe you have a safe person to tell in your support network. Whoever it is, I want you to know that there is so much healing you can look forward to, especially if you have help. This has been my experience.