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parents who immediately took action. They brought her to a therapist, who told her she was in a state of shock, and tried their best to support her in every way. The Palo Alto High School Adolescent Counseling Services, after talking with Tina and her family, filed a police report on her behalf but she chose not to press charges. But many of her peers didn’t respond like her parents did. After telling a few friends, she started to get texts and calls from the people who were there that night. They told her to stop talking about it, told her it was her fault. Then she started hearing from the rest of her circle of friends, who only made the situation worse. “Everyone was making me feel like just a lying slut who got herself in this situation,” she says. “Even though I knew that’s not what happened, that’s how people were making me feel.” Names like “attention whore,” “liar,” “drunk” and “slut” were thrown around in the gossip that surrounded her as she walked across the quad at school. Tina had a bit of a reputation, and the classic “slut-shaming” came into full effect as soon as people learned she had been drunk that night. “These are people I used to consider my best friends,” she says. “[They] treated me like a crazy person.” She needed a break from school to deal with her shock, and the time away from her peers didn’t hurt either. But when she left, they followed her using the anonymity of social media. She received a barrage of Facebook messages and Tumblr posts telling her that she was just looking for attention. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) says the majority of sexual assault survivors
RAINN says the kind of treatment Tina received from her peers will only make matters worse for rape victims. Kerry Kulstad-Thomas, an Assault Prevention Intervention Specialist at the Rape Crisis Center of the YWCA in Silicon Valley, stresses the importance of a good support base. “Loved ones play a large part in a survivor’s healing process,” she says. “It’s really important that they get support from the beginning.” RAINN offers the following advice for family and friends of sexual violence survivors: “Listen. Be there. Don’t be judgmental.” Tina says that’s not at all the kind of support she received from her peers. “It wasn’t even what happened, it was more people’s reactions that’s made this so hard,” Tina says. “When there’s support it doesn’t matter how awful things are, you can get through it, but when there’s not it makes it 100 times harder.” With all the backlash and rejection Tina received, she wanted to stop sharing her story and give in to the pressure others put on her to forget the rape. But she hasn’t, because she thinks that’s exactly the kind of attitude keeping rape culture alive. “I hope that speaking up, saying, ‘Hey, this isn’t okay’ will make someone change their minds, and then maybe something will change,” Tina says. “Even if rapes don’t stop happening, I hope the support afterwards will [improve].” Kulstad-Thomas says developing real support for the victim is exactly what our community needs. “The first step is realizing that it is an issue our entire community needs to come together on,” she says. “[We can do this] by fostering a really honest and more open communication between women.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted: • Find a safe location away from the perpetrator • Know that what happened was not your fault • Preser ve all evidence of the attac k • Repor t the attack to law enforcement immediately • Seek medical care as soon as possible • Recognize that healing from an attack takes time (from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)