[BrandyHagz]

There really are two schools of thought, when it comes to rape situations. Believe it or not, what you talked about here isn’t anything new and it’s really pounded into the head of women who have been raped, sometimes as soon as hours after the perpetration by well-meaning professionals who truly believe that you can ‘put it behind you’ and ‘live like it never happened’.

I tried that. It didn’t work out so well. I mean, for a while, sure, I was able to ‘move on’ and ‘get on with my life like nothing happened’ – but then I got into a relationship with my husband and *bam* I wasn’t ‘ok’ any more.

For me, I wasn’t able to heal until I had faced the demons of the event, realized that I didn’t need to tell myself it never happened, but instead, admit that it happened, remind myself that it was nothing *I* had done wrong and then ultimately faced the anger, rage and pain that resulted from the original attack.

I call my coming to this realization my ‘secondary attack’ because not only did I have to deal with and cope with all the emotions all over again, I also had to get to a point where I no longer accepted the blame for what had happened to me – blame placed on me by being forced to denounce what had happened to me, like it had never happened, when the reality was, it had happened.

I think, like any number of circumstances (adoption included) you can ‘move on’ but you can only ‘move on’ for so long. You do, eventually, have to face the situation and deal with whatever emotions you’re feeling. At least, most people do.

In rape situations, this is an especially damaging mantra – because if you’re being told these things, it means you’re not talking to police. It means your rapist is getting off free and clear. It means no one pays for doing what they did to you. It also means that he is free to do it again – and as long as women are being told to stay silent and act like it never happened, rapist will walk our streets and rape our daughters.

This is an especially emotional topic for me, because I bought into the “it never happened, I’m ok” mantra that the police counselor sold me and in the end, my perpetrator walked free and now I live every day with the knowledge that had I had the strength and support to go against what I was being told, he wouldn’t have gone on to rape at least three more girls (and they were girls, children) – and the countless unknown girls/women he was never caught hurting – because they too got the same talk I did.