April was Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month. If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I chose to bring awareness to this issue by posting a new letter every day during April, from a student who had been raped or molested. I wish I didn’t have enough letters to be able to post one each day for an entire month. But, not only did I have enough, I could continue posting letters every day for months sadly.

Rape and molestation are happening at such epidemic proportions that I believe only bringing attention to them one month out of the year is doing a disservice to the issue. So, I’m purposely choosing to write a post about it after the designated month is over. I guess it’s my way of rebelling against a culture that doesn’t always acknowledge the severity of the problem.

Quiet as it's Kept

When I wrote a post to highlight Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month last year, I shared a story of a young lady who had been date-raped two years earlier and had never reported it until she told me. Since then, I’ve continued to see a pattern of girls keeping their sexual assault/rape a secret. Even if they do tell someone, many times they don’t want to press charges or get counseling.

Unfortunately, many girls blame themselves when they are violated. They tell me they don’t want to press charges and risk going to trial and being interrogated as if they were at fault. They also don’t want to get counseling because they don’t want to replay the incident and the trauma and shame that comes with it.

Earlier this year, a high school junior who was raped by four guys in an abandoned house when she skipped school during her freshman year, wrote the following:

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