I wrote this post earlier this year. It's not intended to answer the question of "why don't women report?" That question has been empirically answered. I wrote the post so that people can understand what post-rape trauma actually looks like. And so other victims feel less alone.
We do not do a good enough job educating people on post-rape trauma, as well as how self-blame unfolds in the minds of victims. Trigger warning: this is post is about rape.
I was raped by two men when I was 19. After the rape, I went back to my apartment in Paris. Everything I did was robotic. As if my higher-level cognition was completely shut off. There was not one moment when I considered calling the police. I wasn't thinking anything. I was just moving.
I took a bath. I'd learned from Lifetime movies not to do this. It destroys evidence. But, again, it was as if my brain was completely shut off. I remember crying in the bath, then stopping, turning into a robot again. I looked in the mirror briefly. My neck was covered in emerging bruises. But alongside the bruises were hickies. I had hickies all over. I did have a thought then, as I looked at the hickies, which are typically associated with romantic sex, not violent sex: "Maybe they thought you wanted it."
Then I took a very long nap.
When I woke up, I very robotically got dressed. I walked to the door to leave for my daily routine. I would take a train to the park and read my book and then I would take a long walk. But I couldn't open the door. I went from roboticism to extreme, animalistic panic. I looked at myself in the mirror. Something wasn't right. I couldn't bear to see myself.
I washed and dried my hair again. I changed my clothes. I went back to the door. Couldn't open it. I looked at myself. Hated what I saw. I washed my hair again. I changed my clothes again. I still could not open the door. I went through this loop at least five times before I ended up on the floor, sobbing and hitting myself. Not once during any of this did I have a real cognitive recognition of what had happened to me or why I was responding this way.
This "looping" I've described is very common in post-traumatic stress. Something terrible has happened. A crack in the world, in yourself. You need to fix the crack. But you can't. And so you "loop." I developed OCD after rape, as many people do.
Finally I was able to leave, but not out of willpower. The opposite, in fact. I was addicted to cigarettes. I needed a cigarette. So I was finally able to propel myself out of my apartment, across the street, to the Tabac. Everything was throbbing.
Then I got on the train and went to the park. I didn't read my book. I watched the ducks in the pond and cried behind my sunglasses. I didn't have a single thought. I just cried.
After a bit, I paid ten cents to use the bathroom and, while I was in the stall, I looked at my thighs. I saw bruises there. They looked like finger prints. There were no hickies. I stared at the bruises for a very long time before, for the first time that day, I thought, "You were raped."
I then continued on my day. I started to walk back to the Latin Quarter, which is where I met my rapists and was raped. I didn't think about this. I was in robotic mode. But then, as I looked across the bridge, I found I could not move forward. Just as I could not leave my apartment. I went into a cafe instead. And, there, as I drank my coffee, I thought, for the first time, "You might get pregnant."
I realized I needed the 72 hour pill. I also realized I didn't know the word for "rape" in French. I needed the internet to figure all this out. So, again, I essentially propelled myself through this horrifically vibrating world towards the internet cafe I always went to. An internet cafe that was about a 5 minute walk from the apartment where I'd been raped.
This all sounds crazy, right? It's not crazy. It's exactly what happens to many people post-sexual-assault. It is the nature of post-traumatic-stress disorder. You have been through the incomprehensible. Your brain is protecting you from processing it. Sometimes you are a robot. And sometimes you are an animal. But the irrationality did not begin with you. The irrationality began with the rape. A violation your brain was not built to process.
At the internet cafe, I looked up the word for "rape" in French (it's "viol"). I also looked up how to say "72 hour pill" (It's just "72 hour pill," but in French). Then I opened my inbox to send a letter to my best friend. She was worried about me.
I started to write to her. I typed, "I was raped," then sat there, staring at the words. It was then that my cognition came fully online. Horrifyingly online. Because as soon as I started thinking, truly thinking, every single rape myth I'd ever absorbed during my 19 years of life flooded my mind.
"You were drinking." "You think you were drugged, but how do you know you were drugged? If you weren't drugged, it might not have been real rape." "You were wearing a backless halter top and a short skirt." "You went with them willingly." "You danced with one of them." "They didn't have a weapon." "Maybe they thought you wanted it." "Why did you destroy evidence by taking a bath?" "If it was so bad, why did you take a nap?" Then the worst, most shattering thought of all: "You didn't fight." And, finally, the devastating conclusion: "Maybe you weren't really raped at all."
I deleted "I was raped" from my email to my friend. Instead, I wrote, "Something very bad happened."
There was nothing confusing about my rape, factually. There was no real reason for me to doubt myself. But the world had taught me to do so. Just like it has taught every victim to do so. This doubt is one among many reasons women do not go to the police.
I eventually did tell my friend what had happened. She did tell me to report the rape. I refused. Why? Because I thought the police would think exactly what I had thought. That I was asking for it. That I was a slut. A girl who'd had sex then cried wolf. It's not like I thought it through carefully, either. I just rejected the idea entirely. Not reporting is itself, sometimes, a survival instinct. Rape is so humiliating. The police present the threat of further humiliation.
What I would like people to take away from this is that all of the behaviors I described above are utterly typical in post-sexual assault trauma. The bath. The nap. The looping. The repetition of my routine, even though it ultimately brought me close to my rapists. The difficulty naming rape as "rape." The overwhelming self-doubt.
Again, all of the above contributes to non-reporting. And do you know what happens next to victims?
A few days go by, your cognition slowly starts to come online, you truly begin to grapple with what happened to you, and a new "doubt" is added to the pile of doubts you already had: "You didn't go to the police. So maybe you weren't really raped at all."
The world implants all these doubts in the minds of victims before any assault ever occurs. Today, as we discuss the allegations against Graham Platner, you can see how this "implantation" occurs. Every time someone asks, "Why didn't she fight?" or "Why didn't she go to the police?" doubt is created in the mind of a future victim.
The questions are themselves the reason "why."