Sexual assault can be a terrible burden to bear, in any person's life. You, however, do have power over your destiny and can consciously choose not to feel like a victim.
It is common these days to roundly deny any and all responsibility on the part of the victim in their assault. This is exactly the view this course has taken and will continue to take. After all, rape and sexual assault victims are often re-victimized when they aren’t believed, or when people suggest that actually, they deserved everything and must have secretly asked for their assault.
It’s such a tricky issue that people rightly avoid questioning . Nevertheless, we have to ask ourselves why it is that some women experience rape again and again and others never do. We have to ask, without resorting to blaming the victim, what can be done to avoid similar assault in the future.
Let me hurry to say that I won’t be suggesting “wear modest clothing” or “don’t drink” as ways to prevent sexual assault. Rather, this section is about asking difficult questions about whether you are doing everything you can to keep yourself safe and well.
Many women report that they regret not listening to their intuition. Rather than trust that their gut was trying to warn them of danger, they worried about being perceived as rude or impolite. It sounds ridiculous, but a friend confided in me that she knew something wasn’t right when an acquaintance offered to drive her home, but she was afraid of offending him and so went along, where he later assaulted her.
If this is sounding relevant, it might be time to commit to listening more closely to your inner alarm bells and trusting your own appraisal of what’s happening around you. Perhaps you can find patterns in the rest of your life, where you defer your own judgment to others, feel pushed or coerced, or tend to put others’ wants ahead of your own. Part of your healing process may be to set up firmer boundaries.
Sadly, many women are assaulted by the people they love and trust the most. Alarmingly, many women may decide that what they experienced wasn’t really assault since it happened in the context of a relationship.
If your assault came from someone you knew and trusted, you may obviously want to ask if such a person really belongs in your life. Understandably, you may be deeply invested in such relationships – especially long-term ones, where finances are blended or there are children – but assault is assault.
Ask yourself if you’d be happy to endure any other kind of crime from someone who is supposed to care for you. Would you continue to date someone who stole from you? Would you accept a spouse who did the same thing they do to you to someone else? Sexual assault in a relationship is never isolated, never a mistake and very seldom a single occurrence. If this sounds like you, part of your healing may involve getting rid of harmful people in your life – and paying close attention to not getting entangled with similar people in the future.
This last point may be a little difficult. Many therapists who work with abused children know that abuse tends to propagate. Children who are abused may grow up to do the same, or act out against their younger siblings in damaging ways. Children who have their boundaries and sense of normalcy eroded, can have difficulty with being assaulted later on, as adults.
Why? Well, some theories suggest that such children will not have good models of what healthy, normal relationships look like. They might have poor self-esteem, and they may subtly project an image that predators can sense – and take advantage of.
If assault, abuse and rape seem to be a theme in your life rather than an isolated event, you might like to ask if you have deeper work to do. Are you bearing the assumption that you are “damaged,” unlovable or unworthy of protection? This attitude can keep you in a nasty cycle where you gravitate towards people and situations that are not in your true interest.