I WOULD like to talk about the secondary assault that I experienced when I dared to be brave enough to talk about what had happened to me.
I was attacked by someone I knew, and whom I trusted, as a friend and brother.
I blamed myself for what had happened, pushed the memory as far away as possible and decided NEVER to tell anyone. So the first secondary assault came from myself.
Eight years later, when someone I knew was counselling a woman who had been raped and had spoken about blaming herself, she commented to me about how it was strange that women blame themselves for being raped.
My memory was unlocked and I blurted out that I knew what that was like and recounted my experience and who it was that had raped me.
This person was completely gob-smacked when I related my experience and who the perpetrator was.
We decided that I should tell family and close friends. This is when the next secondary abuse happened.
Most women don't want to believe that they can be raped if they “behave properly” – so, in other words, if a woman is raped it must be because she behaved in a way that caused it. So this leads to the self-blame and also others blaming the woman for what happened.
The first woman I told was my older sister and her response was “Don't tell anyone”.
Some further comments were “Why didn't you scream?” and “Why didn't you bite him?”.
When the attack happened it came out of the blue, and I was stunned and completely paralysed, and could not do anything.
The next person I told was someone I thought was my closest friend and she said: “What did you do to cause it?”
So that shut me up for a further four years.
It was when the “friend” told me she was having a party and would be inviting “everyone”, which meant also the perpetrator, that I was motivated to take action and get truth and justice.
I phoned Rape Crisis and the woman who answered was the second person who believed me without judgement.
All the wonderful people who assisted and counselled me at Rape Crisis were amazing, with lots of patience to listen to my story, as well as empathy and truthful advice.
I decided to lay a criminal charge.
This is when the worst secondary assault started, and went on for four years during the legal battle, until I decided to settle and “shut up”.
I was warned his version would say it was consensual and he would be let off the hook; and that is exactly what happened.
I was also told that I was making a fuss about nothing, about something that had happened many years before, and that it wasn't really so bad.
Once he was let off the hook, I was told by mutual friends, who were trying to get me off the perpetrator's back, that on paper he was innocent.
It was suggested that I needed psychological help, because actually I had a mental problem, and was imagining this s**t that happened.
I still didn't give up. I had a wonderful male advocate as well as Rape Crisis who helped me to find a team of legal women who fought for me.
The original director of prosecutions (DoP), who had thrown out the case, was replaced and the new DoP decided to reopen the case.
It was at this stage that the perpetrator decided to settle and gave me a confession and an apology; my part of the deal was never to talk about this.
So you may well ask why I did not pursue the criminal charge and take the matter to court?
After all I had experienced, over the four years of legal battle, I felt there was every chance the truth would still not be revealed.
I was also threatened by the perpetrator's lawyer that if I took it to court and I lost, then I would be liable to pay his costs – which would have meant we could have lost everything, including our house.
So I took the private confession and chose not to push for justice. This meant I did not get justice for all the other women that the perpetrator allegedly attacked as well.
Lastly, I experienced secondary abuse from an Anglican priest, who knew I had been raped, and who, on two separate occasions, told me of women who had said they had been assaulted by men they knew. The priest maintained that these accounts weren't true and that both the women were psychologically unbalanced.
Finally, I would encourage victims to never give up in trying to obtain truth and justice and so move on to becoming survivors. But I hope, as I've tried to illustrate, they will choose very carefully whom they tell.
The only group that I can highly recommend is Rape Crisis.