I’ve been sexually assaulted more times than I could count. In fact, I had grown so accustomed to being sexually assaulted that for some time I didn’t even realize when it was happening to me. It literally took me years of therapy, self-introspection, self-love and an understanding of my rights to change how I looked at the way men interacted with me.

I’d love to tell you that my new found sense of self awareness and knowledge of how men casually assault women has changed my life. It hasn’t, just this year I had to cut off what I thought was a good male friend after he continued to attempt to sexually assault me with what he thought was casual flirting.

In light of the recent video released by the Washington Post that shows Donald Trump engaged in conversation promoting rape culture, I felt the need to speak up and share my own story. Today won’t be the first time I’ve talked openly about my assaults but today is the first time I’ve sat down to write about them in full detail and to even let myself digest my experiences as a whole.

In a show of full disclosure, I have to tell you that not only have I been assaulted repeatedly but my repeated sexual and emotional abuse has led to my mind splitting off. I am legally emotionally disabled, suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety disorder and dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder in layman’s terms) At times I am so disturbed by my past sexual assaults that I can’t function, I can’t sleep and for the last few days, I can barely think.

Last week, I wrote an article on Trump’s misogynistic comments that blatantly amounted to admitted repeated sexual assaults. I not only listened to the audio but watched the video. The video, in my opinion, was worse than the audio. The video showed Billy Bush pandering to Trump’s misogyny as he encouraged Days Of Our Lives star Arianna Zucker to hug “the Don” and himself after they exited the bus. I cringed as he pushed himself between she and Trump and then coerced her to walk with them both, between them. AS they walked he asked the obviously uncomfortable Zucker if she could pick between him and Trump who she’d choose to date. She declined to answer and he continued to prod her for an answer. She finally submitted and said both.

I have replayed his conversation over and over in my mind, aloud with friends and in private with my therapist. Some are shocked that these statements were made public. In a way, I’ve been saying Thank God. Thank you that someone is finally acknowledging what men like Trump, Billy Bush and even Bill Cosby have known for years. One, that if you’re rich enough, famous enough, or hold a higher position of power over someone, you can practically do what you want to them. Secondly, that when it comes to someone of high stature it will always be your word against there unless there is audio or video proof. It also made me hope that more people will understand that this behavior is prevalent, not only among the elite, but with men in everyday society as well.

I started this piece by saying I’ve been sexually assaulted more times than I could count. Let me give you some background on my experience with sexual assault.

I was born to a teenage mother who had a baby to keep a man and didn’t get him. I was punished my whole life for her rage against him. By the time I was 7 years old I had already been through more trauma than a child should have. By the age of 7 when my molestation started I had already been abandoned for almost a year by my mother. I had already been beaten regularly by my stepfather who was murdered in our home in front of me at the age of 6. My mother received a large settlement after his death and turned to drugs. I, already neglected and suffering emotionally from dealing with my stepdads abuse and bloody death, was like prey to her best friend.

My mother had met Mike when we lived in the house prior to the apartment where my stepdad was murdered. After my stepdad's death, Mike became the first of many male boarders who would move into our home. Within our first year in the new house, my mom was almost strung out, drugs were certainly more important than her kids. One day my sister and I were left unattended and we accidentally set the house on fire. The fire caused us to move in with my mother’s boyfriend family. There, I was sexually abused for the first time that my mind will allow me to remember.

I will never forget the first time I can clearly remember Mike touching me. He smelled like beer, he always smelled like beer. My sister and I were forced to share a bed at the house we stayed at after the fire. I slept at the bottom, she at the top. One night while we were in bed sleeping I started to feel something moving around in between my legs. I remember moving around and mumbling something, thinking it was just my sister’s foot. He put his finger to his mouth and shushed me.

I remember that first time clearly, over the next 6 years he molested me repeatedly, making me touch him, perform oral sex on him. He did the same to me. As I got older it went from don’t tell to him also giving me money and special gifts which my mother never questioned. Instead I was constantly called a thief because I always had money. Because of the volatile relationship my mother and I had, I doubt I ever tried to tell her about her best friend until I finally blurted it out one day at 14. I was so tired of always being accused of lying about every word that came out my mouth I had learned to hold so much in.

It was just days after my 14^th birthday when my mother walked in on me performing oral sex on one of my female friends. I told her I had just been doing what I was taught and finally I told her everything her best friend has been doing to me since I was just 7. As usual, she called me a liar. As per her usual habit of emotionally abusing me, instead of seeking legal help or getting me mental help she proceeded to tell her friends about my “lie.” One of them who wasn’t as screwed up in the head as she was told her if she didn’t report my confession to the police he would. So she did. My mother stood against me in court, next to Mike, my abuser. She told the judge I had always been a habitual liar and that he loved me like his own child. She told the judge he’d never do anything like that to me.

When your mom tells the judge you’re a liar and there is no proof you’ve been molested because the jerk never penetrated you, you lose. My mother continued to allow Mike to visit our home, to invite him to dinner and expect me to sit at the dinner table with him. Mike continued to be her friend until her death of AIDS 3 years later. She died possibly believing her best friend never molested me or knowing full well he had since day one. She never liked Me, who knows. At least my family found out that I was telling the truth shortly after her death when Mike propositioned my 11-year-old sister. She smartly recorded him on my grandmother's answering machine. He eventually sent my sister money in the mail and disappeared from our lives.

The year prior to my mother’s death I was raped in my home. For years I looked at it as my fault. The year I told my mom about Mike is the same year she found out she was HIV positive. We didn’t live on our own much longer after that and ended up moving into my grandmother’s home. My grandmother was very strict and a little nutty but totally lovable. She didn’t like people in her house. My mother had gotten to a point where she often wasn’t home for days or weeks at a time. She’d pick up the younger two kids and stay at her boyfriend house (yes my HIV positive mom found love and a man who stayed with her until death) I was left in the care of my grandmother most of the time.

My ex-boyfriend and I had continued our friendship after we broke up. He had started leaving early to meet me at my house to go to school from there. One day I was running late and against my grandmother's rules I let him in. I had him wait in the living room while I went upstairs to get dressed. I don’t know how I ended up on the floor in the living room but at some point Robert ended up raping me on the floor. I stayed there for I don’t know how long, minutes or hours, eventually I managed to get up and drag myself to school. I was a mess mentally, I tried to tell someone I trusted. I told my drama teacher and begged him not to tell anyone, he did and then they wanted to call my grandmother. I was already abandoned practically by my mom, staying with my grandmother who would rather I wasn’t and if she knew I had even let him in the house my whole life was over. Besides, this was a year before my mom died and Mike propositioned my sister. At this point I had already been branded the little girl who cried rape. My mother had made sure no one would believe me about Mike and I had learned to keep my mouth shut.

I recanted my story and said I lied, that he had never raped me. This was 1998, Robert apologized for raping me in 2013. He said he never realized how much damaged he had done. He had continued to use social media to stalk me over the years. In fact, after he apologized and promised he would stop bothering me online, he reached out to wish me a happy birthday last year. That’s what every rape victim wants, to wake up and see the face of her rapist in her Facebook inbox.

My late teens and my 20’s found me drifting through life, selling my body when needed to eat and provide for my child. In my mid-20s I managed to fall into the adult entertainment industry with the rising popularity of the internet. I didn’t realize how much I was opening myself up to the possibility of being assaulted again. Thankfully I haven’t been raped again but being in the industry I HAVE been sexually assaulted over and over.

I have never gotten along with females and always had male friends. It took me way too long to realize that many men couldn’t handle being friends with a woman they have fantasized about. Problem is, as a woman, I am fully fine with being friends with a man I’m in no way attracted to.

I am the girl who has been innocently hanging out with a friend and fallen asleep to wake up to them having sex with me. I am a professional model who paid a well-known photographer to shoot me and while my eyes were closed he whipped out his penis and started advancing on me. I opened my eyes in time to catch him before he touched me with it. I am a woman who has had a man put his hands on her body randomly on the street.

I am a chronic pain suffer with fibromyalgia who can’t get a massage from a friend without fear of being raped. There have been too many times that I have had to fight a man off me because men think massage equals sex. When they find out it doesn’t, they stop pretending to even care about my pain. In a one-week period in 2012 I actually had to fight 3 men off me. I pulled a knife on the last and chased him out my apartment. Imagine the horror of getting a massage so relaxing you doze off only to wake up to a man inside of you as if you gave him permission. I go to the spa these days, a safe environment to get a massage. I have ONE friend I trust not to violate me.

For some reason, men seem to think because I have nude images available online that means I’m a whore or that it’s okay to sexually assault me. Somewhere, men have picked up the idea that a woman’s consent is implied if she hasn’t specifically said no. In many cases, like Donald Trump “joked” they don’t even wait for an answer they just move in. When Trump said “let me pop a tic tac in case I start kissing her…. Beautiful women I just can’t help myself. I start kissing them, I don’t even wait for them to. I can’t help myself.” I cried. So many men exhibit this same behavior, as if a woman is a sexual object here for nothing but their pleasure.

I had to cut off what I thought was a good friend this year after he tried to bully me into having sex with him and then sexually assaulted me when I didn’t. We had been friends for 3 years though he was 10 years younger than I at 25. In the 3 years we had been hanging out a few times a week I had started to consider him one of my best friends and told him. He never had a serious relationship and had a hard time even meeting girls for dating and sex.

In August of last year, I told him I was going to give him some in December for his birthday. I figured by then he’d have met someone. It didn’t happen, and come December and his birthday I, being a woman of my word kicked out the pity sex. I told him up front it was a one-time thing, my body as a gift to my friend who I really cared for. Of course, it wasn’t pleasurable for me, I had no interest in him sexually. He kept pushing and begging and trying to make me feel bad so it ended up happening twice more. I didn’t want this so, finally, I put my foot down.

In an effort to avoid hurting my close friend’s feelings I told him I was starting off the new year sexless. That I wanted to focus on myself and I didn’t not just want to have sex with him, but with anyone. For the next two months my “friend” passive-aggressively tried to bully me into having sex with him again which I refused. We had arguments constantly about what I was choosing to do with my body, and how I was no longer a real friend because I didn’t want to have sex. I put distance between us, not seeing him for almost a month. When I let him come back around he pretended that everything was cool and we’d be able to be friends.

We were watching a movie and I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up and he was fingering me. He said that I seemed to want it because I had moaned. He also was rubbing himself. Last straw I cursed him out and put him out. He proceeded to call and text me, insulting me. Three years gone down the drain because after I gave him my body to him of my own volition he thought that he had constant access to it whether I agreed or not.

I pretty much avoid men now, I don’t date and I don’t trust men. The few men I interact with have been around me forever. I interact with men online and even then I don’t trust them. I know too well that to many men I am an object, a sex symbol and just a body.

The fact that so many people are willing to look past statements like “when you’re rich you can do anything, grab them by the p*ssy” or “I just kiss them I can’t help myself” and not see them for what they are, comments on sexual assaults kills me inside. He tried to downplay his comments to “locker room banter” and many athletes spoke out against that label. Yes, men talk about sex and women in locker rooms, not sexual assault.

In today’s society women are still publicly ridiculed when they speak out about being raped and assaulted. Though times have gotten a liltlee easier, in many cases, it’s still her word against his. Hell, I was assaulted by an ex in 2004 who tried to use my past sexual history as an excuse for breaking into my home and trying to kill me. Even when the victim of other crimes, a woman’s sexual history is always used against her. We learn to stay silent, to hold it in.

So many of the women who accused Bill Cosby of sexually assaulting them have said it was Bill Cosby, who would believe them. That was in some cases 20-30 years ago, I’m sure they thought that in 2015 and 2016 their stories would not be met with such ridicule, they were wrong.

We have to stop excusing statements and actions like this. We have to speak out every time we are violated. We must fight through and report them. I should have reported the friend who fingered me. I had told him so many times I wanted nothing more than friendship, like many women, I allowed myself to feel guilty because I let him in and my guard down. His violating me was not my fault, I know it wasn’t. It is not on me to carry the shame of their deeds, it took me so long to learn that.

Every time I turn on the T.V. or internet and see Donald Trump I can’t help but wonder just how many women he’s gotten away with assaulting. I wonder if things will ever change. Will us women ever be safe?