Sexual assault is something that has been more and more talked about and brought to attention in recent years. College campuses have campaigns against sexual assault; young men have created date-rape drug proof nail polish to prevent it from happening; awareness for what it is and how to prevent it is circulating across the country more than ever before, but it is still a huge problem in our culture. It can happen anywhere to anyone-- college campuses, work environments, high schools, etc.

We've all seen the headlines and read articles about the Stanford rapist, Brock Turner, the 19 year old college student who sexually assaulted and attempted to rape an unconscious 22 year old woman in an ally. Some of you may have read the incredible letter she wrote to her attacker, divulging the harsh details of what he had done to her that night. The letter went viral because she told the world and her attacker, specifically, that she knows exactly what he did and how exactly it has affected her. But she is a survivor.

Someone close to me was the survivor of a sexual assault earlier this year. What started off as something consensual turned into something entirely the opposite. What she experienced was extremely traumatic. She has been recovering slowly but surely with guidance she has been getting, and she even took a big step and wrote a letter to her attacker. After sharing her letter with me, I was deeply moved by what she had to say. I asked her if she would agree to letting me share her letter in one of my articles and she said yes. She told me that it was very important to mention that it was the Stanford Survivor from whom she drew her strength and courage.

I am sharing this because this is the true testimony of someone who experienced something that happens to people everyday. However, many do not have the strength to share their stories with the world. But it is by knowing what this heinous act does to a person's body, mind, and soul that we can work towards preventing as many of these acts as possible.

Names, dates, and locations were changed to maintain the anonymity of the letter.

The content of this article may be difficult for some people to read, especially for those who have experienced sexual assault in the past.

John Doe.

I think I might actually hate you. The only reason I say ‘think’ is because hate is such a powerful, consuming emotion and you do not deserve the ability to emit it from me. You disgust me. You took more than I was ever willing to give. You took my safety. You took my sense of control. You took my peace of mind. You took my self-respect. And you took my ability to claim ownership of my own fucking body. All because you decided that your want to exert power over me, was more important than my own free will. You stole all of those things from me, but only for a moment in time. Don’t worry, I’ve taken them back.

You made me sick, you made me vomit, in my own bed and I was the one to apologize. I bore the shame for your excessive force. I never gave you permission to push my head down, to hold it there as I tried to push you away. But you held it there anyway until I was sick, until I lost my breath and gagged for air. I never gave you permission to wrap your hand around my throat. I never gave you permission to slap my face. But that didn’t matter to you, because you never asked. You did what you wanted and took my silence as submission. I never consented to being recorded, and I hope you burn in hell if you did so anyways. I told you NO. I explicitly set my limits from the beginning, I told you I wasn’t going to be your personal pornstar, I said NO. The thought of the image of my body on your cellular device, like a trophy or memento sitting on some fucked up shelf of your perceived conquests, still makes my stomach turn. I am not your conquest. I am not a foreign land you can invade, inhabit, exploit for resources and destroy. You don’t get to fucking claim ownership. I am NOT for sale, and I never was. But you didn’t care, thieves never care for the consequences of what they tryto steal.

I abhor what you did to me. You made me feel so many emotions that weren’t mine to feel. YOU should have been embarrassed. YOU should have been sorry. YOU should have March 4th, 2016 seared in your mind as a major, horrific happening that you caused. YOU should have spent the past __ months in agony, replaying your actions over and over again like a video reel on repeat, combing through each gesture, each phrase, each moment for all the places you went wrong. Those are NOT my burdens to bear; it’s not my wound to carry. Yet, you cut me wide open and I spent so many days, frozen in time, watching myself bleed out, until I could finally scream for help. You left scars both seen and unseen. Because of you, I had to recount the worst night of my life, over and over again to every voice of authority that asked. I had to relive that nightmare day in and day out. I had to listen to myself deny what you did, minimize my pain and blame myself for your actions. But guess what? I’m fucking done.

Did you know I had to get a forensic exam done? All I wanted was answers as to what happened, answers for what you did, so I went looking in places deemed expert. Like the sexual assault representative, who met me at the student health center of my university. Let me say that again, she met me at the student health center of my university. The university I worked so hard to be able to attend, the university I was meant to feel safe and strong in, the same university that I fought for my life to be able to return to earlier that year. The same student health center that was able to heal all of my prior ailments, but could not do a damn thing to fix what you broke in me that night.

She stayed with me while I waited to retell the physician conducting my exam what you did. She sat with me as the words fumbled out of my mouth leaving a bad, bitter taste behind, a taste that the sound of your name still elicits.

Next was the actual sexual assault kit, the collection of forensic evidence. I got to sit there, absolutely numb as they combed through my hair, ran their hands all over my body, searching for what you left behind. I tried to push it away, stuff it down, not feel it. Then they made me spread my legs, open myself up once again in your honor. That is when I felt it. The shame, embarrassment and violation of their necessary and legal probing, poking and prodding. Can you imagine how much worse it felt when those were your hands, working without my consent? Then, I heard her say to the assisting nurse, “there’s some tearing, can you see it with the camera?” I looked everywhere else but that lens as they captured snapshots of the aftermath. And once again, there were pictures of my most private self that now sit on a shelf in a backlog of untested kits, somewhere in the world, outside of my possession.

They asked me if I wanted to press charges, pursue you for your crimes, inform my school or at the very least file for a no-contact order. I refused. I refused because, the thought of you hearing how you left me, hearing that I spoke about what you did to me, and retaliating, shook me to my core. The thought of you ever seeing me again overpowered my entire being with paralyzing fear. But looking back now, I realize you are nothing to fear. You are a coward. You are a filthy, lying, manipulative predator void of all remorse or responsibility for the things you did. I felt you try to insert yourself where you did not belong as I verbally protested multiple times. I physically pushed you away when you tried again, thinking it was dark and you must not have understood. But you did, you understood perfectly well that what you were doing was wrong, and it didn’t matter. It did not matter for one moment what you knew I didn’t want, because you wanted it, and you were all that mattered to yourself from the start. And that is where I misunderstood. That is the ONLY thing I misunderstood. You see, I thought we were both decent, law abiding adults who were seeking mutual pleasure from one another. But no, you planned to use me up, and wring me out like a soaked washcloth, applying more and more force until every last drop of me was yours.

You wouldn’t let me stop. You wouldn’t let me sleep. You wouldn’t even give me a moment to fucking breathe in between shifts of serving your needs. You used me like property, you pushed me down and said, “stay there” before you entered with force at your own will. And yes, I did consent to having sex with you. But that is NOT what happened. Sex is mutual, sex is pleasurable, and oral sex is not something I should have ever felt like I had to continue because an aggressive stranger in my bed told me I couldn’t stop. And for a long time, I blamed myself because I let you in. I opened that door and let you into my room, into my body, but I did NOT give you my entire self. I did not give you my decision making ability. It was still MY RIGHT to close that door, to shut you out, and to protect myself from you as soon as what I believed to be a guest in my home quickly became an intruder. I had every right to demand that you leave, regardless of having given permission to stay way before the assault. That permission was granted before I knew the monster behind your mask. I had every right to demand you leave after speaking to me like a disobedient pet, after threatening me with what you were going to do to my body in the morning before discarding it like dirty laundry. The moment you said to me, “I know you don’t like it, but you’re so good at it,” you solidified your coercion and acknowledged my compliance. Compliance is NOT consent. I countered your foul persuasion with a lie to convince myself that I was still in control of the situation, to convince myself that I was still okay, and still held power over my fate. But you shattered that when you removed your mask, and I realized you were playing me like a puppet, pulling at the strings until you yanked them swiftly enough to wake me up.

You tricked me, and manipulated me into thinking you were harmless. You made me doubt the weight of what you’d done, the pain you caused, and the magnitude of trauma I endured. You made me hate myself and my body because it became a constant reminder of you. A reminder of the gross, perverse words you spewed in pleasure that were met with hours of my silence. But silence wasn’t enough for you, you wanted to hear grandiose affirmations of yourself and your body as you denigrated mine.

Well fuck you John Doe.

I’m no longer incapable of saying your name out loud, because it means nothing. And even though you did make me feel those things and think those thoughts about myself, they were all wrong. Because any decent human being would never have done what you did, acted the way you did, spoke the way you did, to an innocent. YOU committed a crime against me and my body, but that is all I will allow you to be. A horrible transgression committed by a vile criminal. You are the tainted one, I am clean. You are damaged, I am healing. You are the offender, I survived.

I AM a survivor.

You are a Nobody, who will wither into nothingness as I continue to banish you from my psyche. There was a point in time where I believed you left me shattered beyond repair. But that is just another lie, because I am whole. I was, and always will remain, whole. No matter how hard you tried to chip away at me and claim whatever pieces you could, I am still on top.

You can’t have me. You couldn’t then and you can’t now. You can never possess me, for I am not a possession. I am a person. I did not deserve the way you treated me that night. I did not ask for it. I did not deserve to be left in the condition I was in, visibly shaking with fear as you watched that fear, looked me in the eyes and uttered the threat, “next time I’m in town, I’ll call you.” As if we had just had a friendly encounter. You don’t get to erase what happened. I know what you did, you know what you did, and I know you would do it again. Because you are a monster, and that’s what monsters do; commit evil and instill fear. But I’m immune to your strand of awful, John. I am immune because I see you for what you truly are and always were. I can see your cowardice, so I am unafraid.

What you are to me is what I consent to and allow you to be. I revoke the consent to fear you. I refuse to allow you to keep hold of me. I will continue to heal the scars of that night, on my own. But I am exiling you from this process, from my journey, from my dreams, from my bed, from my bedroom, from my safe spaces and from my body. For all of those things belong to me and only me.

Goodbye coward, you may no longer trespass here.

- Anonymous