Everyday Victim Blaming

challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse

Feel like a fraud victim

I've really recently found this website and reading through other people's submissions makes me know I feel the same as many other girls even though i sometimes feel i dont have the right. I never considered myself a victim until after relaying my anger about a past experience they told me it sounded like rape. That was years later and until that point I had not even considered it or why the experience made me wake every morning and hate myself for allowing it to happen.

My experience was not violent and I feel this is mostly what makes me believe it it almost unworthy of me being a 'victim'. However I find myself wanting the clarity of other people to almost find a kind of closure. In uni I on a couple of nights out had kisses a guy I knew, yet I was not at all attracted to him and I need let anything more happen past our friendship. One night after returning home and going to bed a friend of said guy came into my room picked me up and carried me to the guys room, he then left the 2 of us shutting the door. I then don't remember anything of what happened apart from leaving to go back to my own room. By the next morning however I knew sex had happened. I then, to prevent this from seeming like I had been taken advantage of repeatedly slept with this guy willingly. For over a year I would wake and the annoyance, anger and disappointment in what I had 1stly allowed to happen despite being too drunk and then that I had lowered myself to try and rectify the situation by going back to him, it was always on my mind.

Yet not until having the potential severity of the experience pointed out to me did I consider it and that makes me feel like a fraud, like it was obviously not a big deal at the time or surely I would have felt victimised and felt I had been raped?

Thank you for providing a sade space for us to share these feelings and experiences, relaying my account feels like a step to closure.

[Apology from Admin - there has been a delay in publishing this piece due to a technical error]

 

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One thought on “Feel like a fraud victim

  • Admin says:

    Thank you for sharing your experience with us – we believe you.

    We know you are not alone – the minmisation of sexual violence is all-prevalent in our society, and it leads us to feeling our experiences are ‘not serious enough’ or ‘not bad enough’. It is frustrating, but we understand and know that by supporting our campaign, you are helping to change this.

    We have a list of organisations on our Get Support page, if you would like some suppport from a non-judgemental organisation who will believe you.