Why didn’t you say no?

June 2, 2014, Catherine, Personal Experiences,

I recently told my friends and family about my string of sexual assaults which have occurred within the past year and 9 months and was unprepared for the victim blaming that occurred. I had responses such as, "Why didn't you say no?" And "you need to learn how to put your foot down and not let men take advantage" as well as people saying things such as "you know what drunk boys are like" and excusing the men for their behaviour because they had drunk alcohol.

I also had people tell me I need to control my own drinking as I was drunk at the time of all the assaults and my godmother and one of my friends did not even believe that the assaults took place and said that I must be looking back at things differently and that because I didn't have bruises and didn't say no I wasn't assaulted.

I know it is not my fault and never the victim's fault, only the perpetrator's but it is difficult when you are only 19 years old to deal with all of this victim blaming, I even had my GP blame me and use the locked car analogy!

 

We do NOT give permission for posts published as personal experiences to be reproduced, translated or otherwise published elsewhere. We will not contact people who submit their personal experiences on behalf of journalists, bloggers or other third sector organisations. These testimonies remain the intellectual copyright of their authors and must be treated with the ethical guidelines used by academics for research involving human subjects. Our full guidelines can be read here.

‹ Why don’t ‘those women’ just stay away from abusive men?! Sick of the shame and blame game ›