I remember one day just looking in the mirror and saying he he raped me and he abused me and that was the hardest thing was to say it out loud and I remember I was waited til no one was home because I didn't want anyone to maybe hear and even just whispering to myself was like the biggest first step that I took to acknowledge that something had happened to me and it was out of my control in that it was wrong so I came out of the bathroom I had a towel around me and he started you know trying to kiss me and you know I just want to make love or whatever I was like no no I wanted to and I was in this closet and I went to pull my jeans out and as I bent down he grabbed the towel and and he grabbed the towel I kind of lost my footing and I remember as I'm pressing against me and I remember resisting at first but because I lost my footing I couldn't really fight I just remember thinking myself is this really happening like is this what I think is happening I thought that it was normal and because it was a trusted family member that this just must be what people do and no one talked about it and there was no sexual education in my high school or my grade school that said this is good touching this is bad touching I think what is so scary when you're a child and someone takes advantage of you and abuses you is that even when you come forward you don't have the control of your own life to make the decisions about it so it's scarier to come forward [Music] I couldn't reconcile it because there was hatred but at the same time because he was an affectionate loving caring father I couldn't reconcile the two in a moment how does someone be so loving and be so hateful in the same body I don't think I really thought of it as marital rape or military sexual trauma I don't until I started to hear that more and more maybe over the last decade as I started hearing these terms about survivor and trauma I think that's when I started to click and then the military started putting more emphasis on military sexual trauma and what it looks like giving it a face the vast majority of the time people are sexually assaulted by people they know 80 to 85% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by an acquaintance or an intimate partner so that can range from someone who is a significant other to a mentor a teacher a co-worker or a friend for example at the coalition we use sexual violence and sexual assault pretty much interchangeably for us we consider any sexual conduct that happens without consent to be a form of sexual violence so that can include things that involve contact like touching unwanted sexual touching all the way to rape but can it can also include things that don't necessarily involve contact so that might include sexual harassment voyeurism things like that there's a lot of reasons why a survivor might not be comfortable disclosing their sexual assault right away it can range from concerns that they may be blamed for what happened to them that people might ask them questions about how they were dressed or why were they out alone at night or why did they quote/unquote put themselves in that situation survivors might also worry that aspects of their story won't be believed I had to acknowledge it within myself first and then finding the trusted person and it's not always gonna be your family member it's not gonna be the person that you think is going to come to the rescue and be the hero it can be just a close friend it can be a hotline healing is something that people need to understand it's still these scars but healing is something you have to also choose you have to choose every single day even after you've gone through the journey of counseling and therapy I want women understand that even when you go through those processes it becomes easier to tell the story it becomes easier to come out of the moment and not be retraumatization be okay [Music] I think it's really important to reinforce that messaging with survivors that what happened to them is not their fault it doesn't matter anything that they did before during or after an assault they are not to blame for what happened to them so in the state of Arizona there are a number of different agencies that are doing work to support sexual assault survivors so that might include a community-based advocacy program that a sexual assault survivor could go to for things like counseling or support groups and in reporting to law enforcement the Family Advocacy centers are set up so that survivors can tell their story the least amount of times possible and have access on site to a medical forensic exam and if they're looking to talk on the phone to someone that's something they can do at the national hotline or they can call our coalition's helpline I've been choosing every day for 25 years not to let that become my story otherwise I would never have come to love I'm remarried I'm in a loving marriage I have a happy family life had I not been able to do that and choose it every day I would not know what real love and what a real loving relationship looks like I now have the ability to speak and share my story and I feel that I have a responsibility for the child that's still being abused for the little girl that doesn't have a voice for the little girl that doesn't know what is going on I have the responsibility to speak on behalf of her and to tell other people what happened to me so that they it might that might have its own word [Music] you