I was assaulted by a boy in my class
Even now, almost a year later, my stomach drops when I see someone who looks even slightly like him
I finished the semester with him sitting right in front of me in the class.
There hasn’t been a day since it happened where it didn’t cross my mind.
There are no words to describe the utter fear you feel when you look into the eyes of someone with the sole intention of hurting you, of abusing you. For me, it wasn’t so much the loss of control. It was that I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen. I was one hundred percent in survival mode. Just get inside, get help, get somewhere public where someone will intervene. Because I wasn’t strong enough to stop it from happening myself. He thought it was okay to lay his hands on me and push me around. He invaded my safe haven with no second thoughts and turned what had once been my home into a tomb commemorating the assault.
What’s funny is that it took me months to admit it. To actually say the words out loud. I was assaulted. I was assaulted and everything changed – but strangely, nothing changed at all.
For months following, I was riddled with panic attacks, nightmares, and paranoia. Even worse were the psychological consequences though. Even now, almost a year later, my stomach drops when I see someone who looks even slightly like him. I jump when someone sneaks up on me from behind. I haven’t been able to trust a boy the same way since. And let’s not forget, the natural shame of being a victim. Hindsight is 20/20 and daily I find myself thinking, “I should have just driven away. I should have called a friend to come walk with me. I should have just been nicer.”
Subconsciously I know that there was nothing I could have done to prevent this once it was already happening but at the forefront of my mind is always the thought: it’s my fault.
If you’ve never been through an assault you’ll never understand what it’s like. My friends and family naturally downgraded the severity of the incident and I followed along with them because it was easier to laugh it off than to submit to the terror. They weren’t there though; they just didn’t understand what really went down. It’s not like I blame them now – I don’t at all. How can I blame them when it was me who was too shaken up by the event to tell them the full detail of what happened? I was so in shock by what happened that I felt like I couldn’t make any decisions myself and let them sway me into believing that I didn’t need to really report what happened. I needed to do something though – this guy was in my class and I was not about to sit five feet from him for an hour three days a week.
I decided to just go talk to my campus minister instead. Throughout the year I had developed a trusting relationship with him since he was the leader of the campus ministry I was part of. He was the voice of reason I needed. He seemed to know that I needed someone to make a decision for me so he called the police himself and he filed the report with the school himself. After that, things got easier. I told the police officer what happened. He assured me that if there were any more problems, I could give him a call and he would help handle it. A report for assault and harassment was filed against the student by Penn State. Everyone got the notification on their phones that an assault had occurred on campus.
What struck me was that aside from everyone downplaying what had happened and the dozens of times I was told, “You’ll get past this,” my adviser said one thing to me that shocked me. “If you want, you can change classes to get away from him.”
Excuse me.
As painful as it was for me to admit, I was the one assaulted. I was the victim. And I am the one supposed to switch classes and completely change my schedule in the middle of the semester because this student attacked me?
The reports came and went, I never talked to that cop again, my friends stopped asking how I was doing and then no one talked about it anymore. They forgot about it. It was just some distant event of the past that they were separate from. Meanwhile I’m the one left with dealing with the actual trauma of it. The school never checked on me again. They never even extended the offer for me to go talk to someone about it at CAPS. Like I said, I couldn’t even decide the call the police myself – how was I supposed to decide to go to CAPS myself?
I finished the semester with this student sitting right in front of me in the class. My professor was willing to listen to my story but when the other student had to miss some classes because of some circumstances surrounding the incident, he was excused and pardoned from the work he missed. I’m not saying I wanted an automatic A. I didn’t want anything, really. I just didn’t want my attacker to get away with what he had done. He went on from all of this with no marks on his record, he was able to go study abroad the next semester and suffered no permanent repercussions.
I don’t want any pity. So then what’s the point of all of this? What are you supposed to take from a girl essentially complaining online about her sorrows in life?
The point is that something needs to be done about these boys that escape from their actions unscathed. I’m not the only one to have had this happen. Other students have stepped forward to say that no consequences befell their attackers either. It’s hard to help the victims. A large part of recovering is learning who you are now in association with your demons and that has to happen mainly on the inside. I’ve learned how to deal with my demons and what I have come to realize is basically PTSD. Who really needs to be helped is the perpetrators.
The only way we’re going to do this is to talk about it. It’s easy to count yourself as a victim. It’s hard to give up the fault that you believe is rightfully yours. I’ll probably be dealing with this for the rest of my life and I didn’t ask for this. I was walking back to my dorm room from class. I was wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. I was doing what I felt was right. He’ll never know the depths of what he’s done to me. He’ll go on in life to be successful and have a family and never think about me again. The worst part? He’ll probably do this again to another girl who was equally undeserving.
Someone told me that I couldn’t let him get away this so I decided to report it. He still got away with it though. He was still permitted to walk around campus without a single mark on his record or any indicator that this individual could be a threat to the student body. And that wasn’t on me; that was on society.