Recently our newsfeeds have been dominated by the Stanford rape case; Brock Allen Turner, a young white male attending Stanford University, sexually assaulted & attempted to rape an unconscious girl behind a dumpster after a party. Turner’s defence used the girl’s alcohol intake as their reasoning for this heinous crime rather than admitting that Turner refused to acknowledge she could not consent to intercourse.
The week previous to this a young girl was brutally gang raped in Madrid while someone recorded the ordeal on their phone; some commentators on Twitter felt she had dressed too provocatively. Since its release, Louise O’Neill’s book ‘Asking For It’, has caused many people to tell their story and share their experiences with assault and rape culture.
This may have been the first time some of you have seen cases like this, but for those of us in front line services this isn’t new information. A conversation has been sparked by these recent incidents and now that a dialogue has began we must ensure that the right measures are taken to protect victims.
I spent three months last summer trying to prepare myself for the day someone would walk into my [Students’ Union Welfare] office and tell me they had been raped or sexually assaulted. I went to specialised training and familiarised myself with all the various protocols. What I did not know was that nothing could prepare me for the incessant shame these victims felt, nothing could prepare me for their willingness to blame themselves and nothing could prepare me for how painfully unaware they were of consent is & what constitutes assault.
Five months into the job I was assaulted myself & immediately understood to some degree these feelings.
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