Delaina
Survivor of Sexual Assault
I was on a date. It was a cold New Year’s Day, he picked me up and our plan was to go to dinner and a movie. The date didn’t go as planned. He turned the tables on me and made me feel like I owed him sex. I was trapped in the car and he assaulted me. I didn’t fully comprehend what happened to me until a year later. I started having flashbacks. I always knew that night had been really disturbing to me, but I never understood the severity of it. I think my mind was trying to shelter me.
I told myself, it was not as dramatic as what’s on TV so there’s no way it could be rape. When I came to identify that this did happen to me, and that it was rape, it hit me hard. The little baby memories I was having, the flashbacks, became elongated, more intense. It was a classic survivor reaction, when pockets of memory would happen at any given moment. Then I was diagnosed with PTSD. Once I really understood what had happened to me, that’s when I identified as a survivor.
I eventually confided in my law professor about what happened to me and she told me about a similar thing that happened to her. That was really incredible for me to hear. She was encouraging to talk to and she connected me with other legal resources.
I reported to police, cooperated through an investigation, participated in making a recorded call to my perpetrator for the investigators, and felt some satisfaction when the grand jury said there was reason to go to trial. Then the County Attorney’s office struck a plea deal with my perpetrator, the felony charges would be reduced to a misdemeanor simple assault. I was so upset by the plea deal.
I read a victim impact statement in court, to the judge, the attorneys, my perpetrator and his parents, and courtroom full of people. I said, “You raped me and you get off with a charge with the word simple in it. You got away with a slap on the wrist while I suffer the rest of my life and you can clean your record in a few years…. This fight was worth fighting and despite all of the trauma, the disgust I’ve endured, I know that I spoke up. I took my choice back and this time instead of freezing, I choose to fight. You will never take that choice away from me ever again.”
I think as scary and horrible as it was, it also was a huge part of my healing. Why would any survivor want to face their tormentor again? You just can’t fathom it, and while it might not be the case for everyone, but for me, just being able to do that – he needs to hear it, he needs to hear how it ruined a huge part of my life and that his actions have consequences. If he’s done this to anyone else or if he chooses to do it again, think twice because he just saw how it truly impacted someone else’s life. Mine.
Now I’m doing a lot better, the flashbacks have subsided a bit, I never thought I’d be at this point. It’s never OK. It’s never like “Oh, I’m 100% better and I never think about it”. I feel that if I hadn’t done this, then I would still be wondering what if? Now I know I’ve truly done every single thing in my power that could have possibly made this right for me.
Last year I identified with snakes a lot. As I was going through the court process I would think, someday I’m going to able to shed this skin, this is something that has been a part of me for so long and now I’m truly shedding that layer of pain and leaving it behind. I’m still the same but I’m changing. They say a person sheds all of their skin cells and grows new ones over the course of seven years, I’m counting down those seven years to when there is a new me that he has never touched. It’s so beautiful to me to think of a snake leaving its old skin and I’m doing that too.
