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Brian Banks

Stories like this run up one side of me and down the other.  I found it while I was browsing tumblr, and thought it was important to share.

1) They make people believe that this is the norm, that false rape allegations happen all the time.  It makes the real problem less important because everyone would rather think that it doesn’t happen.  Statistics say that only 2-8 percent of rape allegations are provably false.  Yes, there are problems with that statistic.  It doesn’t include allegations that there just wasn’t enough evidence to convict either way.  Another one that people like to throw out is 41%, but that is an extremely old study done in a small town where only 109 rapes were reported.  And the criteria for calling those allegations “false” were that the women making them had to withdraw the complaint themselves, which may have had nothing to do with them being false and everything to do with not wanting to proceed forward with the stress of a trial.  Back then, it was okay to ask dumb questions like “what were you wearing?” “Were you drunk?” “Did you get aroused?” which are all questions that prove nothing other than she may have been dressed skimpy, and that her body did it’s job. 

2) That girl is the scum of the earth.  people who pull this shit drive me up a wall.  I was sexually abused.  I know what it feels like to be broken, confused, angry, hurt, and I had to deal with all the repercussions afterward. I went through therapy, I still can’t sleep throughout the month of November, I have freaky dreams, I am afraid of relationships or even getting close to men, and I hate the way people look at me after they find out. Lately, it’s been better, since I’ve started to be an activist, but it killed me before!  And let’s not even start on the guilt I felt because my family fell apart.  I lost an entire half of my family.  My brother was so angry at me.  We had to move, my Mom changed jobs, my brother and I changed schools, I saw my sister less and less.  People who use this as a way to get something, or as an excuse to commit a crime piss me off.  People who pretend to understand this pain drive me up a wall, because I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.  My worst enemy is the man who did it to me, and I wouldn’t even wish it on him.  Don’t pretend to get it, don’t fake it because you think it makes you cool.  It doesn’t, it hurts, and it just makes me angry.  

I’m glad that man is free.  He didn’t deserve to be imprisoned for something he didn’t do.  But please don’t read things like this and think that it happens all the time.  Because it doesn’t, and we survivors need all the support we can get.