Stella
I stumbled across this project because of an interview about the sexual assault story in “sex education” season 2 and felt the need to share a story here as well. Maybe it helps somehow. On my sixteenth birthday my neighbors came by to congratulate me. A family, he is around 70, she around 40 and their daughter must have been 3 or 4 years old. He kissed me on my lips. She stood behind him and I don’t think she saw anything. I was confused by this. It felt disgusting. Some days later I asked a youth worker from church about this and she said that sometimes people greet each other with a kiss. So it doesn’t need to be anything. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Until two years later I had a few conversations with my parents about those neighbors because the guy had sexually assaulted his own daughter. He used to be a teacher and apparently had in the past given inappropriate attention to female students, he had a much younger partner, assaulted her own daughter…. And kissed me on my lips when I was 16 without my consent. Knowing all these other things formed a different picture than I had when I was 16. It is so disgusting!!! I didn’t tell anyone about this for years. I am 24 years old now and can talk about this to friends. I only kissed one guy when I was 22 years old. Before that even the idea of someone kissing me was too disgusting. It is crazy how such a small action can have such a huge impact. I still wonder today if I can trust a guy that I like enough to actually want to kiss him.