PTSD

Fears

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i was talking to my friends about my nervousness around men. I told them due to my experiences of assault and other terrible acts i wasn’t comfortable being around groups of me or being alone with someone i didn’t know well. I was told to get over my fears and i tried to explain i never use my fears to attack or not give men a chance. They just keep me safe and so i don’t get assaulted again. After that they just assumed i hated men. These fears just sit in my chest and i get nervous but would never attack or speak because of them, they are just there.

Ellie (Pseudonym)

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I was in my early twenties when he took what was left of my innocence and faith in the world. I had over a year earlier escaped a sexual abusive relationship, I had escaped my rapist, I was safe now, I was home…. It was the run up at Christmas and I was excited, spending the early evening with his children – the youngest falling asleep in my arms not long before he returned. He was out drinking. He came back drunk. We had a drink. He came and sat uncomfortably close. Something was up. He looked at me in a strange way. He lent into kiss me. I tried to reason. Expressed how I felt about him, how I saw him as an older brother, how I loved his fiancé dearly, how I loved my partner dearly, his children dearly. I held his hand begging him to see me as a young sister – begging him to keep our family together. But he didn’t listen. He tried to kiss me again. And again. He caressed my inner thigh and put his lips to my breasts…. He said he wanted to fuck me. I was scared. I was shaken. But I was lucky – I managed to escape upstairs to my all embracing partner. The rest of the night is a blur of tears, of police lights, of desperation. They said it was sexual assault. They took my statement – a statement I later withdrew out of fear. One moment. One trauma. A broken family. Broken hearts.

Marisa

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I had just finished law school, and was working without pay for an assistant public defender. This man’s boss ordered me into his office for “work”, then locked me in, flung me to the wall, groped and kissed me without provocation. I kneed him hard in the crotch, and he collapsed, so I unlocked the foor and escaped. But it changed my life: I went back to university, and worked very little as a lawyer after that event. (24 years later, he forced another young client into sex, and his licence was revoked for three months.) The worst part for me was that two of my male attorney friends advised me not to make a fuss, because my attacker could legally destroy me. I suffered from feelings of terror and helplessness. Both my male friends apologized, 20 years later, for their failure to support me.