On the night of 29th June 2018, I barely escaped a rape attempt. I was drunk when it happened. We had just left the club where we had gone cool off after an exhausting week of school, and since my hostel was further away, my friend ‘arranged’ for me to sleep at his friend’s place for the night. The three of us had been together the entire evening and I was wrong to think neither could hurt me. One moment I was in bed, and the next, I was struggling to breathe and unpin myself from the heavy body on top of me that was forcing kisses on me, groping my breasts, and fumbling with the zipper of my jeans. However, before he could get any further, the door was opened and surprisingly, it was the other friend who had done the arrangement.
The one thing that every woman dreads every waking day of her life, became a reality for me. Sexual violence was no longer about what I had heard or seen, it was what I had experienced firsthand. It had become personal. I never shared what transpired on that night with anyone except with my boyfriend, and I only did so after a month and thereafter broke off the relationship. The other people by default were the rapist and the friend who betrayed me. I did not report the incident either. I did not have any evidence of the attempted rape other than my word, which would never have been enough. I was willing to just move forward with life and hope to act like it never happened.
Unfortunately, when it rains, it pours. The ghosts of that night refused to leave me in peace. Every moment of the life that followed, I was haunted by the knowledge that whether l liked it or not, what occurred would always be a part of my story, and sooner or later I would have to stop running. I became an angry and bitter woman. Each day I would be calming the raging storm inside of me. I wanted to tell someone, and so many times I tried to do so but I never did. It was always on the tip of my tongue but somehow at the last minute, I would decline. I wanted to be ready but who knew when I would be ready?
Finally, on 19th November, 2019, I hit rock bottom and went public and shared the demons that had plagued me for the past sixteen months. It was either that, or check myself into a mental institution. I was done being strong. Additionally, I reached out to my friends and a few counselors. I remember crying in my bed for hours, drained of strength and scared of the future, worried if I had knowingly sabotaged my already miserable life.
What I had not anticipated, however, was the impact speaking out would have on people including myself. From out of the blue, my phone was buzzing and ringing relentlessly with women sharing their heartbreaking stories of rape and sexual harassment, and the anxiety with which they had to live with. One girl had been raped, gotten pregnant but due to trauma, aborted. Suddenly, what I had gone through paled in comparison.
It occurred to me that there were so many girls who were suffering in silence with nobody to turn to for help. Their abusers were still out there living their best lives, while they, the victims, went shrouded by the darkness of their pain and brokenness. It is then that I decided that something had to give. To begin with, I sat down and wrote a long letter to the school where I penned down my experience, and that of a few others and asked them to act because as it were, they had lived in a bubble for far too long while the girls were not safe. If the school was not willing to have this conversation, then I was going to force them to because we deserved a safe space to learn. I started sharing widely on social media stories on sexual violence. The school reached out, and I together with a few other girls submitted names of our abusers who were immediately put under investigation. I am currently following up on the progress of this.
Furthermore, I wrote down an entire list of suggestions which I forwarded to the gender office that could be implemented to raise awareness and educate the students on gender-based violence in the school. There is still so much farther to go and to speed up and aid the process to bring the change we need in our university, my friends and I are researching on how we can start a non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness on the issue, and consequently outsource guidance and counseling help, and perhaps even legal assistance for the victims of the sexual violence.
I do not know if the night I was almost raped or the day I decided to speak out was the turning point, but I do know that what happened in between is what has led me to fight for the girls who have been victims of sexual violence and the fuel behind my efforts towards creating an environment when they can live without fear or anxiety for their safety.