Mentor worries after student’s assault disclosure

Dear Amy: I'm a man in my early 40s. Recently, through work, I've found myself in a mentor role with a 20-year-old girl.

(I feel I need to say, in this day and age, that there is nothing improper happening between us.)

Through the mentoring process, she recently confessed to me that she had been sexually assaulted (raped) her first semester of college.

She cried and referred to it over and over as "her fault," due to the fact that she agreed to meet this person and got into a situation where it could happen.

I don't know much about this stuff, but I do know that it was most definitely not "her fault."

She told me that she has never told anyone, because she was ashamed. Sadly, she does not have a very open relationship with her parents and considers them very judgmental. She cried and cried and is obviously in great mental anguish over this incident. It was absolutely heartbreaking.

I know from a previous conversation that her family went to group therapy when she was younger. So I suggested that she should see a therapist just to have someone to talk to. I suggested she contact her old family therapist for a referral, but she told me she would be ashamed and couldn't.

As a mentor, I won't bring it up again, but I know she needs help.

I truly think this experience is impacting her life. She seems to have issues with self-esteem.

She thinks she can deal with this alone.

What should I do? What services exist to help her through this? She doesn't think she can talk about it with anyone, so is there a solution for her?

Dear Mentor: Your mentee entrusted you with her traumatic story, and it seems that she chose well. She obviously needs to talk about this, and she is willing to talk about it, under limited circumstances. I hope you will follow up with one more suggestion for her: You should point her toward RAINN.org, where she can connect with an online or phone counselor. She can also connect with other survivors, at her own pace. RAINN recently added a "chat" function to their website, so that people who really don't use telephones as often as text (any 20-year-old would fit into this category) can initiate a text-based help session. A RAINN counselor could point her toward local services, but would also listen (anonymously).