Just because she didn’t report it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen

I was ashamed, confused, afraid.

I knew no one would believe me.

I knew no one would help me.

I knew I’d lose my friends.

I didn’t know what to say.

I didn’t know who to tell.

It would have ruined my reputation.

It would have hurt his family.

I thought it was my fault.

I thought I was tough enough to deal with it alone.

He was my pastor.

He was my stepfather.

He was my boss/my teacher/my brother/my co-worker/a cop/my dad’s best friend. He was my husband.

He said he’d kill me.

Anyone who has been reading the flood of recent tweets under the #WhyIDidntReport hashtag on Twitter has read some version of all of the above. The testimonials are depressingly similar, despite the differences in details.

A man assaults a woman, or in some cases a man. The person who was assaulted tries to move on. Moving on means keeping quiet, hoping to be spared the added trauma of suspicion, mockery, humiliation.

For many years, according to Christine Blasey Ford, moving on meant telling no one about the night in the 1980s, when, she says, a 17-year-old boy named Brett Kavanaugh, now a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, assaulted her at a party.

Blasey, who was 15 at the time, recently told the Washington Post that she didn’t report the attack because she feared her parents would punish her if they knew she’d been at a party where teenagers were drinking.

I remember those parties. I remember the fear that my parents would find out I was there. Do not underestimate fear of parents as a reason for a teenager not to reveal an assault.

But Blasey’s explanation of why she didn’t report her allegation back then hasn’t satisfied many people, most notably the president of the United States, whose tweet on Friday morning triggered the Twitter backlash.

“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says,” he tweeted, “charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.”

I have a lot of doubt that Dr. Blasey, as she prefers to be called, would have done any such thing.

When a woman — or a man — alleges sexual assault, it’s only fair that certain questions be asked, certain information solicited. If the allegation comes a long time after the assault, it’s fair to ask why it wasn’t reported sooner. In this case, it’s fair to ask Blasey to say more about her claim and fair to ask Kavanaugh what he remembers.

What’s not fair — what’s ugly, demeaning, downright abusive — is to assume that because an assault went unreported it didn’t happen.

Sexual assaults are hard to count. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), a nonprofit organization that deals with sexual assault, only 310 of every 1,000 rapes are reported to police. Of those reported, only 57 lead to an arrest. Only six perpetrators end up

incarcerated.

Those figures suggest another reason a woman may be reluctant to file a legal report: The perpetrator is likely to go unpunished, so why endure the ordeal of coming forward?

But whether or not she tells anyone, a woman who has been sexually assaulted may carry the memory around for years like a stone in her heart.

The boy who raped her at a party. The relative who repeatedly molested her when she was 9. The neighbor who exposed himself to her when she was just a girl. The stranger who broke into her house and raped her at knifepoint. The boss at her college job, a man twice her weight and age, who pinned her on the floor and groped her for a long time while she struggled.

All those situations I just listed? They’ve happened to women I know, all except the last one, which happened to me.

The day after it happened, I told my college roommate but no one else. I was embarrassed. I felt sick. I was a good girl and felt bad I’d gotten myself into the mess. What if my parents found out? And, honestly, I wasn’t sure how to name what happened.

One of the most moving entries under the #WhyIDidntReport hashtag on Friday was one that said: “No one ever taught me what sexual assault was so when it happened to me I didn’t even know.”

Too often assault is dismissed as horseplay, rough-housing, boys being boys. You can’t report what you can’t properly name.

In the next few days, we may hear more facts on what happened on the long-ago night Blasey has described. But we don’t need more facts on that situation to be clear on this fact: The failure to report an assault doesn’t mean it didn’t occur.

According to RAINN, the number of sexual assaults has fallen by more than half since 1993. Given the murkiness of sexual assault statistics, it’s hard to know exactly what that signifies, but it feels like progress. It’s progress that comes because women and men continue to tell their stories and people continue to listen, hoping to understand.

And to those who testily ask: Will we ever stop talking about sexual assault and harassment?

Don’t worry. We will.

As soon as it stops happening.