When I was around 8 years old, I started taking regular trips to visit my family in Canada where I met my cousin Jacob. He was only two years older than me, and although that feels like a lifetime when you’re 8 years old, we hit it off right away. He was the closest thing I ever had to a big brother, and because of that, I would spend all my summers with him. As we grew older, the topics of our conversations shifted from neopets and superheroes to relationships and first experiences. I remember one summer in particular when I was 13 years old. He was telling me about his ex-girlfriend and how he would stroke her arm lightly whenever they were alone because she had told him “You really know how to touch a woman.”
After that summer, I didn’t see him again until his entire family came down to visit me when I was 15 years old. I thought we were going to pick up where we left off, but there was something different about him. I desperately wanted my friend back, so when he put his hand on my knee when he sat next to me in the car, I didn’t shoo him away. When he looked at me across the room with all of our family there and mimed male masturbation with his fingers, I simply looked away. When he reached under the dinner table and took my hand in his and interlaced his fingers with mine, I didn’t pull away. When he put my hair behind my ear while staring uncomfortably into my eyes, I didn’t stop him. I didn’t say no. He was like a brother to me, so I trusted him, and assumed that what he was doing was normal.
I was excited when he suggested watching a movie together, but I soon realized that my beloved movie buddy had become a strange 17-year old boy laying next to me in bed with the lights turned off. He ran his fingers gently along the length of my arm, in the same way he had described doing to his girlfriend when I was 13 years old. He kept ignoring the movie and looking over at me in anticipation as if he were awaiting my response. Soon, he was working his way up along my shoulders, tracing my collar bones, inching his way lower on my chest. I felt paralyzed. I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. 15-year old me, having never done more than hug a person of the opposite gender, was now being caressed without her consent. He fondled with my bra straps and ran his hands into the cup of my bra, exploring uncharted territory without a permit. All I remember is how scared I was that he was going to violate me even further and wishing that he would get his dirty hands off of me. It took all my willpower to keep from crying as I calmly grabbed his arm and physically removed him from my shirt: a place his hands never should have been in the first place.
It took me 5 years to be able to call myself a sexual assault survivor. I thought sexual assault survivors were so strong and they had gone through something so traumatic, that I couldn’t possibly take away from their experience by calling what I went through a sexual assault. Sexual assault takes many forms, but regardless of the form it may take, it is never excusable and never the victim’s fault.
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