After the attack: the permanent mental scars of sexual abuse

A common first word is a simple two letter mantra: no. It is something in children’s vocabulary from the very beginning of life, but at some point while growing up, the word can lose its meaning, and even more importantly, its power.

Ria Talukder, sophomore, experiences this problem more frequently than most. She constantly receives unwanted catcalls when she goes downtown, and had a very close run-in with an offender at the music festival Riot Fest this past summer.

“This guy had approached me [after the festival] and I kept telling him to leave me alone. As I walked away he followed me, and at the point I was scared for my life because I was all by myself. I was a 15 year old girl on the southside of Chicago, and I couldn’t do anything to protect myself,” Talukder said. “If one little thing had gone wrong, I wouldn’t have made it home and I’m not sure if I would be alive.”

Talukder managed to catch a train before things got out of hand, but in many cases girls are not as lucky. As of 2014, each year approximately 293,066 people over the age of 12 are sexually assaulted to rainn.org.

“I know I’m not the only one who’s gone through this because I would talk to my friends at lunch and they’d be like, ‘Oh that’s happened to me before’, or ‘That happens to me all the time and I hate it,’” Talukder said. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, a lot of girls go through this, and someone needs to talk about it.’ It really is a problem that everyone needs to be aware of”.”

Talukder’s friends are not the only people who are familiar with unwanted sexual advances. For Kim, LZHS grad whose name has been changed to keep her identity private, consent has been a problem for almost as long as she can remember.

“When I was first assaulted, I was in between my fourth and fifth grade year. He tried to become my friend, and I was very naive and thought ‘Okay, sure, why not?’” Kim said. “He sat next to me on the bus for the entire summer on the way to summer school. From there, things got progressively more out of hand from him calling me ‘beautiful’ to the point where I went home crying one day, and that’s when my parents found out.”

Childhood experiences of sexual abuse like Kim’s can cause other emotional obstacles, especially if the person has held in the situation for a long time, according to Sheila Tanner, social worker.

“The biggest [effect of sexual abuse] would be how victims handle future relationships and feelings about themselves. If it’s not addressed and they have kept to themselves, there are a lot of feelings of shame and guilt. It can lead to self injury, eating disorders, and other things that are caused from holding too much in and not telling someone,” Tanner said. “If something were to occur at this age, there could be effects in all those areas, but things like shutting down and pushing people away as well as isolating oneself are also possible.”

While Kim has learned to no longer feel guilty, she says that she continues to struggle when it comes to building relationships or being in situations with new people.

“When it comes to things like dating, whenever someone gets too affectionate, I tend to back away and not want to be around that person,” Kim said. “If it gets to a point where it’s any physical contact past hugging I get really nervous. I get these little internal flashbacks and just go ‘Nope nope not dealing with that right now’. It makes life so much harder because I want to be in a relationship that’s far more than just hugging and backing off when things are no longer good for me. It’s really holding me as a person back and it hurts a lot of the people I am around.”

Talukder also emphasizes the pain caused to the people who are close to the victim and wants people to consider the ripple effect of their actions.

“‘No means no’ applies to you, it applies to your sister, your mom, even your brother or dad. If you heard about someone that you know saying, ‘No, I don’t want you to hurt me,’ and someone went ahead and did it anyway, you would be furious, right? So you wouldn’t want to do the same thing to someone else?” Talukder said. “If someone says no, then you need to respect them as a person and you need to respect what they’re saying.”

One of the biggest reasons that sexual harassment and assault is so frequent directly correlates with the lack of respect that men give to women, according to both Talukder and Kim. Each agrees that pushing people’s boundaries has less to do with the victim being “easy”, and much more to do with a lack of caring.

“I feel like the people who take advantage of people who can’t fight back are just cowards that use the weaker people to get what they want. Rape mentally weakens you. It makes you feel like you’re worthless,” Kim said. “Nobody deserves to be hurt [like that]. It can be physically and mentally scarring, no matter how old you are when it happens. People only see what they want to see for one reason only: If it doesn’t directly affect them, they don’t care.”

However, Talukder believes there are ways to fix the problem of sexual assault before it begins. In fact, she argues it can be stopped when kids are still in preschool.

“We always tell younger girls that when a guy is being mean to you, it’s because he likes you, or if a boy pushes a girl down, it’s just boys being boys. We normalize violence amongst boys towards girls and we treat it as a normal thing as kids, and as they grow up, they think it’s the same thing,” Talukder said. “They think hitting girls or abusing them or being mean to them is okay because they love them or because they like them. So I think to stop promoting rape culture and assault and jokes about it, then we need to raise boys and girls the same way. We need to teach them the difference between yes and no as children.”

Thankfully, a program similar to what Talukder describes is already starting to be implemented in schools for children as young as five years old, according to Tanner,

“A girl named Erin Merryn went through [sexual abuse situations] when she was young, and it affected her so much that it is her mission now to get [Erin’s] law passed in all states,” Tanner said. “The law says schools from ages kindergarten through twelfth grade need to include an educational component for students of those ages to help teach them about what is sexual abuse and what is sexual assault, what it means for good touch bad touch, and safe people and unsafe people. The lessons vary for different ages so that child or that teenager can understand and work with it.”

While children in today’s kindergartens will start learning the right ways to treat each other and find respect for others, students still make sexual assault jokes that are nowhere near funny, according to Talukder.

“When people make jokes like ‘No means yes,’ that’s exactly the kind of culture that makes rape seem like a thing that can just slide by and isn’t a big deal. If you’re making a joke about something like that, you’re saying it’s okay or something that’s normal, and that it’s humorous,” Talukder said.

Despite the jokes, Talukder says that LZHS is not as bad as other schools where sexual assault is a common problem. However, the only self defense program the district provides is in middle school, leading Talukder and others to believe there is still room for improvement on consent education.

“A lot of the stuff they taught us in self defense class was like some type of jiu jitsu, but in that situation you can’t apply it, because you’re so terrified and the first thing you think of is not ‘My eighth grade PE teacher taught me how to back hand slap someone when this happens,’” Talukder said. “In middle school they really taught us a lot of things we would never use, so I think there should be a class with both guys and girls where they just teach kids about assaults and show them how to stop it when you see it, or even how to not assault people by respecting girls and by not perpetuating a culture that blames girls for assault instead of guys.”

The school is currently working on more ways to educate students on sexual assault and how to prevent it, and Tanner and the other social workers plan to expand the awareness even more than before.

“The social workers are going in to classes and FAME trying to bring out the message of ‘Tell, please tell someone, we are here for you’,” Tanner said “Learning about these different laws and rights and safety precautions from more than one person in more than one way is helpful, so I would like to see it grow. I’d like to see it widespread where each grade level has two to three days of training in different ways; that would be my dream program.”

Though their has been a push to educate students more on sexual abuse, Talukder says the new lessons may prevent future issues from happening, but nothing can erase her memories. While dealing with cat calls and verbal harassment has been a challenge for her, she says she tries her best to focus on the positive lessons that she has gained through her experiences

“This sounds so cheesy, but experiences like that one have made me so much stronger. I feel like if I dealt with that and had the courage to go to the cops, I became much more independent,” Talukder said. “It’s also helped me learn to say no in situations outside of sexual assault but really any aspect of my life. It’s helped me be more assertive and let people know if I’m not comfortable doing something, I’m not going to do it.”

Talukder knows how difficult it can be to say no while in danger, but she says that while it can be scary, it is definitely worth it.

“Sometimes it’s really hard to say no in the situation and obviously you should try to, but if it ever gets to the point where you said no and it wasn’t effective and no one listened to you, then you need to find someone who will listen to you, realize that you truly mean no, and fight for you.. I think it’s all just about building confidence and knowing that you are allowed to say no. You’re not being a bad person or being  mean by not giving them what they want, you’re just serving your own interests. And that is not a bad thing,” Talukder said. “Standing up for myself is not something I regret. So if you are reading this and in a similar situation, you should stick up for what you believe in. Do not let a guy change what you stand for.”