Season 7 Episode 21
“I felt like this was all my fault, I had agreed to date him…who was going to believe that something like this had actually happened to me….my father took me aside and said to me, are you sure you didn’t do anything to provoke him?”
In the third installment of Power, Strength, Dignity, we hear from a survivor who had been sexually assaulted by a man she had been dating. Sadly this is not outside of the norm, according to findings by the Rape Crisis Centre, in South Africa victims often know the perpetrators of sexual assault. But the most difficult aspect of the experience she shares was the disbelief from family members. Often survivors want to spare family members from the trauma of their experience, and so many incidences of rape go unreported, leading to depression and isolation. But the only way to heal is to be supported.