Support, The Aftermath of Rape, and the E-Guide Part 1

The first time I was raped, I was completely alone. I was nineteen years old in a new city, where they mostly spoke another language. I didn't know where to go, much less where the hospital was. I certainly wasn't about to report it to the police, who whistled at me on the way to work every morning.

I was on an internship, as part of my college program, in a place other students before me had gone before. In fact, a science teacher had told before I left that another student had been raped there before. Yet when I called the school nurse, she had no idea what I could do or where I could go to get treatment. 

And I was alone still. In the meantime, my rapist would call me at work, telling the receptionist he was my boyfriend. The first time I picked up the phone and realized it was him, I pretended the phone

connection was bad and hung up. After that, whenever a call came from outside of the office, I would hide behind the cabinets in the lab, in case someone saw me through the open doors and asked me why I wasn't picking up the phone. He called up to four times a day. (The receptionist always told me when he called.) Until one day she came into the lab and found me crouched down behind the counters on the floor, hiding and asked what was going on. Suddenly I wasn't alone anymore.

And here's the thing, we all need support and help after we're raped or sexually assaulted. And we get some basic information from the internet or the rape crisis center maybe. But they mostly cover surface information. I've found a severe lack of information and presenting choices and what they really mean in the real world. Some of this is life-changing or life-saving information. 

And then you may have to talk to a person. And you might not be ready to. And some people are

Healing From Sexual Assault is Finding Hope in A Hopeless Place
Photo by Cameron Russell (Lomo-Cam)
Creative Commons

supportive and others are judgmental. 

So we need an e-guide to the aftermath of rape. Something that presented real-world options and doesn't sugar-coat things. I'm writing one with the intention of distributing it free of charge to as many survivors as possible.

But I need your help. I need some funding and some volunteers.

http://igg.me/at/rapeguide

Please check out our campaign and help us in whatever way you can. Every little bit counts.

http://igg.me/at/rapeguide

Thanks!

And look for the next parts to this series.