A thread) After my sexual assault, I remember getting a mutual friend alone and asking her.
“ Do (our friends) believe me or do they just not care?’
She said They don’t believe you”
So i asked her “do you believe me?’
And she said “I do, but i cant lose my friends” #yeg #AbLeg

This is complicity. This is what it is like to be the victim of acquaintance sexual assault. It is to live in a world where you are disclosing to someone who equally loves the person who hurt you. It is to see your attackers value as a human matter more than yours #AbLeg

Since Friday i have felt nothing but rage. Rage at the Matthew McKnight verdict, rage for those women, rage for myself. It’s been really hard to even function to be honest. Because an injustice to one of us feels like its happening to all of us all over again. #AbLeg

When i was assaulted i did everything right. Told my friends, i went to police, one friend had a text from him admitting it, but in the end the comfort of their lives as it was mattered more. I lost all of my friends and i had to deal with the consequences of my assault alone

Complicity isn’t just allowing something to happen, it is creating the conditions whereby it happen not just once, but again and again and again. The man who assaulted me has assaulted four women I know of. But god forbid you call out your buddy because that’s uncomfortable

I read these statements by McKnights friends “he is a good guy” “he wouldn’t do this” fuck that. You knew. I say that because i knew too. I knew the man who would assault me was disrespectful to women, knew he had been accused of assaulted a girl we knew. But I didn’t believe it

I didnt believe it because I didn’t want to. I knew him for almost 20 years so it couldn’t be. He wasn’t a bad guy. He wasn’t bad until he locked me in his car and used his 100 pound difference to attack me. After, everyone in my life promised to help, they disappeared instead

This is what complicity is. This is why so many of us are angry, its not the assault even, its the violation of our trust by a community of people who should have protected us. It’s living every day not being believed. It’s yelling from the roof top. #AbLeg

I have spent days wanting revenge on those who allowed Matthew McKnight to rape women without consequence. In part i want revenge for what happened to me. I want justice. Most of all i want the people who posed with my attacker a week after he brutually assaulted me to be sorry

But that isn’t going to happen, not for me, not for them. Not now at least. And unfortunately when survivors go nuclear it gives so many reason to disbelieve us. Next week it will be five years since i was attacked. Five years of PTSD and bad dreams and struggling to be happy

All i have ever wanted is for what happened to me to mean something. I want what happened to the women who came forward about Matthew McKnight to mean something. I want change for all of us. It might not change the hell i go through but maybe it will save someone else

So please. Call out your friends when they are disrespectful to women, call out anyone when they are physically agressive with women. If you see them trying to take a girl home who seems to drunk (or drugged) to consent. Stop it. Do something. SAY SOMETHING

Rapists aren’t strangers behind a bush. They are your friend, your brother, your cousin, your co worker. Until we decide that the responsibility to end sexual violence is on all of us, until we decide “losing our friends” is worth it to stand up. It wont end #AbLeg #yeg