In black and white, statistics are manageable numbers. Easily read, easily forgotten, and easily ignored. It's hard to imagine them as they truly are. A face. A name. Someone real.
The reality is rape is a vicious crime against a person, against a body, against a mind that remembers far longer than any visible scars remain. But we don't talk about it. It makes people uncomfortable. Maybe because they don't know what to say. Maybe because it touches far too close to home. Maybe because no one has ever really told us how to react, how to respond, how to grapple with the complexities of an issue that get confused by the notion that sex and rape are one and the same.
If you ask me, I don't believe the statistics. Given the history of rape and it's propensity to be undocumented and unreported, it seems to me that its tentacles far outreach the numbers given. Maybe they're as close to the truth as we can get without ever being able to know for certain what they really are. But those numbers matter. It reminds us of conversations we need to have with our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our friends.
Rape affects us all whether we have born witness to its wake, or are among those whose lives miraculously go untouched. We cannot continue to live in a world where it's acceptable to sweep violence against women and children under the rug, away from the public eye. We cannot live in the world where victims of violence bear the weight of shame for a crime they did not commit.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention month. Get the facts, share them with those you know, don't let this discussion stay in the dark. Every conversation counts, every light matters...
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