Survivor Stories

Ethan Levine was sexually assaulted in high school by a friend of someone he was casually dating. “In the immediate aftermath of the first assault, my focus was on whether it was real and whether I was right about what had happened. I got hung up on the fact that what happened to me didn’t fit the definition of rape I had grown up hearing.”

Carolyn experienced child sexual abuse by an older cousin and another sexual assault later in her life. "It’s so healing to talk about it. The more you talk about it, the more you’re letting go, bit by bit. I can feel it exit my body every time I tell my story."

Lacy was sexually assaulted and abused by her high school partner. “No one understood what I was going through and what it was like in that relationship. But when we were apart, I realized how great it felt to be away from him—I really wanted that freedom.”

Two months after Lisa Gray divorced her ex-husband, she discovered that he had been sexually abusing her daughter Nikki throughout their seven-year marriage. “As it started to settle in, I replayed it in my mind. How could this happen? I had so much shame, so much guilt that I had brought this man into my house to molest my child. What kind of mother am I? The guilt and the shame were deafening—but at the same time I knew I had to do what was necessary for my daughter.”