Unbelievable

I have been watching the limited series on Netflix, “Unbelievable.” And let me tell you – my blood is boiling. If you aren’t familiar to the series, it’s based on a true story where a young woman was bullied into recanting a true rape statement by the police and family members. Finally, years later, proof came out that she had been telling the truth. She was able to sue the state, but the emotional damage had been done. She lost all of her friends and family. And I couldn’t help but think…

I have been her.

I have been the girl who decided to go to the police. I have sat while a detective questioned my story over and over again, with not-so-veiled blaming statements such as, “If you knew he was abusive, why would you get in the car with him?” I have been the girl who was accused of lying, not just by a friend, but by almost every single person on my college campus, including my two best friends, who actually took my abuser’s side – a man who’d sexually assaulted me the night before my dad’s funeral, with my family sleeping three yards from us. I have been the girl who sat while the Dean of Student Behavior at my college questioned me again and again and again, until it was finally determined that my allegations were “false.” “Not enough proof,” they said. “Maybe if you’d come to us sooner,” they said. I lost everyone, one by one, until I was essentially pushed out of campus. I was the girl who considered suicide, after I saw how absolutely hated I was.

Hated and disbelieved to the point where until I got into therapy, I couldn’t see the truth myself.

I blamed myself the whole time. Why had I waited months? Why had I waited until there was no possible evidence left? Why hadn’t I just screamed that first night…why did I just freeze up and then immediately go shower? Why would I do everything they tell you not to do? I couldn’t see the way out. I couldn’t see how this wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t see how I wasn’t what everyone said…a “wh*re.”

And then finally, just months after I escaped the years of horrific abuse, a counselor sat me down and told me, “You have endured an astronomical amount of trauma. You are not making this up. I believe you.”

I completely broke down. After everything had gone down three years prior, I stopped talking about what happened to me. I was scared someone else would make the same assumption. I was scared I would lose yet another person. And so I ended up in the exact same abusive situation, over and over again…after all, I wasn’t worth more than abuse.

I finally moved cities. I went to a new college. And yet I kept my mouth shut, until the PTSD finally pushed me into counseling, where I heard the words I had ached to hear for so long… “I believe you. ” My counselor explained that it would be psychologically impossible to fake the trauma I was exhibiting in every word I spoke. And finally, curled up tightly on that chair with my arms protectively wrapped around myself, I was able to breathe. I let those walls of protectiveness down, and finally decided I should share my story again. I was terrified…I’d been put through so much. Not just by my monsters, but by people I’d considered friends. By a university I’d once trusted and loved so much.

I wrote my first blog post. I shared what had happened – how the system failed me, my friends failed me, and the Church Body failed me. I was terrified out of my mind…what if what happened before happened again? I was in a new place with friends who didn’t know my history…friends who loved me. What if I lost them too? What if I lost everything, my abusers found me, and I was no longer safe? I didn’t want to have to move again. I couldn’t move again.

But this was what God was calling me to do, and I couldn’t ignore that call. I’d been ignoring it for far too long.

And I cannot begin to express how faithful He was. I was met with more support than I’d ever felt before. I had a few people make victim-blaming statements, but I had healed to the point where I could gently rebuke those statements. And in these past two years, as I have continued to share my story, I have learned my calling. I will never stop fighting to heal this broken area of the world.

I am furious with the fact that so many men and women encounter this disbelief. I am furious that I have heard more victim-blaming statements made in the Church or from the Church than I have anywhere else. I am furious that over and over again, we continue to make this mistake, and we further victimize these survivors.

We. Must. Do. Better.

Jesus said that the world would know His disciples by the way His disciples loved the world; and every time we disbelieve a victim, we are not loving the world. We have a calling to love how Jesus loved, and as a Body – as representatives of Christ Jesus - we must honor that calling.

If you need help in learning how to talk to survivors of abuse, please feel free to contact me. I am constantly praying that we can all learn to love better, and stop assuming that a story is “unbelievable” just because it’s hard to hear. I pray we can come together and love the world as Jesus commanded.