Lately, I’ve been thinking about the ongoing conversations about sexual assault and the expectations people have for survivors after trauma. When a case becomes public, it often elicits differing opinions and misconceptions about what survivors experience and how they cope afterward.
As someone who survived childhood sexual abuse, I understand how these misconceptions can affect healing. When a survivor speaks up about sexual assault or childhood abuse, we often hear questions that make us feel like we are to blame, such as:
Why didn’t you tell someone?
Why did you keep talking to the person who hurt you?
Why didn’t you leave or fight back?
Although I heard these questions firsthand, I didn’t fully realize how harmful they can be until I started my clinical training working with trauma survivors. These questions come up not only in conversations about survivors but also from survivors themselves.
Many people may not realize how much these questions can hurt, so we need to be mindful of how we speak to a survivor, because even if we don’t mean to, our questions can make them feel blamed. It takes extreme courage for survivors to talk about something they may have carried for years, and the last thing they need is to feel like they have to defend themselves.
Instead of asking, “Why didn’t they come forward sooner?” we should ask, “What made it so hard for them to tell?”
Sarah’s Story
Sarah is not a real person. Her story is based on a combination of real clinical experiences.
Sarah was drinking with friends when someone she had known and trusted for years sexually assaulted her. She struggled to understand what happened, especially since she never thought this person would hurt her.
After the assault, Sarah began to blame herself and wondered: If I hadn’t been drinking, could I have stopped it? She kept thinking about it and began to believe no one would believe her if she spoke up. Whenever she thought about telling someone, she felt so anxious that she had a panic attack. Her fear kept her silent.
Sarah tried to keep up with her usual routine, going to work and seeing friends. When she attended a social event where her attacker was present, she did her best to act like nothing was wrong and to pretend she was fine. She described these moments as “walking into a room feeling dead inside but knowing that if I did not act normal, everyone would know I felt shattered inside.”
Recent news of a public sexual assault has raised a question that many may have asked Sarah as well: “Why did she keep talking to him?” But that question misses what was happening beneath the surface.
Sarah’s actions don’t mean the assault didn’t happen. They show she was confused and worried about being rejected. For her, pretending everything was normal felt easier than facing all her fears at once.
When Sarah finally told a friend in her social group what happened, her worst fear came true. The friend didn’t believe her. Sarah said the hardest part of telling her story was not just being doubted, but also hearing what her friends said when they found out: “It wasn’t rape. I think she regrets sleeping with him.”
These words minimized her experience and left Sarah feeling misunderstood and alone. Eventually, Sarah cut off contact with this mutual friend group. Sarah continued to have nightmares, anxiety, and panic attacks. She started to avoid relationships and found it hard to trust anyone, including her therapist.
Sarah’s story is just one example of how survivors often face hurtful questions and doubt.
This makes me wonder if we’re asking survivors the wrong questions. Rather than asking why someone stayed silent or how they managed afterward, we could ask what made it hard for them to speak up in the first place.
For many survivors like Sarah, fear, shame, self-blame, confusion, and fear of not being believed can all play a role in not disclosing abuse.1
When Understanding Comes Years Later
When children experience sexual abuse, they may not fully understand what is happening, which can make it harder for them to talk about it. Even if they know they do not want what is happening and feel scared and confused, they may not have the words or life experience to realize it is abuse.2
When I was abused, it was by someone I knew and trusted. I depended on the adults around me to show me what was safe and what wasn’t. So, when someone I trusted hurt me, I couldn’t understand why they made me feel unsafe in my own body.
My story is not uncommon. Childhood sexual abuse survivors often struggle to make sense of why they were put in unsafe situations and hurt by people they depended on.4 It is hard to make sense of something that shouldn’t happen, so survivors often stay silent out of fear or because they don’t know what will happen if they speak up.
When I finally told my story as an adult, the first thing I was asked was, “Why didn’t you tell someone?” That might sound like a fair question, but it made me feel as though they were questioning me since I had not disclosed the abuse sooner. The real issue was that I needed years to process it and learn that I didn’t deserve what happened to me.
Similarly, I have worked with adult survivors who told me that even though they remembered what happened, they could not make sense of their feelings as children until they accepted it was abuse.3 Coming to this understanding can be long and painful.
People naturally offer children understanding because they know children are never to blame. We should give sexual assault survivors the same understanding. This starts with how we speak to them, the questions we ask, and the time we give them to process their experience.
Survivors don’t need more questions that make them defend themselves. They need questions that help us understand what they lived through. Maybe it is time to stop asking survivors why they didn’t come forward sooner, and start asking what made it so hard to come forward in the first place.
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