Being raped or being subject to domestic violence is nothing to be ashamed of. It happens to many, many people and there are as many different ways of dealing with it as there are people who experience it.

I hope that by drawing together like this relevant posts and some resources as part of my own journey, other people may be helped in their search to work out their own way forward.

I would be grateful for suggestions for other links, whether they are accounts of people's experiences or support resources. Or please contribute your own experiences if you would like to, either by sending me a link to include, or sending me your experiences by email for publication - openly or anonymously.

I think this is important, as victims can feel very isolated, very ashamed and very much as if they have no-one to turn to who will understand what they are experiencing.

This piece was first posted on my blog ducking for apples in December 2005, prompted by the Amnesty International survey that included the fact that 34% of people interviewed felt that women were in some way culpable in their own rape. I have copied it here to give it a more permanent home.

If you have a blog or a relevant forum, I would be very grateful if you felt able to write a small post linking to this one, to raise awareness - whether you are male or female, with personal experience or not. The person you work with every day, your friend from college, your sister, your mother, your cousin - they might all have experienced something like this and have never told anyone. Things CAN change, if enough people stand up to be counted. Think of it as a meme. Those 34% of people that Amnesty cite are wrong. I want to convince them.

I am going to put a link to this post in the sidebar of my blog and any further links or info will be added here - I do not want my blog to become a one-issue place and this is probably the last actual post I will make on the subject. What happened to me is a part of me, but it is does not by any means define who I am and I don't want to dwell on it or become defined by it. As various other people also say, I am no longer a victim.

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