Victoria - revolutionary and rape survivor
These days I’m living my own little American dream -- no home, no school, no job. I’m traveling. I’ve been partaking in a lot of protests, like Occupy Wall street. Revolution is happening everywhere, and it’s really changing my look on life. I’m very happy and I love everyone around me.
The incident happened at the very first of July. Today it will be three months. That day was such a crazy day. There was a friend, a guy I thought was a friend, and he was just kind of like, “Hey do you want to hang out?” It had been a while that we’d had a chance to talk. I thought we could catch up.
We drove out, and we were talking and listening to music. We ended up in a cornfield. I used to carry a knife with me everywhere I went, and I was showing him it, just joking. I said, if you try and do anything, I’m going to put up a fight. And then he took it. He took the knife, and that’s when that all went down.
The first thing I did was call the Nebraska Family Help Line. I called them and was like, I need to go to a doctor, but I don’t want the police involved, and I’m afraid of this kid. I ended up going to the hospital. The nurses were excellent. They were so nice. The officers were very helpful, but it was almost like they had to pressure me into telling because I didn’t want the police to know. And I did not want my parents to know.
When my mom came to the emergency room, it was exactly the way I pictured it. She wasn’t mad that it happened, she wasn’t afraid for me, she wasn’t comforting, she was just mad at me. She said, “I told you, what did I tell you?” They ended up having to separate her from me. She ended up leaving the ER, she didn’t even stay there with me. Which was a little sad. I love my mom, but she’s established how much of a relationship she wants with me. I’m homeless.
I’m thankful we’re not going to have to do a trial. The last I heard, he has changed his plea back to guilty or no contest, something like that. I ended up getting a text (from the attacker that same day) and it was essentially “oh crap, I hurt you.” So he knows what he’s done. I’m sure that that’s going to follow him for the rest of his life.
He hurt me. It is probably among the top three worst things, that could ever have happened to me. I thought about ending it, but you can either let it bring you down or you can be really pumped about the positives in your life. That helped, just trying to stay positive, optimistic and always, always thinking this isn’t an opportunity for me to go down or feel sorry for myself. I’m all about forgiveness and I’m all about peace and love.
There’s so much love and I hope every victim understands that. There is too much genuine love and genuine compassion and genuine concern between human beings for them to let one incident dictate their future or lack there of. This is not an opportunity to go down, never has been.
I’m just really happy to be alive and I hope that someday every victim gets to a place where they’re just like every thing’s going to be Okay. Cause it is.
