Brooke Nevels

And it takes a very long time to really process and get to the point where you can

Talk about it in those terms.

And those terms are devastating.

When you say sexual assault, when you say rape, your life changes.

You have a target on your back.

Every single thing that you say or that you don't say becomes evidence.

Which is a loss of power and control.

That's really what it is.

You realize that you are powerless and something scary is happening and you're trying to cling to whatever control you have.

So part of reclaiming that control is telling yourself it wasn't that bad.

It was a misunderstanding.

It was anything but the devastating thing that is a sexual assault.

And in my particular situation, the power differential was as extreme as it could possibly be.

When your job is to work with the talent, when these are people who have to be kept happy, who their opinion of you can make or break your career, annoying them can mean you're never allowed on a set again.

That changes the dynamic of every single interaction that you have.

And another part of that is that any attention that they give you, professionally, you feel is a positive thing that you are lucky to get.

And people who are in power know they're in power.

That's something that they wield every single day.

So when you're a person in power and you ask someone less powerful to do something, you have the responsibility to think about whether they are able to say no, whether they will feel comfortable saying no, whether they can be penalized for saying no.

And we always talk about fight or flight, but the most common reaction to being scared or nervous is freezing.