Marissa

And I thought at least if he would have checked in with his cases yearly, he would have seen what was going on with mine.

I think it's always important to ask questions and advocate for yourself.

If something is not...

going the way you had expected or you're not understanding something, it's so important to say that.

If someone in the Title IX office isn't answering your question or there's something that you're not understanding, ask for somebody else in the Title IX office.

Ask to speak to the Dean of Students.

Sometimes there are people who are not as qualified to do their job or they're not doing their job the right way.

And so I would just highly suggest you find a different person, find a different route.

Don't let it make you lose hope because there's always someone else that can help.

Something I want to make really clear is that it's really important to use the resources that you have, to use victim advocates.

I wish I understood better at the time the process and what should have been happening.

And I wish that I would have been checking in with people above Detective Smith.

I wish I didn't just take her at her word.

That is super detrimental, especially to a victim because they already feel such a loss of control that when things consistently don't go the way that they're being told they're supposed to go, it just adds to the despair and the hopelessness of the situation.

Especially with Detective Smith, there was a lot of dishonesty.

I think that sexual assault is already so confusing, so dehumanizing.

And then to have this on top of it from the person that was supposed to protect me and investigate my case, it was really confusing for me.

One of the most unexpected parts of this experience was the amount of secondary trauma that I endured from the justice system and from the systems that were put in place to protect me.

I feel in a lot of ways more traumatized by those systems than the assault itself.

I was so betrayed by SL and by the assault, but I was able to understand what happened through therapy and understand that he was not a healthy person and understand the choices that he made were his.