by Adrianna Ohmes

“Awful for these girls? They got what they went looking for. They are now only trying to save face because they got caught with their pants down by mommy.”– Amock4u, an anonymous commenter on a post about the Maryville teen rape case on the Huffington Post.

I scrolled through countless comments on several posts about the Steubenville and Maryville rape cases. This one just happened to make me the most nauseous.

It is never the victim’s fault.

But in the society that we live in today, victim blaming has become the norm. People blame rape victims for dressing a certain way, acting a certain way or being under the influence of some intoxicant.

None of those things should matter.

Whether a victim is clothed from head to toe or completely naked does not excuse the rapist’s actions. Whether the victim is married to their rapist or has never met their rapist before does not excuse the rapist’s actions. Whether the victim is drunk or has never touched alcohol before in their life does not excuse the rapist’s actions.

Many people blame victims of lying and accusing their attacker out of anger. However, according to the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault’s website, only 2 to 8 percent of rapes that are reported are false.

Why do people jump to the conclusion that the victim is lying?

I cannot answer this because I’ve never been able to fathom blaming the victim of any crime.

Am I even an appropriate person to talk about sexual assault? I have never been raped. I am not a MOCSA representative. But I do know the subject from personal experiences.

I can list about six people off of the top of my head who I’ve been close to who have been sexually assaulted. Some were assaulted as children by people who they trusted, some were assaulted in their late teen years by someone they barely knew. Most recently someone who I’m close to was raped and I was there with her after it happened.

Thanks to my MOCSA sessions and other situations I’d been placed in I knew how to handle the situation. We were able to have her attacker arrested before he could flee and she got the immediate legal and medical help she needed.

Friends and family members of her attacker have commented on posts about the arrest and allegations online threatening to expose her identity. One anonymous commenter did post her name. Others claim that her her rapist couldn’t have raped her, that he respects women too much and isn’t capable “of such horrendous things.” They said that she was lying and that it was her fault.

They do not know what happened that night and blaming the victim is the most senseless, disgusting and horrendous thing to do besides raping someone yourself.

The only people who actually know what happened during an alleged rape is the victim (if conscious), the attacker and any witnesses.

If I am honest, I cannot say what actually happened except for what I’ve been told, and his family and friends are in the same boat.

But I can tell you this, I have never experienced something so heart breaking, so world shattering as I did as my friend tried to walk to me and couldn’t because she kept collapsing. With tears streaming down her face and her mascara running she kept repeating, “I told him no. I told him to stop.”

How could I not believe her?

I understand that the attacker may not seem like the kind of person who would sexually assault anyone, but what a person does when they’re alone or in a position of power over someone else cannot always be detected.

While people are blaming girls like Daisy and Paige in the Maryville cases or Jane Doe in Steubenville who have come out about their assaults, there are millions of victims who stay silent in fear. Fear of being blamed, fear of not being accepted, and fear of having to see their attacker again.

They’re courageous enough to pursue justice, and that should be applauded not blamed.