Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines tell us it is a public health epidemic, with one in four girls and one in six boys being victimized before age 18. Pennsylvania alone has more than 3.1million victims. Nationally, it is more than 49 million. A child today has a greater chance of being sexually abused than of being in an automobile accident or breaking a bone.

Honestly sometimes I really don’t know why I even bother doing this crap anymore. Some days I wonder why the hell am I wasting my time writing and posting and spreading the word on something that people just close their eyes to. Some days I feel like just being normal. Waking up one day without having to check my schedule to make sure I don’t miss my therapy secessions. I cry about why I’m wasting energy writing in this blog.

My feelings are hurt. I’m feeling really emotional right now. I just understand how and why so many people ignore what’s going on. Especially those who I thought were close to me, who I thought were a part of my support system. I think that the more I open up my mouth and talk about it, the more people I push away and I think that’s what hurts. Like everyone expects me to be quiet about it and not say anything without regards to my feelings. But then again if I can push you away that easily by speaking the truth, then you weren’t a real friend or a support system to begin with.

I don’t want to deal with this anymore. The only advantage to speaking out and saying something is that maybe someone else will listen to you. Maybe you can help another victim get through the process or even educate someone who didn’t know anything about the topic. I do wish a lot of times that I hadn’t said anything, that I only told on person and that my family and friends never knew. I feel like I’ve lost a lot of people (especially my family) by speaking out. I don’t know if the pros really do outweigh the cons especially when you have nothing to show for it.

I’m drained emotionally; it takes a toll on me. I just keep fighting and I keep getting knocked back down and I can feel my inner demons trying to come back and find me. This is how being raped made me feel. I felt like I was to blame. I was the one who had a drink, I agreed to go out with him and according to society, and I played a part in my own rape. According to them, I should not have had a drink with him, I should not have went out with him, I should not have been lying in bed with my boyfriend because everyone knows that’s how you get raped, by cuddling in the bed with your boyfriend. Damn now if that’s how you cause your own rape to happen then that would mean that every married woman has been raped because before she was married she did lay in bed with her husband cuddling………

How much logical sense does this make? I’m really starting to grasp the concept of there’s no one in this world to protect us but us. There’s no written law to officially protect any victim of rape from being raped. Hell a man can still rape his wife here and not go to jail because she’s his property.

For the past 20 years I’ve had different men had control over my body. I’m just now getting back the feeling that no one can control my body but me. That no one has the rights to my body but me and now some pathetic excuse for a man wants to tell me that if I get raped and get pregnant I have to carry my rapist baby? That if a 13 year old girl gets pregnant by her father, uncle, brother she has to have their child. That there’s no way a woman can get pregnant from a legitimate rape because a woman’s body has a way of shutting the whole thing down. A man is telling me that if I’m not forced down and don’t have any bruises it’s not rape. That if I don’t say no, it’s not rape. That if a 34 year old man has sex with a 17 year old girl that it’s not rape because the age of consent is 16 and 17 is legal and statutory rape applies to 15 and younger.

I’m pissed off and angry. This is really happening people; I don’t want anyone telling me what I can and cannot do with my own body. It’s none of their damn business and they need to butt out.

Talking about it doesn’t hurt, it’s the rejection, the victim blaming, the talks, the politics, the ignorant comments, stares and snares that you face every day that hurt. I’d rather quit and do something a lot less stressful but then I think about how I was feeling when I was looking for someone to turn to. I had searched the web up and down looking for another black woman I could talk to about being raped and about being molested and for years I couldn’t find one or a website of one who is openly talking about it.

I think about my daughter. I’ve been raped enough times so that she shouldn’t have to go through what I’m going through. Everything is out in the open and up front. Everyone’s feelings are on the table and no one is looking down to see them. It’s like that big pink elephant in the room that everyone’s ignoring. I do understand it’s a sensitive and still a taboo subject to talk about BUT ITS REAL. It happens all the time, every day, minute and second of the hour.

Closing your eyes and turning your head does not stop that woman from being raped

People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune.

The area’s historical and contemporary racism might have made the local NAACP feel compelled to take the stance it did, says Lester Spence, an Africana studies and political science professor at Johns Hopkins. This is not the first time the NAACP has advocated for black men accused of sex crimes. The organization came under fire in 2008 for rallying around a group of black teens who gang raped a black woman and forced her to have sex with her 12-year-old son at the Dunbar Village Apartment Complex in South Florida. The NAACP held a rally supporting the accused that included fliers labeling the men “victims.” They were later convicted, and the main assailant received eight life sentences. The state NAACP issued an apology, but the national NAACP stood by its original stance.

There’s a difference between Silsbee and Dunbar Village, however, points out lawyer-turned-blogger Gina McCauley, who led the black feminist critique of the NAACP’s Dunbar Village stance:

[Hillarie], a young White woman, has infrastructure in place to advocate on her behalf, but the majority of the time when the NAACP is running around coddling and defending violent predators, the victims are Black women and girls who don’t have such support.

So on football Sunday I’m in a crappy mood. Its nothing personal just that ladies time and I’m trying to control my own anger as far as my emotions during that time. So I decide to get on the internet and do some researching and blogging just to get some things off my mind I guess.


I come across an article of this high school girl who was raped by a football player. While she was being raped, there were 2 witnesses outside who heard the girl say no and heard what was going on outside of that locked door. So to get the point of things when the case goes to trial the football player and the other young man involved in the rape plead to a lesser charge. They ignored what the witnesses had heard and never took that into account when it came to the victims testimony. She was put into a position to where either she had to cheer for the boy who raped her or get kicked off the cheerleading squad. The whole town had been harassing her and still does to this day.


Now what is with the victim blaming? When is it ever ok to rape a woman? Is it ok to rape a woman because she’s drunk? Is it ok to rape a woman because she’s showing skin? Is it ok to rape a woman because she flirted with you? Is it ok to rape a woman because she agreed to fool around with you but when it comes down to actually having sexual intercourse with you she said no? is it ok to gang rape a 11 year old girl because she “dresses” like she’s 20? Is it ok to rape a mother and then force her to have sex with her 12 year old son? All I want to know is when is it ok?


The funny thing about this is the NAACP. Every single time a black man is accused of rape they come out like flies on a pile of shit. So eager to defend his rights, claiming that they should have the same rights as white men. Now I’m not saying that black men should not have the same rights my problem is you are defending a man who gang raped a mother and forced her to have sex with her son and your issue is not that he did it, that he couldn’t get out on bail……am I the only one who sees a problem with this? I don’t see them flocking out to protect the rights of rape victims no but they will stand up for the black man.


Again with the victim blaming, this has gotten to the point where men accused of rape are now the victims and women turn into being the ones who turned them on/lead them on/knew what they were doing.
Rape(Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence) is the only crime where there is an “Alleged Victim.” You hear it constantly all the time on the news, all you have to do is turn the channel. It is the only crime where the victims behavior is being determined on weather or not the crime actually took place. I’ve said this a million times before, if you get robbed the police don’t come up to you and blame you for having money in your pockets at the time you were robbed. They don’t ask you why you were wearing your diamond necklace or why you had on $300 shoes. Yes they might comment on it but that’s as far as it goes and they move on with the case. No one blames them for having MATERIALISTIC VALUEABLES taken away from them. When a woman is raped, What was she wearing? Was she drinking? Why was she out alone? What was she doing in that neighborhood? Why didn’t she scream for help? Why didn’t she fight back? Did she lead him on? Why did she let him into her house?
People put more empathy when materialistic items are stolen then when a woman’s body is stolen from her. Why does money have a higher value then a woman’s body? Why do materialistic items have more value over a woman’s body? Doesn’t that pissed anyone else off other than me?


We need to stop protecting the perpetrators and helping the victims. Blaming the victims for what was DONE TO THEM doesn’t solve the problem, it only enables them to keep doing it over and over again. Seriously what does protecting them do? Do you knot want other people to know what’s going on behind close doors? Because rape happens its nothing to be ashamed of, the shame comes from those people who like to sweep it under the rug to try and cover it up, to keep a good name clean.

Al Sharpton and the NAACP with the Dunbar Village Rape

WEST PALM BEACH - Speaking outside the State Attorney's Office on Tuesday, the Rev. Al Sharpton decried what he said was unequal treatment of the young defendants charged in the Dunbar Village attack and the teens recently arrested on charges of a rape west of Boca Raton.


Backed by relatives of the defendants accused in last year's rape of a Dunbar Village resident, Sharpton said any act of violence against a woman is inexcusable, but he is seeking fairness, considering that the teens charged in a New Year's Day assault west of Boca Raton are free on bail.


"You cannot have one set of rules for acts that are wrong and horrific in Boca and another set in Dunbar Village," said Sharpton, a civil rights activist and president of the New York-based National Action Network. "You must have equal protection under the law."


Avion Lawson, 14; Nathan Walker, 17; Tommy Poindexter, 18; and Jakaris Taylor, 16, all were charged as adults with multiple felonies connected to the attack, in which police say the victim was repeatedly assaulted. Taylor has reached an agreement that would send him to prison for 20 years after pleading guilty to two counts of sexual battery and one count of burglary.



All four teens remain in the Palm Beach County Jail with bail denied, while five teens charged as adults with sexual battery on a physically incapacitated person and lewd and lascivious battery in the New Year's Day case all have posted bond as they await trial. Sharpton said the teens in that case had not been charged as adults; all but a 13-year-old were.



William Long, 18; Alex Perriello, 16; Eduardo Otaegui, 17; Ryan Lafferty, 14; and Blake Carter, 14, are accused of assaulting two middle school students along a canal bank after a night of drinking west of Boca Raton.


In that case, the consumption of alcohol by the teens, including the alleged victims, appears to have been a factor in the assault, according to court documents. The girls ended up in a hospital and one of them is reported to have told one of the boys she wanted to have sex with him, according to court documents. Three of the teen boys admitted to investigators they engaged in sex acts with the girls, one of whom was found by a deputy unconscious and half-naked.



In the Dunbar Village case, the victim was beaten, forced into a sex act with her son at gunpoint and ordered into a tub filled with vinegar and water, where household cleaners were poured on her, police said.


Maude Ford Lee, president of the West Palm Beach chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she hoped Sharpton's presence would help expose the "injustice."


"We're quite concerned it seems there is a different kind of action that takes place with black kids and white kids," Lee said. "We are not condoning the crimes that these kids supposedly committed but we want equal treatment under the law for them."



Michael Edmondson, spokesman for the State Attorney's Office, said the allegations levied at Tuesday's news conference do not deserve a response.


Cathy Lawson, Avion Lawson's mother, said she is still hurting about the fact her son is charged as an adult."I'm not saying they shouldn't be charged, but I don't feel that they should be charged as adults," she said. "Because they don't have the mind of an adult."



Avion Lawson is "not doing good" in jail and is allowed out of his cell one hour every other day, she said."How would you be doing if you were a 14-year-old locked up in a room?" she asked.Walker's mother, Ruby Walker, also attended the news conference and complained about the treatment her son and his co-defendants have received."We don't like what's going on. It's not right," she said. "I don't think we should have to suffer."



Sharpton also said he plans to follow through on a promise to spend the night at Dunbar Village. He repeatedly expressed his concern about the lack of bail for the Dunbar defendants."In this situation, it is the imbalance that we are protesting. We are not condoning the acts on either side," Sharpton said.


"While we admonish young men in every community to not engage in crime and to respect women, we also admonish the system that you can't have one level of justice for whites and those with money and another level for blacks that live in Dunbar Village."Nancy Othón can be reached at nothon@sun-sentinel.com or 561-228-5502.