I truly realized sexual violence and gender violence existed when I was about 11.

Before that, it wasn’t a part of my reality. Just an abstract concept.

My family was wonderful. My dad treated my mother like an equal partner because to him that’s exactly what she was.

I could say the cliché line “my dad treated my mom like a queen”—but too often that’s used to put women on a pedestal. And that isn’t what my dad did. They were partners in every way. My dad taught me to pursue excellence and dream big.

Nothing prepared me for the reality that sexual violence or gender violence existed. Not until I was 11, and a friend told me that sometimes her brother would touch her in inappropriate places when they were alone.

We had had an assembly at school a few weeks before. I’ve since learned from experts that this is not the right way to have these conversations, but it’s what happened. We were all in the gym, and somebody came to talk to us about child abuse. I don’t remember what grades were there or if it was more than one, but I do remember sitting in the auditorium and listening as somebody explained what abuse was and if somebody was being abused they could and should tell their teacher who would fix it.

I’m sure it was more complicated than that, but that’s what I remember. I must have known about child abuse before then because it wasn’t the first time I had heard about it. But when my friend chatted with me it became real.

When my friend first said her brother touched her inappropriately, none of us knew what she meant. I don’t remember exactly what she said next. Now, with my adult mind, I know she was describing pretty severe child sexual abuse. But at the time, I didn’t have the knowledge to understand. I knew it was bad and wrong, but that was it.

We told her she should tell the teacher. That’s what we had been instructed to do. My friend became enraged and started screaming at us when we told her to do so. She told us if we told anybody we would ruin her life and her family and that we were her friends we weren’t supposed to tell anybody.

None of us told anybody. I didn’t actively think about it again until much later. When I finally told my parents, they were shocked. Nobody ever did know. Years later, one of the children tried to commit serious self-harm. And it finally got out, that there was rampant child abuse in that family for years.

But even though I didn’t actively think of it again for a long time, that experience left an indelible mark on me.

A few years later, a friend of mine told me she had to testify against her father for child sexual abuse.

Then a friend confided in me that a boy had assaulted her at a party. And so on. From then on, almost every year while I was a teen, somebody would discuss their sexual assault or rape with me. I never quite felt like I knew how to respond entirely or what to do. But it sparked a flame inside me to try to stop sexual violence that has never faded.

How can we stop sexual assault? How can we prevent this? How can we respond better? What can I do? How can we help?

These are questions that played out in my mind, questions I’ve had since I was in elementary school, questions I’m still actively trying to answer.

And then friends started telling me their boyfriends and then husbands were abusing them and hitting them or emotionally abusing them. That’s never stopped either.

Now somebody reports sexual violence or domestic violence to me nearly every six weeks. I’ve been actively volunteering in efforts to stop both since I was a senior in high school. I have knitted hats for women and children in shelters, I have worked crisis hotlines, I have taken the forty-hour trainings, and now I chair the sexual violence policy alliance in my state and am on the board for the coalition against sexual assault in my state.

My eleventh-grade research paper was on human sex trafficking and sexual violence. I’ve published papers on the topic. It’s a huge facet of my life and has been for a long time.

Recently, I’ve shared my own experiences with sexual violence. However, that’s never been why I’ve been involved or what sparked my interest. It was seeing the experiences of too many people I cared about that sparked the desire to act within me. It’s the faces of all the people who have reported or disclosed to me. It’s the disturbing realization that sexual violence is a pandemic. One that too many are content to see ignored or swept under the rug.

I am involved because I hope that no more 11-year-old girls hear horrific stories of child abuse and don’t know how to respond. I am involved so that one day this pandemic may be abolished. I am involved because too often we still treat gender and sexual violence like it’s okay. And I’m also involved so that survivors one day stop telling me “it was my fault” and “I should have done ____.”

I am involved because how can I not be?

People often think only those who have personal experiences are involved in the effort, and I can say that couldn’t be further from the truth. We need everybody to be involved.

Photo via Unsplash license by Karl Magnuson