my heart is setting off grenades i can only write about this here because everywhere else is dangerous and i'm not allowed to talk about it. trigger warning for discussion of rape/sexual assault. my aunt was raped a few months ago in her house in carriacou by a man who has recently been identified as a serial rapist. this was traumatic in and of itself but the same man was also recently acquitted by a jury of six women and one man for the rape of my aunt. what the fuck kind of world do we live in where rapists get off every single fucking day because it somehow makes more sense to blame women for their own sexual assault? where rape kits sit in processing holds and backlogs for years at a time because investigating rape isn't seen as a priority? where sexual assault isn't considered as important as convicting marijuana users? where we can somehow tell someone that we don't believe they were raped, for whatever reason, when they are trying so hard to explain that they were? why someone would even HAVE to fight to get others to believe that they were sexually assaulted, like it's something people would claim flippantly? every single day i fight to find reasons to stay alive in the face of every fucked up thing going on in this world. today i'm having a hard time. today the reasons to stay are few and the reasons to call it quits are many. i don't really understand why we can't just take care of our own by putting rapists where they fucking belong. |