This is a series I have created, intended to educate and bring awareness to sensitive and often triggering subjects. I aim to shed light on realities that may be difficult to confront, but if at any point you feel uncomfortable, please feel free to leave this article.
“things people don’t tell you” — SEXUAL ASSUALT (Episode One)
I recently read Amber Smith’s books The Way I Used to Be and The Way I Am Now. More than once, I had to stop mid-sentence, staring blankly at the wall, letting the words settle, their weight pressing down with suffocating clarity. Just eight pages into the first book, I was already overcome with nausea. It was painfully clear where the story would lead, and it was terrifying to recognise the ways the victim would be scrutinized, judged, and reduced to assumptions. The hypersexuality, the court scenes, the insidious “Did she say no?” or “What was she wearing?” The visceral sense of the perpetrator’s hands lingering on her skin no matter how hard she scrubbed — it all felt too real.
We understand, on a basic level, what sexual assault is: an act of violation without consent. We hear about the trauma, the mental scarring, and the unhealthy coping mechanisms survivors often turn to. And yet, each victim is subjected to the same dehumanizing questions, as if their pain needs validation:
“Why didn’t you fight back?”
“What were you wearing?”
“Did you say no?”
“Were you turned on?”
“If it affected you so much why did you sleep with so many people after it?”
If we as a society know the dangers, fears, and side effects, why do we insist on asking these stupid questions?
We’re told the basics: that it’s painful, that PTSD can follow, and that one might struggle with intimacy. But what about the things we’re not told?
They never tell you how fucking dirty you feel every second of every day, that no matter how much soap you use, no matter how hard you scrub, you will feel dirty. They tell you about the future lack of interest in sexual activity but not the adoption of hypersexuality. The need to have sex over and over again to feel a semblance of control in a situation where you had none. The need to rationalise the experience in order to not be seen or labelled as a victim, as someone who couldn’t fight back.
When I reached the second book, there was only one scene I was truly waiting for, the courtroom. The perpetrator’s lawyer kept hammering the same question:
“Did you at any point during the encounter say no?”
He didn’t care for any details or explanations. He didn’t want to hear how she’d been strangled or how her nightgown had been shoved into her mouth, silencing her. All he wanted was a simple “yes” or “no” — not the truth of what had rendered her silent, but an admission that she hadn’t explicitly said the word.
It infuriated me because it was painfully realistic; the lawyer wasn’t seeking justice, only a loophole. But the victim’s response left no room for manipulation:
“He. Never. Asked. The. Question.”
It was perfect because it forced a moment of truth into a courtroom often more interested in dissecting the victim than in acknowledging the crime. Her response cut through the lawyer’s manipulation, dismantling the ridiculous notion that silence equates to consent. By saying, “He. Never. Asked. The. Question,” she called out the real issue — the complete disregard for her autonomy and consent at that moment.
This scene was powerful because it highlighted the twisted logic that so often traps survivors in courtrooms. The defence wasn’t interested in her inability to say “no” due to physical constraint or fear. All they cared about was extracting a single word, a “yes” or “no,” reducing the complexity of her trauma to a binary answer that could be weaponized against her. Her response, however, shattered that narrative, redirecting the focus back to the absence of consent rather than her supposed failure to deny him explicitly.
This moment was the perfect counterattack in a system so heavily skewed against victims, an unapologetic assertion that sometimes, consent isn’t a question of simply saying “no” — it’s about whether anyone ever cared enough to ask in the first place.
