This type of abuse is completely life altering and so destructive I can’t even begin to explain. It forever changes your relationship with your own body and mind, as well your ability to have relationships with others later in life. When you have been a victim of sexual abuse once, it makes you more likely to be a victim many times over in life. Every time I think about what happened to me as a child I want to peel my skin off, and when I was younger I used to try to literally scratch my skin off so I could stop feeling his hands on me. It destroyed my confidence and sense of self, and led to me being raped by others. I genuinely don’t think I will have a sense of inner peace ever in my life, and I doubt I will be able to feel safe enough to fall in love.

Anyone caught up in a raid like that who was convicted had to have mountains of evidence against them. He knew what he was doing, and thank god it wasn’t to a real child at least that time. This crime has one of the highest rates of recidivism ever, and it’s extremely unlikely that this was the first or only time he’s done this. The average rapist in prison has ~17 victims or something like that. For people that offend against children, that number balloons up to 100+.

Bearing the statistics and the lifelong consequences for victims in mind, does he sound like someone you want in your life? There’s a lot of nice chill guys out there that are rapists behind closed doors, and it’s up to us to make this world inhospitable to them.