Student Leader Blog: Sexual Assault and Harrasment

Editorial from AMP Youth Leader Saadalah

A silent problem; catastrophic, painful, yet everyone pretends it isn’t, you’ve probably run into someone today who’s lived through it. Nearly one in four adults in the USA are survivors, with no improvement since 2018 despite the loud and painful efforts to raise awareness. Know what I’m talking about?

Sexual harassment or assault has been a quiet destroyer of communities, slowly rooting deep in each victim, breaking them from the inside leaving them hollow and unable to seek the help they deserve, and here’s the truth society refuses to acknowledge, nearly a third of women in the USA have indicated facing sexual harassment or assault in the past year alone. With 15% of men as well, these percentages might look tiny if you’re solving a math quiz, but in reality, that means over 68 million people whose world shattered on some random day.

And while many assaults happen out in public, from insecure or perverted people who feel like they somehow own to someone else’s body, the deeper danger comes from within our social circles, from family members to coworkers or even partners mostly in private spaces where they know how to hide, threaten, or manipulate the victim into staying silent.

That’s where our bigger problem begins, according to Tulane University News report on the recent #MeToo 2024 findings, they found that nearly 88 percent of victims did not tell anyone, not the police, not their families, and not even their close friends, which shows how truly heartbreaking these incidents are, and how we’re constantly failing to respond to the silent cries for help, and how broken our help systems still are.

Do you think it stops after the assault? Oh certainly not, victims start blaming themselves for what happened, and this is not their fault, it’s a product of their environments, constant comments or blames linger inside, growing to think that fear is just part of womanhood. Suddenly the new norm becomes a loop of phrases planted within them: “maybe it’s because i wore this” “what if I hadn’t smiled at them?” “What if I gave them the wrong idea? it’s all my fault”. All this turns to chronic anxiety and hypervigilance. Looking over their shoulders with each step they take, keys between their knuckles, ready to run at the slightest of things.

Assault doesn’t always look like the scenarios we all imagine. Sometimes, sexual assault disguises itself as traditions, making it more damaging. Child marriage forces children to give up their adolescence for someone they never chose, pushing them into a sexualized adulthood before they even understand their own bodies. More than 640 million girls were forced to live through this, carrying trauma long before they turn eighteen.

The risk skyrockets in refugee camps, where families are displaced, stuffed together, and fighting to survive, early marriages become a coping mechanism or a way to earn enough to eat. These camps are under-policed and stretched thin, leaving girls vulnerable and humanitarian workers unable to intervene.

And for those trying to protect themselves and saying “no”? They’re called a “disgrace,” guilt-trapped and gaslit into submission.

Survivors of assault don’t just live one traumatic moment. They wake up to a challenge every day, long after the world has decided their “problem” is over. PTSD, depression, suicidal thoughts, and trust issues, become a part of their daily routine, the stuff no one ever includes in a “Get Ready With Me.” And do you think they talk about it? I wish the answer were yes, instead the world tells them to “move on” pushing them away into a life of silence, letting the trauma eat at them from inside.

Remember how I said that help systems are failing? Here’s how much they’re failing survivors.

Global institutions and legal systems, the ones supposed to help and protect, often crumble when needed, especially in regions like South Asia, Middle East, and Africa, for example, many rape laws are not enforced in the way they should be, “Equality Now” found that in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, survivors face corrupt policing, and a justice system that spreads out medical exams, trials, and investigations for many years, keeping conviction rates painfully low.

During medical examinations, many of these countries allow humiliating and invasive “virginity tests” or sometimes called “two-finger tests,” inhumane procedures dressed up as gathering evidence.

The humiliation doesn’t end there, over 60 percent of survivors said that they were pressured to drop their cases, sometimes even by their own families to avoid the “mess.”

Non-specialist service groups aren’t doing much better, especially in fragile areas filled with conflict like South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Iraqi Kurdistan. These services lack proper trauma-response training, resources, or reliable safety nets.

What does that lead to? When people do find the courage to report abuse, there might be no trauma-informed care, no guaranteed confidentiality, and often no real protection. Just a barely functioning system telling them to “be brave.”

Here’s the thing, healing isn’t linear. People are obsessed with saying you “fall back” into trauma, but that’s not how it works. It’s a spiral, we pass by the same pain again, but we’re not the same people who faced it for the first time. We come back with more clarity and strength, even if it feels exhausting. Feeling tired after trauma is natural, it’s not failure, it’s a side effect of surviving, and survivors deserve a world that understands that.

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Student Leader Blog: Sexual Assault and Harrasment

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