The student at Northern Illinois University had an appointment in Chicago and needed a ride. So she arranged to stay that night in April 2013 with a friend who could drive her into the city the next morning.

“She picked me up on campus and took me back to her place after my classes,” the student, now 23, recalled. “The night was uneventful, but when it was later, and I was getting ready to sleep, she started to kiss me. I froze and didn’t reciprocate.”

She said she didn’t know what to do.

“She told me not to be such a prude and said that she knew I wanted it and kept on kissing,” she said. “I turned my head away but she didn’t stop. She started touching me other places. I still didn’t say anything. After a bit she stopped and called me a prude.”

The next day, the student, who is a lesbian, told her then-romantic partner what had happened.

“All she said was, ‘If you didn’t want it to happen, you would have found a way to stop it.’ . . . I didn’t talk about it at all to anyone over summer. I cried a lot and felt dirty, and just gross. I felt like it was my fault and like I was broken. I felt like I had been unfaithful to my partner because I didn’t stop it.”

During the next school year, the student said her grades plunged, and she had a hard time focusing on classes.

“I had to take two incompletes in the fall and it just felt like I was crying all the time. Everything felt like a blur and I felt dirty, small and numb,” she said. “I felt like a zombie.”

The student did not report the incident.

“The person that did it never had repercussions for her actions,” she said. In the past year, her grades have improved and she is starting to heal. She said she wants to tell her story because too often sexual assault within the LGBT community goes unnoticed.

“For me, it almost felt like there was an extra additional component of shame,” she said. “Logically, I know it is not my fault. I know what happened was sexual assault, but I still do struggle with feelings of guilt and being dirty. I want people to know that the culture and beliefs we have about sexual assault in this country are not healthy. Thinking people would have found a way to stop it if they didn’t want it is victim-blaming, and it is as ridiculous as telling a victim of a robbery that they would have stopped a robbery if they really didn’t want it to happen.”

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