Content warning: This article discusses sexual assault, victim-blaming, intoxication, and trauma.
The recent attention surrounding the Cornell 7 case has brought sexual assault, consent, intoxication, and survivor credibility back into the public conversation.
As a trauma therapist, I have been particularly struck by something that happens whenever a sexual assault case captures public attention:
We start examining the survivor.
What was she wearing?
Was she drinking?
Did she go there alone?
Why didn’t she leave?
Why didn’t she report it immediately?
Does she have a “reputation”?
Why was she there in the first place?
These questions are often presented as if they are simply attempts to understand what happened.
But we need to be honest about what they can also become: Victim-blaming.
What was she wearing?
Let’s start there.
What someone wears does not cause sexual assault.
A short skirt does not cause sexual assault.
A low-cut shirt does not cause sexual assault.
Being dressed provocatively does not mean someone has consented to sexual contact.
Clothing is not consent.
And neither is someone’s sexual history.
Having previously had sex with someone does not mean you have consented to sex with them again. Being flirtatious is not consent. Going somewhere with someone is not consent. Kissing someone is not consent to everything that follows.
Consent is specific, ongoing, and freely given.
“But she was drunk.”
This is another statement that comes up again and again.
Someone’s decision to drink alcohol does not give another person permission to sexually violate them.
In fact, intoxication can increase someone’s vulnerability to sexual violence. It can impair judgment, coordination, awareness, and the ability to protect oneself.
That vulnerability belongs to the person who is intoxicated.
The responsibility for choosing to sexually harm another person belongs to the person making that choice.
This distinction matters enormously!!
We can talk about safety without assigning blame. We can teach people about risk without suggesting that a person who was assaulted somehow caused their own assault. Those are not the same thing.
Trauma doesn’t always look the way people expect
One of the most harmful misconceptions about sexual trauma is the idea that there is a correct way to respond.
People imagine that someone who has been sexually assaulted will immediately:
- recognize that they have been assaulted
- fight back
- scream or physically resist
- leave immediately
- report the assault
- remember every detail perfectly
- tell the story in chronological order
- never speak to the person again
- behave in a way that makes their trauma obvious
But guess what? Trauma is not a performance. The nervous system responds to overwhelming threat in many different ways.
A person may fight.
They may flee.
They may freeze.
They may become still or compliant.
They may dissociate.
They may attempt to appease the person who is threatening them.
They may become emotionally disconnected from what is happening.
They may focus on surviving the moment rather than understanding what is happening.
These responses are not choices someone consciously makes in order to create a believable story later.
They are protective responses of the nervous system.
The freeze response is real
For some survivors, the body does not respond to danger by fighting or running. It freezes.
There is a phenomenon known as tonic immobility, in which a person can experience temporary involuntary paralysis or an inability to move or respond during a traumatic event.
This is one reason why asking, “Why didn’t she fight back?” is such a problematic question.
The absence of physical resistance does not automatically mean the presence of consent.
Trauma can profoundly affect how the brain and body respond to threat.
And sometimes survival means doing whatever the nervous system believes is necessary to get through the moment.
Trauma can also affect memory
Another misconception is that a survivor’s memory should look like a perfectly organized recording.
Traumatic memories do not necessarily work that way.
Research and trauma-informed investigative practices recognize that survivors may remember traumatic events in fragments, with details emerging over time rather than in a neat chronological sequence.
Some memories may be vivid.
Others may be unclear.
A person may remember sensory details- sounds, smells, physical sensations, images-without being able to immediately place everything in chronological order.
This does not mean that every inconsistent account should automatically be accepted as proof of an assault.
It means something much simpler: We should not assume that trauma responses and traumatic memory will look the way a calm observer expects them to look.
“Why didn’t she report sooner?”
This is another question survivors hear constantly.
Sometimes people report immediately.
Sometimes they tell a friend first.
Sometimes they wait days, weeks, months, or longer.
Sometimes they don’t report at all.
There are many reasons someone may delay disclosure: shame, fear, confusion, self-blame, fear of not being believed, fear of consequences, uncertainty about whether what happened “counts” as assault, concerns about the person who harmed them, or simply needing time to understand what happened.
And for some survivors, the first disclosure is not the end of the processing—it is the beginning.
Trauma recovery is not linear.
We need to stop looking for the “perfect victim”
This is perhaps the part that makes me angriest.
There is an invisible standard that survivors are expected to meet before people feel comfortable believing or supporting them.
The “perfect victim” would have:
- made all the right decisions
- never consumed alcohol or drugs
- never flirted
- never gone somewhere alone
- never had sex before
- immediately recognized the experience as assault
- immediately reported it
- physically fought back
- remembered everything perfectly
- behaved consistently afterward
- and told the story in exactly the way everyone else thinks it should sound
A person does not have to have “behaved perfectly” to deserve safety.
They do not have to have made perfect choices to deserve bodily autonomy.
They do not have to respond perfectly to deserve compassion.
As a trauma therapist, I am begging us to become more curious about trauma and less interested in finding reasons why someone “deserved” what happened to them. Enough.
