"Words seemed to make it visible.
But, speaking, even when it embarrassed me,
also slowly freed me from the shame I felt.
The more I struggled to speak, the less power
the rape, and its aftermath, seemed to have over me."
Nancy Raine, After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back, 1998
Traumatized people suffer damage to the basic structures of the self. They lose trust in themselves, in other people, in God...The identity they have formed prior to the trauma is irrevocably destroyed.
Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 1992
"I survived this torture which left me paralyzed for years. That's what that night was all abou