Sexual Harassment

So this week as we were discussing "Rape as Social Murder," we talked about how the victims often don't get themselves past the situations because they think that they cant....they are either too scared or they convince themselves that it is their fault. The same goes for not only rape victims but sexually harassed people as well either physically or emotionally. They tend to stay in an abusive or bad relationship because they are too scared to get out or they convince themselves that somehow they deserve the harassment they are receiving. This whole topic kind of hit home for me a little bit in a way. In high school we had a sheriff that was assigned to our school...we had the same REALLY nice officer for my first three years, but my senior year he retired and we got a new one. I worked in the office for my block of classes senior year so I was one of the first students that he met. I tried to make it a point to be nice to him and say hello whenever I saw him because he was new to our school and didn't really know anyone. However, by about the middle of our first semester, he started getting a little too friendly. At first I didn't think much of it, I just tried to ignore it. One day however, he crossed the line. Long story short, I was walking down an empty hallway and before I knew it my arm was twisted behind my back like I was being arrested and I was pushed up against a wall with him leaning on me so I couldn't move while he jokingly said "this is what I do to bad girls." I didn't tell anyone about it for the longest time. I thought that since he was a sheriff and obviously had authority over me that it was my fault, that somehow I had provoked it. Eventually he kept bothering me till the point that I had to tell someone. I ended up telling my coach who turned right around and told our principal. She called me into her office the next day and we had a long talk about the whole situation. Needless to say he was asked not to return the following year. Its crazy things like these when you start to realize that you can totally relate. Not that my experience was super traumatizing or anything, but it does make me take things a little more seriously sometimes.