Tucked away in the corner of a busy Starbucks, a blue-eyed, red-haired Megan Wyman quietly recounts the sexual assault she experienced as a sophomore at Bowdoin College, a small school in Brunswick, ME.
Her friends were encouraging her to go to a party with them to help her get an ex-boyfriend off of her mind.
She agreed to go to the party. Later, when her roommate was ready to leave, Wyman decided to stay behind. She said she had been drinking, but wasn't drunk.
"I felt like I knew enough people at the party and so I was comfortable staying," Wyman said.
A man that Wyman recognized from an art class she had taken her freshman year approached her and they started talking. His name was Bruce.
"I remembered what a good artist he was in the drawing class we had together, Wyman said. "He seemed like a nice guy."
As it got late, Wyman decided it was probably time to go home. Bruce offered to walk her.
"I thought that it was probably safer not to walk alone late at night," Wyman said.
When the two arrived at her apartment, Bruce went in with her. Wyman said that they sat on the couch and started kissing. Wyman made it clear that she wasn't going to have sex with him.
"I didn't have a problem with kissing, but I wanted sex to be reserved for relationships," Wyman said.
She said that he then told her to calm down, like maybe she was being paranoid.
"I thought maybe I was overreacting," Wyman said.
Pretty soon though, Wyman felt her skirt go up and her underwear come off. Wyman froze while Bruce had sex with her without her consent.
"I just kept saying, 'I can't do this,' over and over again," Wyman said. "He just kept shushing me."
He was still in her apartment the next morning and after he left, Wyman went to her roommate to tell her what had happened because she felt terrible in her gut.
"Natalie (her roommate) told me that I had been raped," Wyman said.
The Aftermath
There were a lot of struggles for Wyman after she was assaulted. In the immediate aftermath, Wyman said that seeing the perpetrator on a regular basis around campus was her biggest struggle.
"Whenever I saw him, my stomach turned and I instantly felt dirty," Wyman said.
Even though Wyman knew in her head that the assault wasn't her fault, it took her a long time to really believe it.
"I guess you could say I was in denial for a while," Wyman said. "Or just trying to ignore what happened."
Not Reporting
Many women like Wyman don't report their sexual assault to police. Wyman said that she wasn't ready to call what happened to her "assault" and so reporting it didn't make sense to her. She also said that she didn't think she would have a strong case and didn't want to go through the pains of the court process.
"I felt guilty for a long time about not reporting," Wyman said.
Only one in 10 victims file a report with police, according to the Sexual Assault Victim Advocate (SAVA) Center in Fort Collins, Colo., where Wyman now works as a Development Coordinator.
It wasn't until two years after the assault, at a Speak Out, that she talked publicly about her experience.
"I finally gained the courage to speak publicly about the fact that I was raped, having no doubt in my mind that rape was what happened," Wyman said. "I was compelled by the many people sharing their stories. I felt like I wasn't alone."
On average, Wyman said, it takes a survivor about five years to tell the first person.
Guilt and Survival
Wyman's biggest struggle of all was being able to fully believe and acknowledge that her assault wasn't her fault.
There are many women who don't report because they feel guilty and don't want other people to know.
Also, many victims know their attacker in some way and so there is little that a woman can do to completely protect herself from being sexually assaulted. It also makes it more difficult for some women to report.
Wyman believes that better education and awareness can lower the numbers of sexual assaults.
The experience changed Wyman in ways she never knew it could. She said that she was able to find strength and changed the way she saw her life.
"We're not meant to do things alone in the world," Wyman said.
