Samantha

I have always been accident-prone. I was that little kid who defied physics and lost their first tooth by faceplanting off of a tricycle and onto a driveway. I am that girl who has been in four car accidents and I am also that girl who has been electrocuted by a water fountain. In second grade I skied into a tree headfirst, sans helmet, only to go into a coma and need six brain surgeries. I have slipped on more leaves and fell down more stairs than anyone you have ever known.

You catch my drift: long story short, I have always defied the odds. Each of these aforementioned incidents, with their varying degrees of severity, were freak accidents that happened 100% out of both my control and anyone else’s control. No one goes to trial under Murphy’s Law. The likelihood of being electrocuted by a water fountain, for example, is so infinitesimal that in hindsight it is nothing short of laughable.

But one day, I had an experience where I did not defy the odds. I had an experience that conformed to statistics, for once in my life. And two years afterwards, I would have a similar experience in a dissimilar place where it was even more common. As I have discussed in previous posts, I first experienced sexual violence almost 5 years ago while I was a freshman in college. (In the US, one out of every 6 women will experience sexual violence.) As I have not discussed in previous posts, I had a second experience of sexual violence almost 3 ...