Responding to Trump, survivors explain why they don’t report sexual assault

Gosnell said she’s furious at the treatment of Ford, especially Trump’s tweet. “Of course I understand why she didn’t report. She must have known what would happen to her. And look what’s happening to her now.”Scott Berkowitz, president of the anti-sexual violence organization RAINN, said reasons for not reporting assaults include fear of retaliation, fear of the perpetrator attacking again, social pressure from peer groups and simple shame.“The president is misguided about standard behavior following a sexual assault,” Berkowitz said of Trump’s tweet.There’s also, Berkowitz added, a guilt factor: “People are often blaming themselves, even though they are clearly not at fault.”The same reasons are only exacerbated when victims are in their teens, he said, adding that 54 percent of those under 18 who call the National Sexual Assault Hotline say they have not told a single other person.Ford and Kavanaugh were high school students — she 15, he 17 — when she alleges the assault occurred. And that, Berkowitz pointed out, was decades ago, when the environment was even less welcoming than it is today for someone reporting an assault.WATCH: Taylor Swift tears up at her concert on anniversary of sexual assault trial verdict Katie Cogan, a trauma psychotherapist in the Washington, D.C., area, said teenagers especially “almost never tell anyone (about an assault), and if they do it’s usually years later. They think it’s their fault or try to convince themselves it was no big deal.”Cogan said she received a number of calls on Friday morning, following Trump’s tweet, from patients expressing distress over the comments and feeling anew that “they will never be believed.”Lea Grover was 14 and a freshman in high school when, she said, she was raped at a basement party that she had agreed to attend to accompany a friend, who never showed up. She said her assailant fed her alcohol for several hours until she was extremely drunk, then led her into a utility closet where he assaulted her.She had been saying “no” all evening, but finally agreed to go into another room with him, she said, thinking she could grab someone on the way and escape. But she didn’t have that chance.She was “paralyzed with fear,” she recalled. “I didn’t think I had anywhere to go or any other option” but to submit.She didn’t report it — “I was utterly convinced it was my fault because I had gone to a party where I didn’t know anyone,” she said. Soon after, she attempted to take her own life, she said.WATCH: Reported sexual assaults on the rise; decline in Saskatchewan Years later, as an adult, she suffered another assault, and she did report that one, though she did not ultimately press charges. Last year she wrote an article about the fear involved in coming forward, titled “Don’t Tell Me Not to Speak Up When I Can’t Even Say His Name.”Asked her response to Trump’s remarks, Grover, now 34 and a writer who works with survivors of gender-based violence, noted that her assault in high school was so bad that she was still unable to discuss it with her parents until 15 years later — when she began speaking publicly about it.Coming forward was — and still is — painful for both them and for her, she said. “Only someone incapable of human empathy wouldn’t understand that.”