A nondescript, gray building on 9th Street. A buzzer to get in and a cramped waiting room. Eyes pointed towards the floor. Hushed voices.

     This harshly-lit area is a haven to some, marking their beginning at Prevail. For those who have come here seeking help, this waiting room is the beginning of their new life, the beginning of their healing, and the beginning of moving away from a life of viewing themselves as victims.

  Sexual assault is an epidemic.

      It plagues someone every 98 seconds according to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN).

     But we don’t talk about it, or at least we don’t want to.

     Prevail is an organization based out of Noblesville committed to offering crisis intervention and restorative support services for adult, adolescent and child survivors of crime and abuse. Their program mixes prevention with aid to support those in abusive situations.

     We are so willing to talk about drugs and alcohol, especially in school, but we turn a blind eye to the fact that hundreds of people are affected by sexual assault each day in the U.S.

     March falls in between two crucial months: Dating Violence month in February and Sexual Assault
Awareness month in April.

     “Schools are under a lot of pressure to get things done, so some things fall off the plate,” Prevail Executive Director Susan Ferguson said. But why is sexual assault the topic to be left out or pushed onto the back burner?

     Natalie Shook is a local
spokesperson for Prevail. Sitting in a crowded Panera Bread on a blustery afternoon, Shook recounted how she went through the program for two years, from 2014 to 2016, when she was a student at Carmel High School. Shook is now a college student at Butler University.

     During high school, Shook attended a party where she was roofied, and then raped by three males. One was her close friend.

     “Everyone hears about [sexual
assault], but no one really knows how deep it is because no one really cares,” Shook said.

 According to the Children’s Assessment Center (CAC), a center devoted to protecting sexually abused children, the primary reason the public is not aware of child sexual abuse is that 73 percent of child victims do not tell anyone about the abuse for at least a year. 45 percent of victims do not tell anyone for at least 5 years. Even then, some never come forward. Oftentimes, Americans do not realize that a large reason victims do not come forward after their experience is their fear of ridicule and discrimination.

      Shook found that instead of her rapists being scorned for their actions, she was the one enduring the derision. She was called names as she walked through the halls, eventually resulting in her move to online schooling.

     According to Shook, the boys who assaulted her were members of the popular crowd, so when they made fun of Shook, others followed.

     “If [people] hung out with me then they would lose that friendship [with the boys]. They would lose that social life,” Shook said.

     However, the lone girl at a party is not the only victim of sexual assault. It happens to more people than
commonly thought.

     Commonly, people believe sexual assault can be prevented through what Prevail calls “risk reduction.”

    “As long as you don’t do this, then it won’t happen. It won’t happen to you,’” Shook said as an example.

     But risk reduction is not risk elimination. Sexual assault can happen to anyone, regardless of age, sex, race or apparel.

     One in 16 men in the U.S. are sexually assaulted while in college according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), but these men’s stories are hardly heard of, possibly because more than 90 percent of sexual assault victims on college campuses do not report the attack.

     Our society has formed the idea that males should always want sex, so the idea that sexual acts can be forced upon them is often considered preposterous. According to the University of Michigan Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, a common misconception is that sexual assault happens because people need sex. People get
carried away by their desires and lose control.

     Based on that common perception, victim blaming is prevalent with male victims of sexual assault. Prevail says it has a large male clientel as well, with men making up almost a quarter of the people they serve. But often, males are ashamed of admitting that they’ve been victim of sexual assault.

   About 3,000 students attend NHS, half of whom are male. One Noblesville student was willing to share his story.

    Jack [the policy of the Mill Stream is to not identify sexual assault victims who are minors] was on a school bus in middle school when the traumatic event occurred.

     “She was notoriously a bad, or silly, person,” Jack said. “When she first sat down she started poking at my upper chest. As the bus ride went on, and after I continuously asked her to stop, she started going down lower to my waistline.”

     As he spoke, Jack’s leg shook and his hands clenched tightly. His voice was hardly audible as his eyes bored into the ground.

     “I don’t understand how she did it so discretely…to this day I still don’t understand,” Jack said.

     Jack says he tried multiple times to make the school take action in handling the misconduct. After repeatedly speaking with a school counselor and even involving Child Protective Services, the school identified and disciplined the attacker.

     A common misconception about sexual assault is that intercourse must occur. But sexual assault is any unconsented sexual contact. For this reason, sexual assault impacts many people so discreetly, but very few victims have success pressing charges to the full extent.

     According to the Indiana’s Sex Offender Registry, only about 5% of convicted offenders in the Hamilton County area served their full initial sentence, with some perpetrators only remaining in prison for two years or less.

     And Shook feels that is one of the reasons why people hesitate to talk about the crime. And she also feels many other shortcomings in the justice system mean the problem is often not effectively solved.

     “[Prosecutors] want you to come in as soon as it happens, and that’s just not going to happen,” Shook said.

     According to RAINN, at one university 63.3 percent of men who admitted to committing or attempting rape also admitted to attempting additional  acts of sexual assault later on. According to RAINN’s findings, if men assault someone once, they are likely to do it again.

     In Noblesville alone, 67 people are registered as sex offenders. From Jan. 1 to Dec. 9, 2016, 47 cases of sexual misconduct were reported in the city according to arrest records
maintained by the Noblesville Police Department.
     Shook says even residents of a seemingly-safe place like Hamilton County need to recognize the risks. “It’s going to happen,” Shook said. “No matter who you are or who you’re with. It will happen, even if it’s not to you. It will be someone you know.”

     The impact of sexual assault is more than skin deep. Victims are impacted psychologically, facing challenges that they have never before encountered.

     “A lot of people expect you to get over it really fast,” Shook said. “But the way I see it, I was stripped of everything. It was like that night I died. The victim is still alive, but the person is no longer there.”

     The first step in helping understand victims of sexual assault is to understand who may be at risk.

     “We live in our bubble of ‘It won’t happen to me because I’m not whatever-you-think-a-victim-of-sexual-assault-is,’” Ferguson said.

     But it can happen to anyone at anytime. Shook says sexual assault is not limited to girls wearing short skirts walking home alone at night. It’s your peers, it’s your coworkers, and it’s the little neighbor boy next door.

     “It’s a very selfish act, that [perpetrators] put their desires over yours and will do anything to cover it,” Shook said.

     Talking about sexual assault can be uneasy. It can be hard to talk about. But not talking about it is worse.

     “[Talking about it] won’t eliminate [sexual assault], but it does help people to feel safe,” Shook said.

     Ferguson talked about how feeling safe in an environment is the most effective form of prevention against sexual assault.

     “If people feel safe growing up then they will feel less likely to feel a need to use power and control to sexually assault or be a perpetrator later in life,” Ferguson said.

     The cycle is evident. In order to reduce the problem, to make progress, we must first talk about that which makes us uncomfortable. But if that little moment of inconvenience can save a life, isn’t it worth it? So, let’s talk about sex.