Dear Stanford rape victim:
I’ve been thinking about you a lot this week. Today marks the one-year anniversary of Huffington Post Highline’s publication of The Lost Girls, the story of my rape by the manager of my former band, The Runaways. Like you, I was unable to remember much of what happened to me. Like you, I had witnesses. And like you, I made headlines with my story.
So when you have your bad days — which you will — I hope you will take stock of where we were a year ago and be encouraged by where we might be this time next year. Please don’t ever question whether you did the right thing. It might feel today like you relived the worst night of your life for nothing. But a year from now, when you look back and see how far we’ve come, you’ll know you had something to do with it. You’ll still wish the rape had never happened. But you’ll be glad you spoke up.
When my story broke last July, huge numbers of people were still calling the four dozen or so Cosby accusers liars. They called me a liar, too, despite confirmation of my story by half a dozen witnesses.
