Thousands of people across the globe have taken to Twitter to share the heartbreaking reasons—from embarrassment to shame to fear for their lives—they didn’t report their sexual assault. The hashtag #WhyIDidntReport was at the top of the trending list on the platform on Friday, and it came on the heels of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when the two were teenagers in the 1980s.
Coming forward with a personal experience about sexual assault can be a major challenge, and it doesn’t help that many people believe that if a woman didn’t report her assault right after it happened, then it may not have actually happened. Actress and activist Alyssa Milano took part in the movement by writing a moving first-person essay for Vox explaining why it took her 30 years to tell anyone at all about her assault. “I never filed a police report. I never told officials. I never tried to find justice for my pain because justice was never an option,” she wrote.
Here’s to a hashtag that’s trying to change that mindset, and to those who have posted about their experiences. We’ve gathered some of the most powerful tweets from the movement below.
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