Trigger warning: Proceed with caution.

The verdict is in for the two Steubenville teens that CNN seems to feel sorry for. Twitter is a mixture of rape apologists and people angry at said apologists. Facebook is probably still all cat pictures or shamrocks and Pinterest, I’m sure, is still largely flowers, baking, and projects even Martha Stewart wouldn’t try. At any rate, here are my two cents:

I’ve spent the past seven years listening to teen girls tell me or tell each other about being raped, molested, or assaulted. It’s so often a gateway to their criminal or drug activity. I’ve also heard too many times about their stripping, hooking, drug use, and older “boyfriends” who are sometimes encouraged to “date” them by their own mothers. This is not technically part of my job description. It falls into that category of being there for the students and trying to find out…

Trigger warning: predatory behaviour, creepiness, sexual assault.

Yesterday, I read this account of creepy stalking behaviour retold by a woman whose husband had witnessed it first-hand and subsequently described the incident to her in detail. During the course of her husband’s recitation, the woman asked him what she refers to as The Question, capitalised because, once asked, he stopped seeing the creeper as simply being awkward and inappropriate and started seeing him as frightening and potentially dangerous. And as I was reading, something clicked in my head regarding an incident which, approximately sixteen years ago, left me deeply unsettled, and which continues to unsettle me in memory. It’s not a story I’ve ever told more than once or twice, partly because even now, at the age of 26, I find it as difficult to articulate as I did at age 10, but mostly because, up until yesterday, I didn’t know how to…