Editor’s Note: This is the second story in a four-part series on campus sexual assault for Ball State’s sexual assault awareness week. *The names of the students have been changed to protect their identity.

Hannah Pike* has been raped twice. Once by a friend she had been sleeping with for about a month, and the second by a man she met online.

Pike is among the one-in-five women who have been raped, according to a 2012 survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the assault is only the beginning of the trauma that victims experience.

The assaults 

Before the first sexual assault, Pike had told her friend she didn’t have the romantic feelings for him that he had for her, and didn’t want to sleep with him anymore.

They were at a bar in downtown Muncie, and while they were walking home, he started acting aggressively and tried to kiss Pike, even when she repeatedly said she was tired and wanted to go home.

“It was all really confusing because at that point … I still had that image of rape being the thing that happens in alleyways and the guy with the knife and not with this person you really trust who is your friend,” Pike said. “So at that point, I still hadn’t thought ‘I’m scared.’ I didn’t think he would hurt me. I just thought, ‘This is annoying and I kind of want to go home.’”

When they got back to his house, he kept trying to get Pike to come inside. She was trying to find a way to not go in, but she kept thinking about how she had to go to the bathroom.

“And of course he was like, ‘You can use the bathroom in my place,’” she said. “At that point I didn’t know how to get out of it.”

Once she got in the bathroom, Pike was scared to leave. She didn’t know how she was going to get out when she left the bathroom. When she left, he raped her.

“It’s still really scary for me because there was so much coercion instead of threats of physical force, which is what we tend to think of rape as,” Pike said.

Allison Wynbissinger, Ball State’s victim advocate, said the media has perpetuated the idea that the man in the bushes is going to be the rapist. Two thirds of the time, the victim knows the rapist, according to Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

Pike didn’t even think she was raped until a friend told her it sounded like rape, and asked her if she was okay.

“Then I was just crying and crying,” Pike said.

She never pressed charges—she didn’t want to ruin his life.

“I kept thinking that’s what would happen and I didn’t want to do that,” Pike said. “There’s this weird thing, there’s this urge where you sympathize with your attacker and you don’t want to hurt them, even though they’ve done this horrible thing to you.”

Pike said she had an immense support system of family and friends, but she did have a few friends who reacted badly when she told them. One friend asked her if she was sure it was rape, because she had slept with a lot of men in the past.

“She didn’t say, ‘Because you’re kind of a slut,’ but that was definitely the meaning in there,” Pike said.

Another friend accused her of lying to get attention because she was telling people what had happened, and because that isn’t the normal response for sexual assault survivors, he assumed she wasn’t telling the truth.

Nina Burrowes, a British research psychologist who specializes in the psychology of sexual abuse, said when friends are disbelieving, it can actually end up being worse than the sexual assault.

“Because you’re violated by your abuser and then your community … they also let you down by not believing you,” Burrowes said. “That can make it feel worse.”

On the other hand, she said having a strong support system can let survivors know they are loved and safe, and ready to be listened to and believed.

“[Sexual assault] can make you feel like you’re invalid, like what you want and what you want right now doesn’t count, it’s all about what I want as the abuser,” Burrowes said. “So it’s really important that you hang around with people who make you feel valid again, like you’re a person, and again that you feel safe, because of course that can be very difficult after abuse, especially if you’re still living a trauma.”

Pike said in some ways, the first rape led to the second.

“After I was raped the first time, I kept thinking about how you hear a lot about rape victims not being able to have sex after that,” she said. “That freaked me out because I was a very sexual person, and I don’t want that to happen to me.”

The second time, Pike was raped by a man she met online.

When she first met up with him, she said there were some red flags that she had ignored. He was aggressive and pushed her limits a little further than she liked, but she never thought of it as assault.

“Now looking back, it most definitely was, because he was definitely manipulating me and pushing me way farther than I wanted to go,” Pike said.

When they were having sex, she said it got to a point where the pain was more than she liked.

But Pike said she was in “such a weird emotional place” that she just went with it.

They didn’t talk again for a while, but Pike called him again a few months later.

The sex started off consensual, but when he wanted to have anal sex and Pike did not, she told him to stop. He kept going.

“Even though I said no, he just kept going and I cried, and I said, ‘You know I was raped, you can’t do this,’” she said. “In my head I was still thinking, ‘Is this rape too? I don’t know.’ Both times it happened, in the moment there was so much shock with what was going on. Again it was someone I kind of trusted, even though there had been those red flags. I convinced myself he was fine.”

Afterwards, he held Pike and let her cry, and told her he was sorry. He asked her if she was going to call the cops, and then laughed. He proceeded to rape her again.

“That’s the thing I remember the most, him making a joke and laughing about it,” Pike said. “Then he took me home. The entire time he was taking me home he was telling me this story about his fiancée who got a restraining order against him, but it didn’t do anything, he still went to her house. And he was telling it like a story, but … it felt like a warning.”

Pike said he was stronger than she was.

“I got the sense that the entire time, he would hurt me worse if I fought,” Pike said. “I was terrified, so I went with it.”

This time, Pike went to the hospital to get a rape kit done and filed a police report. She said with the first man, she didn’t want to ruin his life, but she also didn’t think he would rape anyone else.

But with the second, she thought he was scary and cold, that she wouldn’t be surprised if he had already raped someone else.

Pike said she had heard horror stories about how rape victims are usually treated by the police, but the Muncie Police Department officers she talked to were understanding and nice.

However, filing a police report didn’t do anything. Pike said the Muncie Police Department interviewed him and their stories matched, up until the part where she said no. He said she never said no. So the case was never prosecuted because there wasn’t enough evidence, according to Sergeant Seth Stanley, who leads the criminal investigations department.

“One of the things that still really messes me up to this day is that the reason he probably got away with it is because he didn’t hurt me enough,” Pike said. “There were a couple of bruises and bite marks, but that was from when it was consensual, and a little bit of tearing, but not that much. It was my word against his.”

The recovery

Pike has been able to talk openly about both of her assaults since they happened.

“I’ve had a lot of my friends, and even people I don’t know, come to me after I’ve tweeted about it or written or blogged about it and said, ‘The fact that you’ve been able to talk about it has meant so much to me and makes me feel like I can talk about [their own assaults],’” Pike said. “Getting those reactions makes me feel like I want to be as open as possible.”

Finding out some of her friends have also been assaulted helped Pike realize she wasn’t alone.

For the first year, Pike said she felt numb, like she wasn’t processing what had happened.

“I was angry and upset and blaming myself, but I could still function,” she said.

Burrowes said sexual assault is “a crime against the self.” She said while the physical injuries are traumatic, the psychological injuries are worse.

“I think our ability to make choices is the core of who you are, and if you can’t even choose who touches you intimately at what time and how, what choices can you make? I think this is why it can be so impactful,” she said.

Last year when Pike first moved off campus and had to rely on taking the bus, it hit her hard.

“I’m surrounded by all these men I don’t know,” Pike said. “I’ve had guys come up to me on the bus and be harassing me.”

She also had trouble being in class with male students.

Because one in 12 male college students has attempted rape, according to the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey, Pike said all she could think about in class was how many of those men were part of that 8 percent.

Pike dropped down to one class in the fall semester following the second rape, and two in the spring semester.

“I just became a massive recluse because I was so scared about being out in the world with men,” Pike said. “Now it’s getting back to better again. Sometimes it’s still really hard. But I know I have a solid friend group now where I know if anything ever happened, they would protect me.”

But even though it’s gotten easier, Pike said she doesn’t know if she’ll ever get closure.

“In some ways I wonder if I’ve gotten the most I’ll ever get, just because I’m able to write about it, talk about it freely, but I feel like there’s always going to be that anger and frustration that nothing happened to them,” Pike said.

She said a month after the first rape, she had been posting about it on her private Tumblr blog and the man contacted her. He told her to stop talking about it.

He said it was making him feel bad, and that he had talked to his friends and they said it wasn’t rape. He said he had forgiven himself, so she should, too.

“I wish there was something I could do to make it so they could never forget, the way I have never been able to forget what they did,” Pike said.

Men and assault

Although statistically men are sexually assaulted less often than women are, they are also even less likely to report it for fear of not being believed, according to Michael Scarce, the author of Male on Male Rape: The Hidden Toll of Stigma and Shame.

One in 71 men have been raped at some point in their lives, according to the CDC study.

And one in 20 women and men reported experiencing some kind of sexual violence other than rape in the year prior. Sexual violence is committing sexual acts without the consent of the other person.

When Evan Taylor* was sexually assaulted his freshman year at Ball State, he chose not to report it to anyone.

“I thought no one would ever believe that I had been sexually assaulted,” Taylor said. “As a freshman, that was my state of mind, that I’m a male and no one’s going to believe me.”

One of his friends from class had reached out to him on Facebook and asked if he wanted to hang out.

They had hung out a few times in groups, but one weekend he went to Taylor’s to watch a movie.

As they were watching, the man made a move on him.

“In and of itself, making a move wasn’t that big of a deal,” Taylor said. “I was like ‘Hey, I’m sorry, no,’ and I thought that would be it.”

And nothing else happened that night. Taylor said he was glad the man respected boundaries.

But two weeks later, the man asked Taylor if he wanted to study for an upcoming test. Their plan was to meet at a campus building, but when Taylor got there, he saw the man standing outside the doors. He said they were locked, and asked Taylor if he just wanted to go to his place to study.

As they were walking back, the man tried to make a move on him again, and Taylor pushed him off.

“He forcefully tried to kiss me, and I really did try [to make him stop], like, I didn’t want it to happen,” Taylor said. “... I just was not interested in anything with males, period. So it made it that much more hard for me, because there was no way, shape or form I wanted this to be happening.”

The man was aggressively kissing and grabbing Taylor, and as much as he tried, he couldn’t get away. At one point, he pushed Taylor up against the fence that was behind them.

“Eventually, I did get out of the situation,” Taylor said. “I don’t want to say he was understanding—because he absolutely was not—but I think it came to a point where it wasn’t fun for him anymore and when it stopped being fun for him and started being more work.”

When the man finally left, Taylor said he was a “complete trainwreck.”

He immediately called his big brother in his fraternity, and he was there within a few minutes.

“It’s really odd to be a male involved in sexual assault when you’re the victim, because you don’t really know what your options actually are,” Taylor said.

At the time, he didn’t want to report it, even though one of his friends encouraged him to. His friend told him he needed to tell in case the man tried to sexually assault someone else.

“Reporting everything would have made it seem so much more real, and I didn’t want to give it that validity,” Taylor said. “... I thought that somehow if I didn’t report it, it wouldn’t be real.”

One of his friends who lived with him in the residence halls told him about all the campus resources available for him to use, but he chose not to take advantage of any of them.

“As a freshman, even though the resources were still there, I don’t think it was talked about as much, and so because of that it made me feel more uncomfortable,” he said. “I really regret that. That was stupid of me, but I was really fortunate enough to have a really great support system within my fraternity. Those guys were there for me.”

However, he said for some of his brothers, there was a fleeting moment when he first told them what happened when they hesitated, and he could tell they were questioning what he said.

“Not to say they don’t believe you, but [sexual assault against males] is not something that’s talked about,” Taylor said. “There’s that moment where they look at you and you can tell they’re thinking, ‘Wait, like really?’ But my friends didn’t dwell on that for too long.”

Taylor said while he had the support of his fraternity brothers, many freshmen don’t have strong support systems when they first come to campus.

“I have no idea what you would do if you were in a situation in which you were sexually assaulted and you didn’t have a support group,” he said. “... If that were to happen, it could really ruin not just your collegiate experience, but your state of mind.”

He said this is why programs that the university offers are so, especially during the Red Zone - the first six weeks of school when sexual assaults are most likely to occur on college campuses - are so important. At Ball State, those preventive programs include Step In. Speak Up. and the University Police Department’s Rape Aggression Defense system.

Taylor didn’t tell his family about the sexual assault until last summer, and he said they were understanding and supportive.

He said he only told some of his fraternity brothers and close friends because he was embarrassed.

“Sexual assault is almost always portrayed as a man against a woman, so I think a lot of times a man assaulting a man or a woman assaulting a woman or a woman assaulting a man is just so often not seen,” Taylor said. “Even if you look at case studies, it’s not something we talk about a lot. It made me feel even more uncomfortable because it was like, this isn’t normal, this is so odd.”

Burrowes said shame and guilt are probably the biggest reasons people don’t report, and combined with those two, the fear that they won’t be believed.

After the assault, Taylor said he was a bit more apprehensive of people at first. He was hesitant to hang out with people he didn’t know that well one-on-one, which hindered his ability to build those connections.

“I’m a very outgoing person, I’m very extroverted, so I love getting to know new people,” Taylor said. “But when it came to one-on-one hanging out, it’s something, even now, that I still hesitate with. But I’m working on it and feeling better. It’s just something that’s continued to evolve since freshman year.”

Now that the man who assaulted him has graduated and is not on campus anymore, Taylor said it was easier to move on.

“Even though he wasn’t in my life, knowing that he was not at my university really helped to make me feel better,” he said. 

Read the first story in the series here: Ball State sexual assault numbers double even with under reporting

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