Since the Cornell case went viral, my feed, DMs, and group chats have been filled with furious and exhausted women. There are many reasons behind the emotions but, in moments like these, a lot of us are reminded that there’s a major disconnect between how people expect someone to react after being sexually assaulted and what it’s like to experience it. In 2026, nine years after the #MeToo movement, too many people still hold a dangerously narrow view of how a survivor should act, and, therefore, of who deserves to be believed and supported.
When allegations of sexual assault come out, some dismiss a survivor because they stayed in touch with the person who hurt them, changed details of their story over time, or seemed to go along with something in the moment and later say they didn’t consent. It may seem like their every move is put under a magnifying glass while onlookers ask them to make each action make sense. Reactions to sexual assault don’t always make sense, though—at least, not to people who haven’t experienced it.
But there are well-established psychological reasons survivors may respond in a wide range of ways, and those responses aren’t evidence of whether an assault really happened or someone should be believed. According to research, people who hold a narrow view of how survivors should react are less likely to believe or support them—even when the person disclosing is their friend. And, this has real consequences: Survivors who get a hurtful reaction when they tell someone are at a greater risk of developing PTSD, and those who never tell—because they don’t think what happened to them was “really” assault—are more likely to be assaulted again.
So, whether you are confronted with headlines about a sexual assault case or are helping a friend navigate one, here’s what you should know about how trauma may shape their behavior. Over 800 people experience sexual assault in the United States every day—and 89 percent of all rape victims are girls and women, according to RAINN, the country’s largest anti-sexual violence organization and operator of the National Sexual Assault Hotline. (Most victims are women and girls and most perpetrators are men and boys, but boys, men, nonbinary and trans people, and LGBTQ+ people are assaulted too—and anyone can be a perpetrator). Most survivors never see justice or even report the crime.
That’s in part due to the lack of understanding people have about what actually occurs in the mind of a survivor, and what it’s like to deal with the fallout after enduring a major trauma like sexual assault. Most people have an idea of what sexual assault looks like, or a “script” they have in their head (to use sociology parlance), explains Sara Wilf, PhD, an assistant professor of social work at George Mason University who studies how survivors seek support after sexual violence. In our cultural script, Wilf says, the “perfect” sexual assault victim behaves flawlessly: they do not party or drink.
They say no, fight back, and scream for help. They also immediately get an hours-long rape kit exam (though half of hospitals don’t have a specialized nurse on staff to collect the evidence and there’s no guarantee it’ll ever be tested). They tell their story exactly the same way for multiple interviews.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
