I was barely two years old when I first started speaking up. My mother believed me; the system said I was too young. Not articulate enough. I could be confused. There wasn’t enough precedent to investigate. Two years later, I was four years old and finally considered “articulate enough.” I was interviewed a lot. I was examined physically. There was physical evidence to back up my claims – I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Doctors believed me. Social workers believed me. My lawyer believed me. A grand jury believed me.

A jury of his peers did not believe me.

At barely five years old, teddy bear in hand and my grandma sitting behind me (mom wasn’t allowed in the courtroom), I testified in front of a courtroom full of adult strangers. I sat across from my father and answered questions from his lawyer and mine. I told the truth, my truth.

It wasn’t enough. Reasonable doubt. He wasn’t convicted, but he was given a permanent restraining order. He obeyed that until a couple of years ago, when he reached out on Facebook to thank god that I was happy and healthy. I read that message and sat, catatonic, for several moments before I started screaming and screaming until my throat went hoarse.

He was the first, he wasn’t the last. All of them, starting with the one I learned painfully at four years old, a lesson in the universal truth: Men feel entitled to the bodies of women (and girls), and in the large majority of circumstances, they will get away with taking advantage. I never spoke up again after that. What would be the point?

Decades of self-harm, mental anguish, intensive therapy, and endless personal growth have led me to a place where I am now training to be someone who can help others pick up and sort through the pieces of a wrecked life. I am almost 40 years old. I’m better, but I will never be whole. I’ll never know who I could have been had that man not decided that my inherent vulnerability and trust in him was something to exploit. Given the content of his message more than 30 years later, I guarantee he’s spent the decades during which I scraped and clawed my way out of the darkness he thrust upon me telling himself and others stories about how he was maligned and misunderstood. Maybe by this point, he even believes it.

As with any story like mine, there was complicity from others. People who likely knew or suspected, but did nothing. I’ll forever be grateful my mother believed me 100%, no hesitation. But she was far from the majority. In one fell swoop, I lost all contact with anyone on his side of my “family.” To this day, I know almost nothing about that half of my biological identity. And without some sort of acknowledgement of harm, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to know them. I’m afraid what I’d learn. I’m afraid to know what other little girls have been in his life throughout these intervening decades. I’m afraid it would break me in a way I couldn’t come back from.

So. I, like so many others, am Jane Doe. I’ve been Jane Doe my entire fucking life, and I wish anything currently being said or done in this newest horror show of a rape case surprised me… but I learned from the beginning of my existence what the score is when it comes to men and the havoc they so frequently feel entitled to wreak upon others’ bodies. In so many ways, the system and society are set up to ensure they win. But we can prevail. We can grow and we can protect one another through the power of our shared stories.

And men who want to create a different story? You can start by looking for the signs that something is going wrong and putting a stop to it before it becomes a reason to file a report. You know you know what it looks like. You know you know how it makes you feel.