This is unfortunately very realistic. I have been researching sex assaults for work and just learned that up to 70% of victims experience some degree of tonic immobility (involuntary paralysis) during the assault. This reinforces the idea that if a victim didn’t want it to happen, she would have fought back. The late reporting is also very accurate, which leads to credibility issues during prosecution.
I've read a lot of stories, and unfortunately had some personal experience with it, and it's also not uncommon to bury the memory. It's just so outside of the expected, and so devastating, that the brain just sort of places it in a closet and doesn't think about it (though you have other problems that you don't understand). And then, for whatever reason, you DO think about it, and it's only then that you recognize what happened enough to be able to report it.
To people who, often, have reasons they really don't want to believe it. It's a mess.
This is unfortunately very realistic. I have been researching sex assaults for work and just learned that up to 70% of victims experience some degree of tonic immobility (involuntary paralysis) during the assault. This reinforces the idea that if a victim didn’t want it to happen, she would have fought back. The late reporting is also very accurate, which leads to credibility issues during prosecution.
I've read a lot of stories, and unfortunately had some personal experience with it, and it's also not uncommon to bury the memory. It's just so outside of the expected, and so devastating, that the brain just sort of places it in a closet and doesn't think about it (though you have other problems that you don't understand). And then, for whatever reason, you DO think about it, and it's only then that you recognize what happened enough to be able to report it.
To people who, often, have reasons they really don't want to believe it. It's a mess.