“In May of 2004, I went to a party and accepted a drink from a boy I had just met.  That is the last thing I remember from that night.  The next day, when I woke up bruised and beaten, I started to put the pieces together. I realized that I had been drugged and had become one of one in four women who will be a victim of sexual assault.  At first I was determined to press charges, and make sure this guy paid the consequences. I went to the emergency room and had a rape kit done. I gave my statement to the police.  But in the days that followed, and as more details about the event began to unravel, the more I began to understand what had happened and how horrifying it was.  And I knew that I just wanted to make it all go away.  I wanted my life back. I never wanted to think about it again. After much thought, I decided to drop the criminal charges.

As the months went on, I found that it was ALL I could think about.  I pulled away from my friends and family, not knowing how to deal with or process what had happened. I became extremely depressed, I stopped going to class and started sleeping all the time. I stopped doing the things I had previously loved doing. I felt like this whole thing was my fault, and I was embarrassed and scared to tell anyone.  A friend of mine saw through my façade and knew I needed help. He tried to get me to go to counseling, but I was unwilling to at first. I later found out this is common for survivors of any kind of sexual assault or dating violence. My friend just told me that no matter what, he was there for me and would take me to get help when I was ready.  A few weeks later, I went back to my friend, realizing I wasn’t going to be able to get over this on my own.

It was then that I got into counseling and began my recovery. A former roommate of mine was also a speaker for notMYkid, and having been a speech and debate competitor all my life, I knew that this was a good goal for me. Speaking out about it was something I wanted to do. Raising awareness was something I felt strongly about. To date, I have spoken to over 20,000 students in the state of Arizona about drug–assisted sexual assault, and how to protect themselves from it and other types of unhealthy dating situations.  Also, I want men and women to realize what a horrible crime this is, and that if it does happen to them, the victim is not to blame. I believe my life was changed forever so that I could tell others about it.”