Why I Didn't Report My Rape

"Meanwhile, all the way across the country in New York, I wake up every day and wonder if today is the day that I'll finally make the hotel phone ring. Of course, I know that isn't true. The phone has rung countless times since that morning in June of 2021 that I checked out of that hotel, and nobody is waiting for my call. But to me, it's frozen in time."

"Of the rape, which lasted all night, I remember both too much and too little. I never did anything about it. I didn't tell anyone who could have done something about it, either, such as the hotel staff or the Las Vegas police. I never considered taking any kind of action at the time, but ever since the possibility has haunted me as a particularly cruel version of a path not taken."

The narrator was raped by a group of men during a three-day Las Vegas trip with friends. The narrator did not report the assault to hotel staff or Las Vegas police and never pursued legal action at the time. The hotel phone remains a frozen symbol in the narrator's memory, imagined as waiting for a call that will never come. Statutes of limitations have passed, eliminating the opportunity for criminal charges. The narrator describes a conflict between legal deadlines and emotional responses, and experiences enduring regret, indecision, confusion, avoidance, and the haunting sense of a path not taken.

Read at The Nation