Diana Nyad: My Life After Sexual Assault [View all]

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That night I was not of this world. Teammates had to prompt me to get onto the blocks. I hadn’t heard the announcer’s voice. In the end, we won the team title, but while the team was cheering and laughing, I plunged down to the floor of the diving well. My young world had just been capsized and I was very much alone in my confusion and fear. And I screamed into the abyss of dark water: “This is not going to ruin my life!”

I might have defied ruin, but my young life changed dramatically that day. That first savage episode signaled the beginning of years of covert molestation. Throughout the rest of high school I was a loner, not a natural role for me. No longer did I hold the unofficial title of “most disciplined” on the team, the first to practice each dawn. I couldn’t chance being alone with Coach again. I sat through classes, distracted by an image of hacking my breasts off with a razor blade. Overnight, I began going through life a solitary soldier. I didn’t need anybody, for anything.

Mine is an age-old scenario. Coaches and priests and doctors and scout leaders and stepfathers and, yes, movie producers, have been preying on those they are supposedly mentoring for far too long. And this isn’t the first time I’ve told my story. I first gave voice to the details of the years of humiliation when I was 21; the sense of power it gave me was immediate.

For me, being silenced was a punishment equal to the molestation. Legal prosecution proved time and time again to be futile, but I could at least regain my own dignity each time I uttered my truth. I’ve been speaking out, loud and strong, for nearly five decades now. It has been crucial to my own health. It has energized others to speak out, too. And I will continue to tell my story until all girls and women find their own voice.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/opinion/diana-nyad-sexual-assault.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0