I want to start this post off with saying thank you. Thank you to everyone for your kindness, prayers, and overall comfort that you have given me. Knowing that I have an army of people behind me makes coming forward even more important to me. I am no longer doing this for myself but for every other survivor out there. Not just victims of Chase (which are too many to count now) but every person who has ever felt victimized by someone else.

The hardest thing I have had to do throughout this experience is learn to not only forgive myself but also forgive him. For a while I thought “Was this my fault? Did I deserve to be raped? Was I asking for it?”. Learning to forgive myself has been something that I still continue to work on. You just never believe that something like this will happen to you until it does. Even after it happened, I was still in disbelief. I just couldn’t believe that I froze and wasn’t strong enough to push him off of me. I wrestle with this thought all the time. What more could I have done to prevent this? But the answer is that I couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. I am not the one that made the decision to be raped. He chose to rape me. It was not my fault and it is not yours either.

Now this is the part I struggle with the most. Forgiving him. How do you forgive someone that committed such an evil act against you? As I have mentioned before in my Facebook and twitter posts, Jesus forgave Judas when he betrayed him. As a Christian, I strive to imitate Christ no matter how difficult or irrational it may seem. Who am I to claim Christ in every other aspect of my life but this one? So to sum it up, yes, I forgive chase for what he did to me. Now that doesn’t mean that I want anyone to have mercy on him. He has already been given one too many chances. He deserves to spend many many years in prison for what he has done. You can forgive the sinner but that does not mean you have to forget the sin.

Again, I want to make it apparent that I am so extremely grateful for all of the support from friends, family, and complete strangers. Your kind words are what have kept me fighting. I hope that I have and will continue to make you all proud. We are going to get him this time so that no more women will be subjected to this vicious crime.