I've been raped more than 1000 times.
There's something people don't know about rape. Many people dismiss it as a single act with temporary consequences, a matter of hurt feelings, something closer to what they've seen in pornography than to violence. Modern culture has sexualized acts that, in truth, desecrate a human life: body, mind, and spirit.
I believe science and faith belong together. Not many people try to understand how the mind, the body, and the spirit are connected. Fewer care. The trivialities of our social lives entertain us endlessly, and it is easy never to look past them.
So this post is about the neuroscience of rape: what it does to a person, and why it matters that you know.
"It happened. Move on."
People say that. But can you?
History records sexual violence used deliberately as a weapon, in Nanjing in 1937 and in war after war since, precisely because its damage does not end when the act does. It is meant to break a person and a people. What it breaks, first, is the nervous system.
What happens in the brain during an assault
When the brain detects danger, the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped region deep in the brain, sounds the alarm. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol flood the body. Heart rate spikes. Muscles brace.
At the same time, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and language, goes quiet. That is why so many survivors say, I couldn't scream. I couldn't think. I couldn't move.
Often the body freezes completely. Scientists call this tonic immobility, an involuntary paralysis that the brain triggers when escape seems impossible. In a Swedish study of nearly 300 women treated after sexual assault, about 70 percent experienced significant tonic immobility during the attack.
Freezing is not consent. It is not weakness. It is biology.
Meanwhile, the hippocampus, which normally files our experiences into orderly memories with a beginning, middle, and end, is overwhelmed by stress hormones. Memories of trauma are often stored in fragments: a smell, a sound, a sensation, without a clear timeline. Those fragments can return later as flashbacks, as vivid as if the event were happening again.
What happens when it happens again and again
One assault can change the brain. Repeated assault rewires it.
When danger becomes constant, the nervous system learns to stay on guard. Some survivors live in hypervigilance: always scanning, easily startled, unable to rest. Others go the opposite way, into shutdown. The brain protects itself by dulling everything.
That shutdown can look like:
- Dissociation: zoning out, feeling detached from your body or from what's happening around you
- Reduced affect: a flat face, little visible emotion
- Slowed speech and movement: fewer words, stiller hands, a quieter presence
- Numbness: to pain, to pleasure, to connection
Some people describe survivors as "caged animals." It is closer to the truth to say they are living inside a nervous system that was taught, over and over, that the world is not safe.
We judge
From the outside, all of this is easy to misread.
She spaces out. She doesn't say much. Her face doesn't move. People wonder: Is she stupid? Is she cold? Is she on something? Is she even listening? Sometimes these signs are mistaken for autism or another kind of neurodivergence. But what you are seeing may be the nervous system's response to violence.
We judge before we understand. And sometimes the people quickest to judge are the ones with the most to hide.
Your social life and someone else's life
Human life isn't limited to our social lives. Yet so many of us live for reputation, for social circles, for what people think of us.
Sometimes, in indulging a social life, in the party, the peer pressure, the drugs, the thing "everyone was doing," someone is violating another person's life.
Did you know you could be diminishing the value of someone's life, damaging their mind, body, and spirit, and their ability to work, to love, to function in the world?
Did you know that human life matters?
What is a human life?
As a Catholic, I believe every human person is made in the image of God. Nothing done to a survivor can erase that dignity. But it can wound everything through which we live it out: memory, trust, the body itself.
The brain can heal
Here is the part that gives me hope.
The brain is not fixed. It keeps changing throughout life, a capacity called neuroplasticity. With safety, time, supportive relationships, and trauma-focused therapies such as cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, and EMDR, the alarm system can learn to quiet down. Many survivors find that symptoms ease and that their lives grow wider again.
Healing is rarely fast, and it is never a straight line. But it is real.
Who am I?
I'm not stupid. I'm not empty. I'm a survivor, a writer, and a person whose life matters, like yours.
So, before you judge someone who seems a little different: have some empathy.
This is my story, and I wrote it. Please don't copy it without permission.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
If you have been sexually assaulted, you are not alone, and it is not your fault. In the United States, you can reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN) any time at 800-656-4673 or online at rainn.org. If you are thinking about suicide or are in crisis, call or text 988. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
