Many women of color don't go to the police after sexual assault for a reason

This article is strong and heartbreaking at the same time.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/women-of-color-police-sexual-assault-racist-criminal-justice

If we report our assaults to police, we risk being retraumatized not only by the inhumane process of reliving a violent experience through sharing its gory details - but also by the violence of the criminal justice system itself, which treats rape victims like suspects. Worse yet, the police themselves commit assault with impunity; often, they target black women in particular, knowing our existence at the intersections of racism and misogyny make crimes against us far less likely to be investigated.

To be a “good rape victim” is to immediately report your assault to the police (even knowing you will likely never see “justice”), but to be a good black person is to avoid the police entirely because your life quite literally depends on it. The tightrope walk is impossible.

That’s why black anti-sexual assault activists, like survivor and feminist writer Wagatwe Wanjuki, have long argued that survivors should not be forced to report their assaults to police in order for their stories to be believed.

An ongoing study by Black Women’s Blueprint, a New York-based human rights organization, finds that 60% of black girls and women report having experienced “coercive contact of a sexual nature” by the age of 18. Still, we are deemed categorically hypersexual, incapable of being assaulted because our bodies themselves serve as static, menacing consent.