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" A sexual assault survivor at Harvard wrote a first-person account of her ordeal, which was published in the university&amp;#039;s student newspaper. In it, she vents her frustrations at the campus bureaucracy that has stalled her pleas for help, and she reveals the fear and depression that permeate her daily life. She also describes the encounter in vivid, startling detail. &amp;quot;Dear Harvard,&amp;quot; she writes. &amp;quot;I am writing to let you know that I give up. I will be moving out of my House next semester, if only \u2014 quite literally \u2014 to save my life.&amp;quot; You should read the whole thing, but these 10 excerpts will give you chills. 1. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m writing this piece as I&amp;#039;m sitting in my own dining hall, only a few tables away from the guy who pressured me into sexual activity in his bedroom, one night last spring.&amp;quot; 2. &amp;quot;I have to take sleeping pills every night to fall and stay asleep, and I routinely get nightmares in which I am sexually assaulted in public.&amp;quot; 3. &amp;quot;He took my shirt off and started biting the skin on my neck and breast. I pushed back on his chest and asked him to stop kissing me aggressively. He laughed. He said that I should &amp;#039;just wear a scarf&amp;#039; to cover the marks.&amp;quot; 4. &amp;quot;I turned my back to him, praying he would leave me alone. He started getting impatient. &amp;#039;Are you only going to make me hard, or are you going to make me come?&amp;#039; he said in a demanding tone. It did not sound like a question. I obeyed.&amp;quot; 5. &amp;quot;Even though he had verbally pressured me into sexual activity and physically hurt me, the incident did not fall within the scope of the school&amp;#039;s narrow definition of sexual assault.&amp;quot; 6. &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t get Harvard to move my assailant to a different House without going to the Ad Board, but I could not go to the Ad Board because of the school&amp;#039;s narrow policy.&amp;quot; 7. &amp;quot;After unsuccessfully suggesting a number of interventions that could have helped me better live with my situation, I eventually got the persistent impression that my House staff believed I was fussing over nothing.&amp;quot; 8. &amp;quot;The resident dean compared living in the same House as my assailant to a divorced couple working in the same factory. My House Master and my dean encouraged me to forgive my assailant and move on. Someone at University Health Services asked me if it was possible that my drinking habits were the problem, because it seemed like they had led to my sexual assault.&amp;quot; 9. &amp;quot;The last time I met with my resident dean, I told my dean about my depression, and how I thought it had been caused by the lack of validation and empathy I had received from the Harvard faculty. \u2026 My pleas were met with a refusal to comment and an argument that it was not an administrator&amp;#039;s role to criticize Harvard&amp;#039;s sexual assault policy.&amp;quot; 10. &amp;quot;[B]eing told that something with the potential to be as empowering as prosecuting your assailant is unlikely to result in any action, being denied several requests that you think will help you heal \u2014 those things truly make you feel hopeless, powerless, betrayed, and worthless.&amp;quot; April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. If you or someone you know needs help, contact RAINN. RELATED:  I Survived Sexual Assault and Didn&amp;#039;t Tell Anyone for 17 Years Follow Heather on Twitter. Photo credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a6245/sexual-assault-letter-harvard/?src=rss>