Last year Rose Kalemba wrote a blog post explaining how hard it had been – when she was raped as a 14-year-old girl – to get a video of the attack removed from a popular porn website.

Dozens of people then contacted her to say that they were facing the same problem today.



WARNING: This story discusses a violent sexual attack

The nurse stopped at the doorway leading out of Rose’s hospital room and turned to face her.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said, her voice shaking. “My daughter was raped too.”

Rose looked at the nurse. She couldn’t be older than 40, Rose thought, her daughter must be young, like me.

She thought back to the morning after the assault, to the conversations with the emotionless policeman and the clinical doctor. Everyone had used the phrase “alleged” when referring to the violent, hours-long overnight attack that Rose had described to them. With the exception of her father and grandmother, most of her relatives hadn’t believed her either.

With the nurse it was different.

“She believed me,” Rose says.

It was a small crack of hope – someone recognising and acknowledging what had happened to her. A wave of relief washed over her, which felt like it could be the start of her recovery.

But soon hundreds of thousands of people would see the rape for themselves and from those viewers she received no sympathy.

A decade later, Rose Kalemba brushes her thick thigh-length black hair at the bathroom mirror, twirling the ends with her fingers to form natural ringlets. This wouldn’t have been the case in the months after her attack – all the mirrors in her home had to be covered with blankets, as she couldn’t bear to catch her reflection.

She is now 25 and she has organised routines of self-care into her daily life.

Taking care of her hair is one. Combing it takes time and effort, it’s almost an act of meditation. She knows she has beautiful hair, people comment on it all the time. Every morning she also makes herself a cup of cacao, a pure, raw form of chocolate that she believes has healing qualities, and writes down her goals in a diary.

SEE FULL DETAILS HERE

Ok, so now you want people ti start digging it out.

Kim k comes to mind.

Seen