Trigger warning: sexual assault
When I moved to Kitchener in 2019, I had one friend, my roommate, a friend from college. My hometown of Burlington didn’t seem to have many marginalized people like me, and I was hoping to really find my people once I settled into my new home in a more diverse city.
Imagine my disappointment when I learned that community isn’t found without effort. I’m naturally introverted, so I only made one other similarly marginalized friend, as opposed to the masses I assumed would flock to me. He gave me support, but he could not be community.
Eventually, my new friend and I started attending events run by our community. We both enjoyed it, and I found it easier to put myself out there with my friend by my side. We both felt safe and we both felt increasingly connected; the more we went out, the more people would recognize us and talk to us. For the first time in my life, I finally understood what a “safe space” was supposed to feel like. When you’re part of a marginalized group, you deal with a lot of harm from the outside—so it felt good to finally be insulated from that.
And then, last summer, that changed.
I was sexually assaulted by a prominent member of my community.
I no longer feel safe at community events even tangentially related to this person; I’ve been to a couple since The Incident, and it feels weird. Everyone knows this person—he has a good reputation and is charming, funny and outgoing. Everyone loves him.
No one knows what happened between us. So why would they think otherwise?
Still, everyone’s favourable opinion of him cuts deep. It makes me angry that no one sees what I saw. I wonder: if they knew, would that change things? Would it change how people see him? Or would their opinions, already formed, stay rigid? Would they stand by this charming, charismatic, outgoing monster—or worse, feel sorry for him for losing his connection with me?
I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that a space that was my launching point into my own community no longer feels safe to me. And I have to figure out where to go from here.
That doesn’t feel good. That doesn’t feel fair.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
So, now what? How do I reclaim this space that was so meaningful for so long? After all, this person is a part of the same community—he has the same rights as I do to access and enjoy these spaces. He also has a right to feel safe.
In the months since I was assaulted I’ve been asking myself: what’s the solution? In this ongoing process, what’s the best way forward?
Is it for the community to be aware of what happened and make their own decisions? For a time, I did consider this, putting him on blast and telling the world who he is. But I didn’t. I’m better than a knee-jerk reaction like that.
Is it for him to voluntarily ostracize himself from the community for the foreseeable future? That doesn’t feel great – that feels punitive, and I’m not sure that would really show who I am and what I value.
Is it for me to move on and heal and forgive and forget? It doesn’t feel very fair for the onus to be on me. It doesn’t feel fair that I have to fight for my own sense of safety when I was the one assaulted. But – what else is there? If I can’t expect the community or this person to do the work, who will?
So far, I’ve been trying a combination of slowly informing the community—if it comes up in conversation, I don’t shy away from telling people. The more people I tell, the stronger I feel, and it gives the community a chance to come to their own conclusions.
I am also finding new community spaces unrelated to him. I’ve mostly stopped going to events related to this person, but I’ve started going to different community events—mostly with the same friend I made when I first moved here.
At the end of the day, creating community safe spaces takes effort. It takes effort to find, effort to create, and effort to maintain. And, as I’ve learned, it takes a lot of effort to reclaim. But I don’t think it should be one person taking on all the reclamation—that’s what community is for. We look out for each other. We protect each other from harm—from the outside and from within.
That’s what I wanted to find here. That’s what I’ve worked for. And that’s what I will rebuild for myself.
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