Mariska Hargitay essay on rape

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There's a powerful essay about rape from Mariska Hargitay, the actor who portrays Olivia Benson on "Law and Order:SVU."  She was raped when she was 30, and went through a very common phase of denying it happened, then minimizing it out of shame.  It's a reminder that:

1) Many women cannot talk about their rapes, or find it hard to due to the shame that's associated with it
2) Most rapes are not perpetrated by a thug in a dark alley; it's someone the victim knows fairly well
3) Talking about rape (whether a personal experience, someone else's experience or even as a fictional character) can help other rape victims come to terms with what happened to them, and start to talk about it themselves.  And that's one of the steps along the path towards dealing with the trauma.

https://people.com/mariska-hargitay-experience-rape-renewal-reckoning-8424247