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![\"Department](\"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Sexualviolence.jpg\")
<\/a>A victim of sexual assault herself, Celis told her story yesterday to give hope and support to other victims and survivors of sexual assault.<\/p>\n
\u201cTen years ago on a day not out of the ordinary, I became a victim of sexual assault. Despite all the misconceptions regarding sexual violence, I was not at the wrong place at the wrong time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Celis said she did not provoke the act of violence against her, was not attacked by a complete stranger, and she did not ask for it, but throughout her ordeal she felt robbed of her dignity and her self-respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was helpless and alone and was overcome with anger, fear, and shame and after what seemed like hours of pain I have been asking over and over what I had done to deserve this and basically I had to gather all the strength I had left and fight back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I knew that if I was going to die I wasn\u2019t going to go down without a fight but thankfully I prevailed and was able to get home to safety and, even though I escaped the assault, I felt robbed of my humanity and my self-worth. I was ashamed and feared of what others would think.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember the last words from my attacker and the threats not to report it out to anyone and I was afraid of taking action against my attacker, even though I knew what he did was wrong and what he did was a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there was no other way and I knew the right thing to do was to report this. I knew I couldn\u2019t allow him to roam freely and risk him attacking me again or someone else or someone more helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd with the support from the family and the strength I needed for the sake of my children, I reported the crime. I hung on until I got my day in court where I took the stand and faced my attacker while reading the entire ordeal in front of everyone. But I took that stand, I fought hard and I got justice and since then I continued picking up the pieces of my life and became a strong person today. I was a victim but now I stand here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Being a mother, daughter, sister, friend, and coworker in a \u201ctight-knit community,\u201d Celis believes that courage inspires courage.<\/p>\n
If you see an act of domestic or sexual violence, break that practice of minding your own business. The right thing to do is to speak out and be that victim\u2019s voice, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should never turn a blind eye toward violence. Speak out and call for help and let them know that domestic or sexual violence is wrong. It is a crime that will not be tolerated in our community. If we don\u2019t do this we give the power of the attacker to destroy lives and create another victim,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time to end the silence and reach out to those who have been victimized and tell them that they are not alone, they do not need to live with the shame and guilt, and they need to know they can get their lives back,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Celis told her story not just to inspire other victims but to also inspire her sons, who would one day know her story and become advocates against sexual and domestic violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":195488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3459,3460,67,3461],"class_list":["post-195482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-despite-gov","tag-early-childhood-month","tag-people","tag-reina-celis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}