If you feel ready to disclose what happened, you should do so without hesitation. If you are still preparing to report, know that it will be helpful to document your experience as much as possible. If the abuse happened years ago, it will be impossible to remember every event and every date, but sketching out a timeline will be very helpful for you and the criminal investigation. It can be a painful, draining process to rehash the past. Try to remember specific details and things that were said. Gathering any evidence you have will help you remember and also aid the investigation. Journal entries, letters, emails, pictures, artifacts, and communication with other people about your relationship can help piece together the past. The police cannot take these things from you without your permission, but be prepared for them to encourage you to submit them to the police department as evidence in the case.

You might be feeling discouraged from reporting because you have a lack of evidence. Law enforcement know there are rarely any witnesses to sex abuse. It is likely that you never told anyone what was going on, and it is likely that you were coached to destroy evidence along the way. That is ok. If you feel ready to report, you should report anyway. Remember, even if your report doesn’t result in an investigation or charges being pressed, your experience could be corroborated by other targets who have reported, or who have yet to come forward.

If you report to a police officer, they will want you to make a recorded statement. This process can feel very intimidating. It can feel like YOU are the one being interrogated. Try to remember: if a teacher engaged in sexual activity with you while you were a student, that teacher is fully and solely responsible for what occurred. You are not in trouble with the law. The police are trying to gather as much information possible to move forward with an investigation or pressing charges.

You are allowed to have support with you when talking with the police. This could be an emotionally supportive person like a parent, friend, or therapist. It could be an attorney, including the states attorney. If you feel more comfortable talking with either female or male officers, you can request to do so.

If you are reporting your abuse, you have likely spent time preparing yourself for the consequences that your abuser might face. Even if the abuse occurred years ago, this can be extremely traumatic and difficult to wrestle with.

However.

You should also be prepared for the opposite. A lack of immediate action - or a lack of your abuser ever facing consequences - is a very real possibility. A 2007 Associated Press exposé revealed that only 53% of cases investigated by law enforcement resulted in a criminal conviction. It might be difficult to picture anything other than the police speeding away with lights flashing and handcuffs ready, but more often than not, that couldn’t be further from reality. After an initial flurry of activity, criminal investigations and prosecution can take years. Our legal system is limited by archaic statute of limitation laws and state attorneys often choose not to press charges for a variety of reasons.

Reporting your abuse has many benefits. Justice can bring a sense of closure that can help in the healing process. Consequences for an abusive teacher will prevent them from targeting other students, and removing them from the school will make it a safer place.

But these benefits do not come without a cost. You trade your own privacy and your sense of control.

When preparing to report, brace yourself for “re-traumatization.” Re-traumatization is when a person’s reaction to an event is amplified or intensified by a previous traumatic experience. This can include symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, always being on alert or hyper-vigilance, depression, or somatic symptoms, just to name a few. Reporting your abuse will involve bringing yourself back to the time of your abuse and telling the story. Telling your story to the police, filing an official report, telling your story to attorneys… every step of navigating the justice system has the potential to be a new trauma. Enduring the roller coaster surrounded by a support system of people who know your story can help. (Ideally, one of those people is a licensed therapist.)