Alyssa Milano Comes Forward With #WhyIDidntReport Story: “It Meant Recognizing My Attacker’s Existence”

Activist and actress Alyssa Milano is the latest celebrity voice to come forward to tell her #WhyIDidntReport story in the response to Donald Trump’s questioning on why Christine Blasey Ford did not file a police report regarding her sexual assault claims against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

In an essay written for Vox, Milano said that she wasn’t much older than Ford when she was sexually assaulted. When she read Trump’s tweet on Friday about how “if Ford’s words were true” she should have filed a report years ago. “This statement chilled me to my core,” she said.

Milano writes that victims of sexual assault don’t file a report because “they know all too well that our stories are rarely taken seriously or believed.” She adds that when it comes to sexual misconduct, “our justice system is broken.”

“Now, we are seeing our worst nightmares realized when we see the disbelief, pushback, hate, and death threats Ford is receiving just because she had the courage to speak up,” she said.

“It took me years after my assault to voice the experience to my closest friends,” Milano recalls. “It took me three decades to tell my parents that the assault had even happened. I never filed a police report. I never told officials. I never tried to find justice for my pain because justice was never an option.”

She continues: “For me, speaking up meant reliving one of the worst moments of my life. It meant recognizing my attacker’s existence when I wanted nothing more than to forget that he was allowed to walk on this Earth at all. This is what every survivor goes through. Telling our stories means being vulnerable to public attacks and ridicule when our only ‘crime’ was to be assaulted in the first place.”

Milano has been an outspoken voice during the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement as well as a supporter of Ford. The Insatiable star comes after the SCOTUS nominee in the article.

“Every person who refuses to loudly and openly reject Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is telling every generation of Americans that an alleged abuser’s career is more valuable than a survivor’s humanity,” she wrote. “And the highest court in our land is no place for an alleged sexual offender to sit.”

After Trump’s initial tweet, Milano did not hold back and tweeted at the former Celebrity Apprentice host: “I was sexually assaulted twice. Once when I was a teenager. I never filed a police report and it took me 30 years to tell [my] parents.” She then encouraged everyone to share their stories.