At a women’s conference, a question was asked:
“What would you do with $10,000?”

Many women answered:
“I would open a home for victims of domestic violence.”

And that’s beautiful. That matters.

But I noticed something.

No one said anything about creating safe spaces for victims of sexual abuse.

And I couldn’t ignore it.

Because sexual abuse is physical abuse.
It happens to the body.
It violates the body.
It leaves scars—just not always the kind you can see.

So why do we respond to one, but struggle to respond to the other?

It’s almost universally agreed:
A man should never put his hands on a woman.

But what happens when he does—sexually?

Why is that conversation quieter?
More uncomfortable?
Sometimes even avoided?

Maybe it’s because sexual abuse forces us to confront things we don’t want to face.

It’s not always a stranger.
It’s not always violent in the way people expect.
Sometimes it happens in relationships.
Sometimes even in marriage.

And that challenges what many people have been taught to believe.

It also requires language—words like consent, coercion, and understanding—that not everyone has been given.

So instead of addressing it, we stay silent.

But silence doesn’t protect victims.

It protects misunderstanding.

It protects denial.

It protects systems that were never built to fully acknowledge this kind of harm.

The truth is:
A woman being hit is not the only form of violence we should be outraged by.

A woman being violated sexually—without full consent, without understanding, without choice—is just as serious.

Just as physical.
Just as real.

And just as deserving of protection, support, and safe spaces.

We don’t need to choose one cause over the other.

We need to expand our understanding of what protection really means.

Because safety isn’t just about not being hit.

It’s also about not being violated.

And until we fully recognize that, some survivors will continue to suffer in silence—even in spaces that were meant to protect them.