*Activist Amber Amour found online support and criticism after she posted intimate details of her alleged sexual assault on social media – only minutes after the attack took place.
She claims that while promoting her ‘Stop Rape. Educate’ campaign in Cape Town, South Africa last November, she took a moment to entertain a male named Shakir – one thing led to another and the two ended up in the shower together. Instead of simply enjoying an intimate moment of cascading water over their nude bodies, Amour alleges Shakir raped her.
Amber decided to share her story because she says it’s important to her to live by what she preaches. The New York born rape activist encourages victims to speak up and get help, so she couldn’t keep what happened to her a secret. She logged onto Instagram to post a photo of herself crying along with a detailed account of the assault. Read it below.
“Here I was, telling survivors every single day that they should speak up… I knew I had to practice what I preached,” she explained to Marie Claire UK. “So the first thing I did was take a picture and write a post, describing what had happened.”
“It was almost an intuitive thing,” she added. “I was still in the bathroom – in the crime scene. I don’t even think I’d stood up. I just typed and typed.”
Despite sharing her compelling truth, Amour’s story was met with harsh criticism because she agreed to shower with her accused attacker.
“Don’t take showers with men you aren’t intimate with. Period. Someone should of been told you that,” one poster chided.
“Wow sounds like you love attention,” another commented. Yet there are many who were appalled by the backlash and found the 27-year-old’s transparency brave.
While many found it hard to sympathize with Amber, others showered her with support.
“The fact that there are WOMEN commenting negatively on your posts makes me feel very afraid…This is the world we are living in,” said one advocate. “It hurts to see this. It is never ok to think you are entitled to have sex with a woman solely based on what is wearing or if she let you kiss her or not??? Never does that give you the right.. Im honestly baffled”
“No matter what a person does, it is not an invitation for rape,” Amour fired back in a subsequent photo caption. “It doesn’t matter if I kissed him. It doesn’t matter if he was drunk. It doesn’t matter if I said yes to a shower. I never said he could get violent with me. I never said he could make me bleed. I never said he could rape me. But still, that’s how the scene went down.”