Certain smartphone apps help you to report sexual assault, and many who have used them say it’s less traumatizing than reporting face-to-face:
One student who says she was sexually harassed on campus by another student says she was too full of fear, and shame to take her complaint to campus administrators. Even as, she says, the harassment started to cause depression and anxiety, she couldn’t bring herself to walk into the school’s Title IX office to tell a stranger her story. Fighting back tears, she recalls being “afraid of being blamed,” and afraid that she wouldn’t be believed. She also worried it would have been too embarrassing to recount the explicit, vulgar language that was involved.
These apps encrypt a person’s report, and you can either send it directly to authorities or use it as a time-stamped record to hold on to until you’re ready to submit it.
