Trigger warning: this piece contains statements about sexual assault.

I first met Russell Simmons in a New York City nightclub when I was a 19-year-old model. Our friendship was cemented by our love of nightlife and drinking. When I was 21, Russell and I began dating casually; in the summer of 1994, I called Russell, told him I was in town, and asked if he wanted to hang out as friends. As we sat in our usual corner booth at the Time Cafe, I noticed that he wasn't drinking as much as he usually did. That didn't stop me from pouring glass after glass of Pinot Grigio. As the night wore on and the party rolled on, I became severely intoxicated. I asked Russell to give me a ride back to the apartment where I was staying. In return, he instructed his driver to take me back to his place. I had been drunk and alone with a male friend in the past, but nothing had gone wrong.

I was lying on his bed, fully clothed. I felt myself drifting off to sleep, but then something happened and I opened my eyes. I vaguely saw Russell walking towards me, completely naked and wearing a condom. I said "no" and tried to push him away. I did not agree. I tried to stop him. It didn't matter. After all, my "friend" had violently taken from me something that did not belong to him.

In the aftermath, I struggled to make sense of what had happened to me. Without adequate mental health and trauma care, I could not cope. I cancelled my bookings and stepped away from the modeling world. People in fashion and entertainment are seldom separated by more than two degrees of separation. Finding myself in the same room again with my assailant was something I wanted to avoid at all costs, and that meant giving up just as my career was beginning to take off.

It took many years indeed before I could comfortably share what had happened to me with people outside my immediate family and close friends. I wanted to move on and forget about Russell, as anyone can when the perpetrator is a celebrity.

In the late 2000s, I became more open about being a survivor. I went public with my personal experiences of sexual assault and threw myself into the world of activism against gender violence. Fighting back against a society that does not believe in gender violence, especially domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, became my life mission.

The #MeToo movement gained traction on social media when I shared my story along with the names of my perpetrators and began to believe that people would actually believe me. This is because our race has a history of black men being framed for rape in order to justify racial fear and violence, including lynching. [13] [14] Fear of false accusations, coupled with the black community's deep-seated distrust of the criminal justice system, also plays an important role in why black women who accuse black men of rape are seen as complicit in a society that smears black men as violent sexual predators. Our knowledge of how Black men in the United States are pathologized as predatory rapists contributes to the burden Black women feel to protect Black men from a failed criminal justice system. As a result of this legacy, Black women are placed in the untenable position of having to choose between allegiance to race or allegiance to gender. In a white supremacist patriarchal society, it is unacceptable to acknowledge the suffering of being black and a woman at the same time. Those who speak out about acts of violence against us (opens in new tab) are considered race traitors.

Despite knowing this, I chose to share Russell's actions because I felt that not doing so would go against everything I have advocated for throughout my advocacy work. For the first time in history, women's claims of sexual assault and harassment are finally being heard and largely accepted as legitimate; around the time Jenny Lumet became the first woman of color to publicly accuse Simmons of rape in November 2017 (opens in a new tab), I had a worked with a journalist and began to publicly share what he had done to me as well. I wanted to allay suspicions about the women who came forward with claims against him by also saying "Me too."

About eight months after my first attempt to go public, my story was published in The Hollywood Reporter. Still, Russell* and his supporters accused me of lying and the story was dismissed. I found myself isolated and rejected by people I had known for decades. After almost a year of fighting to have my voice heard, my voice was suppressed.

We now live in a time when conversations about race are front and center. It is heartbreaking that there are music industry executives, media outlets, and fans who still support Russell, despite so many allegations, because he is a cultural icon and his victims are overwhelmingly black.

One of the challenges surrounding the "Movement for Black Lives" is that the majority of the discourse is focused on cis heterosexual black men. The almost singular focus on police brutality perpetrated against black men has created a void that legal scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw's #SayHerName initiative (open in new tab) seeks to fill. [Historically, social movements have brushed aside the experiences of Black women. We have been told to wait. We have been admonished that our cries of suffering, especially regarding sexual assault, are a distraction from the movement's larger goal of addressing police brutality and institutional racism.

It is understandable why we do this: it is through racial solidarity that we have been able to make social progress in a country that continues to devalue black lives. But at the same time, denying the claims of Black women's experiences of sexual violence can only serve to stifle the liberation and progress of Black people as a whole. [It is essential to elevate the suffering of Black women survivors at the same time as dismantling systems of oppression that foster the belief that Black women's problems are part of Black people's problems and that Black men's problems are simply Black people's problems. [14] [15] I am well aware that my privilege as a light-skinned, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied woman with a known perpetrator allows me to share my story in a way that many other women, even non-black women, cannot. I am always thinking of survivors of sexual violence whose names we will never know because they are afraid to come forward. They are rightfully afraid of not being believed and of retaliation from male perpetrators and a system that favors men over women, especially trans women and gender non-conforming people.

In the famous words of black lesbian feminist, activist, and poet Audre Lorde: "We are not silent. But even when we are silent, we are afraid. So it is better to speak." By speaking out, survivors break through the social barriers that police what we say and do. My voice has been heard not only because of the efforts of myself and The Hollywood Reporter, but also because of the work of black women journalists and feminist activists who have fearlessly rallied behind me and other survivors since the release of the documentary "On the Record" Black women have been the main force behind the white media's obliteration of Black women. Black women continue to lift each other up and break down barriers in the face of erasure by the white media and condemnation by those in their own communities.

But it must be a movement that goes beyond the collective efforts of black women alone. The liberation of black women must not be secondary to the liberation of our race. Whatever happens, we will hold accountable those who harm us or censor us.

This is not revenge. It is love. It is beautiful, radical, transformative black love.

Syl Rae Abrams is an activist and the primary subject of the HBO documentary On the Record.

*Editor's note: In 2018, Russell Simmons, through his attorney Patti Glaser, released a statement (open in new tab) to The Hollywood Reporter denying all allegations of sexual assault by Abrams.