Another and another survivor of sexual assault comes forward with their traumatizing story. It feels like we’re living in a world where the words’ consent’ and ‘respect’ have lost all their meaning. Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in her Instagram Live broadcast on Monday night that she is a survivor of sexual abuse.

This is the first time she has spoken about her trauma. Ocasio-Cortez was contextualizing her experience in the wake of the insurrection at the US Capitol in January. Recounting her day on which the riots occurred, the New York democrat compared the people in Congress who are telling the riot victims to ‘move on,’ to the abusers saying they use the ‘same tactics’ as them.

“The reason I say this, and the reason I’m getting emotional is that they told us to move on, that it’s not a big deal that we should forget what happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the tactics of abusers,” said the congresswoman, getting close to tears in her video.

.@AOC is on live talking about the trauma of the capitol insurrection and relates it to her trauma of being a sexual assault survivor pic.twitter.com/et0SafP3ej

— Ryan Khosravi ✨ (@ryepastrami) February 2, 2021

“The reason I say this and the reason I’m getting emotional at this moment is that these folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the same tactics of abusers. And, um, I’m a survivor of sexual assault,” she said.

“And I haven’t told many people that in my life. But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other. And so, whether you had a negligent or a neglectful parent, and — or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experience any sort of trauma in your life, small to large — these episodes can compound on one another,” continued Ocasio-Cortez.

The Instagram Live video went on for about an hour with the democrat sharing details of what exactly happened with her during the riots. Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she hid with representative Katie Porter in her office.

She also has to lock herself in her office bathroom for a while when she thought an insurrectionist was breaking into her office, but it was a police officer. “I thought I was going to die,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “I hear huge violent bangs on my door and then every door going into my office,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Like someone was trying to break the door down. And there were no voices.

There were no yells. No one saying who they were, nobody identifying themselves. I just started to hear these yells of, ‘Where is she? Where is she?” recounted Ocasio-Cortez.

What she said next in the video is something that struck us significantly. “My story is not the only story, nor is it the central story, it’s one of many stories of what these people did in creating this environment,” she said. “These folks who are just trying to tell us to move on are just like pulling the page — they’re using the same tactics — of every other abuser who tells you to move on.”

Bringing her video to an end shortly after that, Ocasio-Cortez said that ‘we can move on only when the individuals responsible are held to account.”

This is just one account of the evening that can be best described as a nightmare. Hundreds of people must have had similar experiences from the Capitol riots. We hope the people responsible are quickly held accountable so that the victims can find some sense of peace.

Let us know what you think of the entire situation on our Facebook page.