With no one to talk to about her experiences, Ruiz blamed the assault on herself. “For many years I felt lost,” she says. “I didn’t know who I was — I felt like a bad person.” The pain eventually grew to the point that Ruiz felt suicidal. “If I hadn’t talked about it, I would not have been healed, and you would not be speaking to me today,” she says.

After becoming involved with the Denton County Friends of the Family (DCFOF), a local organization that provides services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, Ruiz finally began to speak out about her history: first during counseling, then to her family, and then in public.

Talking about her experiences to counselors proved deeply beneficial for Ruiz. “When I told my story and people helped me understand what it meant and how to deal with it, I felt like a whole person again. I became stronger, and I learned to take care of myself,” she remembers. “I gained the dignity and self-esteem that I lost.”

It was more difficult for her to tell her family about the abuse, but exposing the secret was crucial: The family soon learned that the same person who had sexually abused Ruiz was also molesting her 13-year-old cousin. Like Ruiz, her young cousin had kept silent about the abuse, coping with her pain by taking sleeping pills.

Her young cousin’s experience inspired Ruiz to begin speaking publicly against sexual assault. “I saw that I could have done something if I had spoken earlier and louder, to everyone in my family,” she says. Today, she works closely with DCFOF as well as with the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA), an advocacy organization that works to promote sexual-assault awareness throughout the state. In addition to her public speaking, she has also participated in TAASA’s “Speak Up. Speak Out” campaign by appearing in television, radio and print ads.

Although it was difficult at first to speak in front of large crowds of strangers, Ruiz has found that simply telling her story has helped other women — and particularly Latinas — to reveal their own abuse. “A lot of women are unwilling to talk about it or go for help,” she says. “They are worried that their families will find out, and in our culture, within our families, people are not always going to [support] you.” Ruiz has found that setting an example as a Latina who is willing to make her story public has encouraged other Hispanic women to come forward. “Our community needs more people who are willing to speak about their own experiences,” she says.

Indeed, staying silent about sexual assault is all too common within the Latino community. Cassandra Juarez, a licensed professional counselor in the Chicago area and the author of the novel A Journey Through the Penumbra: Out of Rape’s Shadow, says that one of the biggest challenges she faces in treating Latina sexual-assault victims is getting them to reveal what happened to them.

Often, Juarez says, young Latinas come to counseling because of more apparent problems. “The initial reason might be that they’re depressed, that they’ve made a suicide attempt, that they are failing classes in school, or various other things,” she says. Gradually, many of them reveal that past sexual assault is at the root of their self-destructive behavior.

The stigma associated with women’s sexuality in Hispanic culture keeps many victims from talking about their experiences, Juarez says. Recalling one 14-year-old patient, she notes, “There was this very deep, profound sense of shame and violation.” Furthermore, she says, Hispanic culture often tends to adhere to a “blame the victim” mentality. “People say to victims, ‘What did you go home with him for? What have we told you about being alone with a man?’

In addition, Juarez describes the Catholic heritage of many Latinos as a roadblock to talking in depth about sexual assault. “In the Catholic tradition, there’s [the tradition of] Confession, where you do your penance and you’re done,” she says. “I think [Latinas] come into therapy wanting to treat it that way — putting it behind them, and it’s over, and they forget about it.” Ruiz, as well, had to confront a priest who told her to “forgive and forget” her assault. Nevertheless, Juarez asserts that other aspects of Hispanic culture can also be a source of help and healing for sexual assault victims. She recalls that another of her young Latina patients benefited greatly from the closeness of her family. After counseling helped her learn to express her fears about future sexual assault, the teen’s family took some concrete measures to make her feel safer, such as locking the windows and asking the police to patrol the neighborhood. Not only did the daughter feel better, but other family members began to heal as well. “The father was able to feel more empowered by taking these measures,” Juarez says, “even though he lost control by [feeling like] his daughter was violated.”

Both Ruiz and Juarez insist that education is greatly needed in Latino communities, both to prevent sexual assault and to overcome the stigmas that keep victims from revealing it. “One of the things I wish I had been told when I was younger is what individual family members’ roles should be towards me,” says Ruiz. She argues that young girls need to be educated about what constitutes inappropriate behavior. Given that three-fourths of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knows and more than half of all victims are under the age of 18, it is especially important that young Latinas learn how to respond if a family member tries to assault them.

Furthermore, Juarez believes that sexual-assault-awareness campaigns should also be aimed at men. “They need to know what is unacceptable and inappropriate behavior — for example, that it’s never OK to force sex on a woman, even if she’s drunk, even if you’ve had sex with her before, even if you’ve been going out with her for six months.”

Juarez adds that many Latinas, in turn, need to learn to be more assertive. “I think Hispanic women are raised to respect men and to defer to men, and to be polite and well-mannered,” she says. “But when someone is assaulting you, you have to throw all that out the window!” Most important, she says, is for women to remember that “It is never the victim’s fault.”

Hopefully, increased efforts to build public awareness about sexual assault will help in preventing it within the Hispanic community. But for Latina victims of sexual assault, abuse or rape, the most important step is the one that Eunice Ruiz, her cousin, and many other women have gathered the courage to take: breaking the silence, speaking up and speaking out.