I hear it everywhere I go

There is a certain effect I know I have on people. When speaking with people, they naturally open up to me. I hear some terrible stories. I am also a licensed nurse. I usually end up in psychiatric nursing because I am a natural at it.
My first rape happened at the age of 15. As I blog I will go into more details of it, but for now the relevant part is that I spoke with a lot of people while I tried to cope with it and the fallout from the rape. It has always bothered me, so I bring it up in conversations at times. I am always shocked when I do. Every time I have that discussion, I either am speaking to someone that is a victim of rape, or has a very close person they know who was also raped. To that effect- nearly all of my female friends have admitted to being raped. It's almost as if I have opened the door and find a secret society of people who have been raped. A lot of them have only told a few people. I can account for nearly 3/4s of my female friends admitting to being raped.
That's the funny thing about rape- it is incredibly under reported. They can only estimate how much of the population has been raped because so few rapes are reported and so few victims will admit to a survey so that the statistics can be calculated. How many of those who report they have not been raped are in denial? There is so much of it that remains quietly ignored.
Of the statistics, they calculate, depending on the study, that false allegations of rape account for 2-8% of reported rape. Sadly, a lot of that false allegation is also skewed due to recanting of rape- not that it didnt occur, but that a victim chose to not go through with a rape allegation. How many victims were scoffed at by police? How many realized that reporting rape came with its own additional traumas? How many victims were threatened by their perpetrators? Or threatened with loss of a job?
To some people this may seem ludicrous, but I have been raped three completely different times- and the only time that ended well for me was the one I didnt report. I have never received justice for any of those rapes. I have the identities of each rapist. One was a family member- a known pedophile at that. One was a result of date rape. One was the result of a drugging.
Everywhere I go, I hear the same stories. Every once in a while I have a male admit to being molested or raped, too. Most of my female friends have admitted To AT LEAST ONE rape- some multiple times, multiple perpetrators. My purpose with this blog is to bring this issue out- to create a forum. To change the way rape is perceived. But mainly to change the way a rape victim is received. We have to support those who struggle with the shame of being raped. We have to do better.