It’s estimated
that one in six men are sexually assaulted. Now, DJ and musician Zeke
Thomas is doing his part to put a stop to that.
“Sexual assault
touches all genders, all races,” 28-year-old Zeke tells BET in a
candid new interview. “It’s a human issue and it’s something that isn’t talked
about. And we gotta start having those conversations.”
Last month,
Zeke opened up to New York Magazine and Robin Roberts at GMA about being a survivor of sexual assault. Now, he just announced
he’s the newest ambassador for the National Sexual Violence Resource
Center.
Speaking to BET about
his new role with the Center, Zeke says:
What I hope to
achieve in my ambassadorship is if I can help you through my story–giving a
voice to the millions of men who are abused or have been raped before–if I can
help point you in the right direction the same way allies have helped me,
that’s what I want to do.
The first time
Zeke was sexually assaulted was when he was 12 years old. He recalls:
I didn’t
realize what had occurred. I knew it was wrong. I knew something wasn’t right
about it. But it wasn’t until much later that I started talking about it with
my therapist and actually told my mother that this had happened to me.
Then in
February 2015, it happened to him again. He connected with a man on
Grindr, they met up for drinks, he passed out, and the next thing Zeke knew, it
was morning and, as he described to New York Magazine last
month:
My ass was
destroyed. Destroyed. I’m bleeding. And I’m just like — terrified. I can’t
move. I didn’t move from my apartment for two days. I didn’t move. I didn’t
talk to anybody. I froze.
After the
attack, the man blocked Zeke on Grindr. To this day, he has not been able to
find him. But Zeke tells BET he doesn’t blame the app for what happened.
“These apps
that everybody uses — from Bumble to Tinder to Match.com got an app now — these
apps aren’t the problem,” he explains. “It’s people. There are bad people in
this world who do want to do harm.”
Zeke hopes by
sharing his story with other victims and survivors of sexual assault, it
will help them closure to their own experience.
He explains:
It’s never a
day that I don’t think about it, that I don’t question it, that I don’t relive
that moment. Even now speaking about it, you feel that pain. But the pain
didn’t defeat me and I’m not going to allow it to. But you keep on doing that
work, you keep on talking about it, you still go to therapy and do what you
have to do to take your power back.
Watch Zeke’s
powerul PSA below…
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