It started with an innocent crush. "I thought Gabe was really cute. I used to dream about him asking me to marry him and taking me away to some island paradise."

That never happened.

Instead, one night Jennifer’s older brother invited her to go dancing with them. There was no problem getting in the club, Jennifer had piled on tons of makeup and she looked plenty old enough. The older crowd thought it might be fun to see Jennifer drunk. " I remember my brother yelling, ‘Let’s get my sister drunk!’ and everyone with us cheering."

As the night wore on Jennifer drank and danced and danced and drank. At around 3 a.m., her brother left with some friends to go pick up his girlfriend.

'Ten minutes later Gabe led me out of the club," remembers Jennifer. 'He drove to the nearest motel and got a room. Then he began to kiss and touch me."

"I’d never been touched like that. I’m not sure what I was thinking. I guess I felt lucky that Gabe actually liked me. I didn’t ask him to stop because I was afraid he’d stop liking me and leave."

That night Gabe had sex with Jennifer. Even though she never screamed or fought back or even said, "no," Jennifer was raped. At 12 years old, she was too young to consent to sex with an adult.

When they went to Gabe’s house the next day, Jennifer was surprised to find Gabe’s girlfriend there, waiting for him.

"I didn’t know he had a girlfriend," Jennifer says. "I thought he’d slept with me because he wanted me to be his girlfriend."

Jennifer told her "best friend" about having had sex and the next thing she knew everyone in school was talking about it.

"They called me a slut and lots of other horrible names. Guys wouldn’t give me a second look. I would go home crying. I didn’t understand why people were being so mean to me. I blamed myself. I thought I had done something wrong."

Over the next two years the name-calling finally stopped. Jennifer started high school and got herself her first real boyfriend.

"I was going out with him for two or three weeks, when he asked when I was going to sleep with him. He didn’t ask if, he asked when, like it didn’t matter if I wanted to or not," she says.

Jennifer broke up with him, but she soon realized that every guy she dated expected her to have sex with him.

"It was because I’d done it already. The guys thought that if I’d done it once, I had no right to say no when they wanted it."

Of course, they were wrong. After that first time, Jennifer decided for herself if and when she wanted to have sex. She was determined never to do something so intimate just to try to make a guy like her.

Now, at 17, Jennifer understands she was taken advantage of. She no longer blames herself.

"I can’t change the past," she said. "I’m not the one that did something wrong. Gabe was the adult. He should have known better."