Something had snapped inside Gretchen Casey.

Maybe it was the way the doctor propped himself up on the side of the exam table, letting his legs swing nonchalantly over the edge. Maybe it was the casual tone he struck when he said: “So I heard you had a rough night.”

But whatever the reason, Casey had come to a decision. This man was not going to touch her.

What had happened was not just a “rough night”. A rough night was stepping out to find your car had been towed, or that your friend had thrown up in the back seat. It was not waking up in the dead of the night to be threatened at knifepoint. It was not the experience of being blindfolded and raped in your apartment, all the while praying not to die.

The last thing Casey wanted now was to be probed and swabbed by some clueless doctor. So she refused to undergo a rape exam. “And I made that decision in a split second. Who did that hurt? It hurt me.”

Looking back on that moment, Casey doesn’t blame the doctor for her decision. She had been reluctant to report her rape in the first place, afraid that the man would come back and kill her if she did.

But now she recognizes the fears and pressures she faced while reporting her rape as one reason why there need to be alternatives to the criminal justice system. She is exploring one such approach by using a practice called restorative justice to help other sexual assault survivors.

Read about how Casey and other advocates are pushing for restorative justice as an alternative approach to handling cases of sexual violence in this article for The Guardian.