'Luckiest Girl Alive' Author Jessica Knoll Speaks Out About Being Gang-Raped as a Teen

Bestselling author Jessica Knoll revealed on Tuesday that she was gang-raped as a teen – just like the protagonist in her hit novel, Luckiest Girl Alive.

In an essay published in Lena Dunham‘s Lenny Letter, Knoll opens up for the first time about the devastating experience that continues to haunt her, explaining why she kept it hidden for so many years – and why she’s choosing to speak out now.

“The first person to tell me I was gang-raped was a therapist, seven years after the fact,” Knoll begins the heart-wrenching essay. “The second was my literary agent, five years later, only she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about Ani, the protagonist of my novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, which is a work of fiction. What I’ve kept to myself, up until today, is that its inspiration is not.”

“I’ve been running and I’ve been ducking and I’ve been dodging because I’m scared,” she continues. “I’m scared people won’t call what happened to me rape because for a long time, no one did.”

“But as I gear up for my paperback tour, and as I brace myself for the women who ask me, in nervous, brave tones, what I meant by my dedication, what do I know? I had a simple, powerful revelation: everyone is calling it rape now. There’s no reason to cover my head. There’s no reason I shouldn’t say what I know,” she writes, referencing the dedication included in the opening pages of her novel: “To all the TifAni FaNellis of the world, I know.”

TifAni FaNelli is the main character in Luckiest Girl Alive – which has been optioned by Reese Witherspoon to be turned into a movie – a successful young woman who is tormented by memories of being gang-raped in high school by several male classmates.

Knoll’s essay describes in agonizing detail the similar events that happened to her in real life, and the shame, confusion and heartache that followed. Knoll coped by going into what she calls “survivor mode;” she learned to “laugh loudly at my rapists’ jokes” and “speak softly to the mean girls.” Once, she mustered up the courage to confront one of her rapists – only to feel compelled to apologize to him later. “What a thing to live with,” she writes.

Now that the former Cosmopolitan editor fully understands the truth about what happened to her, she’s ready to confront it.

When a tearful reader recently asked Knoll how she was able to so accurately portray TifAni’s rape, the author finally opened up.

” ‘Something similar to what happened to Ani happened to me,’ I responded for the first time ever, and she grabbed my wrist and held it tight, blinking tears, while I smiled brightly, insisting in a foreign falsetto, ‘I’m fine! It’s fine!’ ” Knoll recalls.

But, she concludes, “I’m not fine. It’s not fine. But it’s finally the truth, it’s what I know, and that’s a start.”