This Student's Rape Photo Series Powerfully Demonstrates How It Can Happen to Anyone

​Despite the fact that rape and sexual assault are spoken about openly much more frequently now than they ever have been before, this kind of violation is still occurring regularly, and victims are still finding it difficult to report incidences to the police.

These kind of assaults take place worryingly frequently at colleges and universities, as has been brought to light with the publicity surrounding Brock Turner's conviction. 

The student athlete from Stanford University was prosecuted for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a bin at the beginning of last year, but for reasons not wholly understood (although we can take a guess) he only served three months in prison, an embarrassingly light sentence. 

Having recently been released from jail, 20-year-old Yana Mazurkevich, a student at Ithaca College in New York, decided to create a powerful photo series, 'It Happens', on behalf of Current Solutions, sexual assault awareness media platform​.

And her pictures certainly make an impact; with all the photos containing the words "it happens", followed by the likes of "suddenly", "anywhere" and "without a reason", reminding us that this kind of traumatising assault occurs a lot more than you'd think.​

Posting the pictures to her Facebook page, Yana clarfied that the people featured in them were not survivors of rape or sexual assault themselves, and wrote: "In response to Brock Turner's early release, this photo series aims to continue the conversation on sexual assaut, as well as to raise a huge finger to Turner and his 3-month jail time."

Yana covers all bases with her photographs, reminding us that sexual assault can even occur when you're in a relationship with the person abusing you; that it can occur even to the most unlikely of people - the macho high school jock, for example; and that it can happen anywhere, even (or especially) in the workplace.

The photographs are obviously uncomfortable to look at, but what's more distressing is the fact that Mazurkevich​ told ​Buzzfeed ​that ​​they were all based on "an accumulation of personal experiences... that my friends have been through."

"This happens to real people, people close to you, people who you know," added the photographer.

But by putting work like this out there, she's helping to remind us of this, which hopefully will one day mean there's less of a stigma around victims opening up.​

Follow Cat on Twitter.