"Dear sex attacker. You will not win." A powerful letter from a sexual assault victim.

A young woman who was recently seriously assaulted on her way home by a stranger writes an open letter to her attacker.

Warning: This post deals with sexual assault and may be upsetting for some readers.

It is the voice of a young woman speaking directly to her attacker.

The voice of a young woman saying “this is a fight you will not win.”

The voice of a young woman claiming back the phrase “not guilty.”

It is a voice worth hearing.

The woman, 20-year old Ione Wells was recently sexually assaulted by a stranger near her home in Camden, North London. She was attacked in the street in full view of neighbours. Brutally assaulted.

Ms Wells, a Oxford University undergraduate was pushed to the ground by a man who then grabbed her by her hair and dragged her along the ground and grabbed her breast.

The 17-year-old attacker pleaded guilty to the sexual assault on Monday – and now faces sentencing in May.

The attack prompted Ms Wells to write a powerful open letter to her assailant. She says she wants all victims of sexual assault to know that they are not guilty.

They are the innocent ones.

“Victims are inherently not guilty, and always will be, never forget that.” she says.

The letter, originally published in her university’s newspaper, and now re-produced on a website for the campaign she has started “Not Guilty,” describes her terror at the attack – yet says her community came together.

“You did not just attack me that night. I am a daughter, I am a friend, I am a girlfriend, I am a pupil, I am a cousin, I am a niece, I am a neighbour, I am the employee who served everyone down the road coffee in the café under the railway. All the people who form those relations to me make up my community, and you assaulted every single one of them. You violated the truth that I will never cease to fight for, and which all of those people represent – that there are infinitely more good people in the world than bad.”

She says “This letter is not really for you at all, but for all the victims of attempted or perpetrated serious sexual assault and every member of their communities”

Related content: This is the anti-violence campaign Australia desperately needs.

The campaign is already having a positive impact with one rape victim telling the BBC’ s Newsbeat reading it helped her realise that when she was raped, it wasn’t her fault.

“It’s great she’s speaking out, it makes such a difference and it really helped me. It’s a topic that needs to get talked about.

“The more voices and people I hear, the more it makes me realise it’s not my fault.”

For Ms Wells that is the reason she spoke out.

Her letter in full:

I cannot address this letter to you, because I do not know your name. I only know that you have just been charged with serious sexual assault and prolonged attack of a violent nature. And I have one question.

When you were caught on CCTV following me through my own neighbourhood from the Tube, when you waited until I was on my own street to approach me, when you clapped your hand around my face until I could not breathe, when you pushed me to my knees until my face bled, when I wrestled with your hand just enough so that I could scream. When you dragged me by my hair, and when you smashed my head against the pavement and told me to stop screaming for help, when my neighbour saw you from her window and shouted at you and you looked her in the eye and carried on kicking me in the back and neck. When you tore my bra in half from the sheer force you grabbed my breast, when you didn’t reach once for my belongings because you wanted my body, when you failed to have my body because all my neighbours and family came out, and you saw them face-to-face. When CCTV caught you running from your attempted assault on me… and then following another woman twenty minutes later from the same tube station before you were arrested on suspicion. When I was in the police station until 5am while you were four floors below me in custody, when I had to hand over my clothes and photographs of the marks and cuts on my naked body to forensic teams – did you ever think of the people in your life?

I don’t know who the people in your life are. I don’t know anything about you. But I do know this: you did not just attack me that night. I am a daughter, I am a friend, I am a girlfriend, I am a pupil, I am a cousin, I am a niece, I am a neighbour, I am the employee who served everyone down the road coffee in the café under the railway. All the people who form those relations to me make up my community, and you assaulted every single one of them. You violated the truth that I will never cease to fight for, and which all of those people represent – that there are infinitely more good people in the world than bad.

This letter is not really for you at all, but for all the victims of attempted or perpetrated serious sexual assault and every member of their communities. I’m sure you remember the 7/7 bombings. I’m also sure you’ll remember how the terrorists did not win, because the whole community of London got back on the Tube the next day. You’ve carried out your attack, but now I’m getting back on my tube.

My community will not feel we are unsafe walking back home after dark. We will get on the last tube home, and we will walk up our streets alone, because we will not ingrain or submit to the idea that we are putting ourselves in danger in doing so. We will continue to come together, like an army, when any member of our community is threatened, and this is a fight you will not win.

Community is a force we all underestimate. We get our papers every day from the same newsagents, we wave to the same woman walking her dog in the park, we sit next to the same commuters each day on the tube. Each individual we know and care about may take up no more than a few seconds of each day, but they make up a huge proportion of our lives. Somebody even once told me that, however unfamiliar they appear, the faces of our dreams are always faces we have seen before. Our community is embedded in our psyche. You, my attacker, have not proved any weakness in me, or my actions, but only demonstrated the solidarity of humanity.

Tomorrow, you find out whether you’re to be held in prison until your trial, because you pleaded ‘not guilty’ and pose a threat to the community. Tomorrow, I have my life back. As you sit awaiting trial, I hope that you do not just think about what you have done. I hope you think about community. Your community – even if you can’t see it around you every day. It is there. It is everywhere. You underestimated mine. Or should I say ours? I could say something along the lines of, ‘Imagine if it had been a member of your community,’ but instead let me say this. There are no boundaries to community; there are only exceptions, and you are one of them.

You can contribute to the campaign by visiting the Not Guilty website here.

If this brings up issues for you or you need to speak to someone help is available.Please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.