Incident at work - over sharing?

[Mandatorymongoose]

Apologies because I couldn't work out an appropriate title to this. It's basically about if it's acceptable to discuss rape / sexual assault at work.

Situation is that I am a student on a 4 month placement. I have an assessor / mentor I meet with regularly to discuss how I'm doing.

On a long journey with colleague A we were discussing the difficulty of balancing studies with life. I mentioned that I'd found the previous module particularly difficult because I'd been going through a court case with my DD (16yrs) at the same time (clarifying she was a victim not a perpetrator). Colleague asked what happened, I gave a brief summary of it being a sexual assault and answered any questions she asked (about sentencing and if DD / me had support mostly).

At my next assessor meeting, assessor tells me he needs to discuss my personal boundaries because there had been some concerning incidents. Clarified that actually there was one incident and it was the conversation with colleague A.

Assessor questioned why I would tell anyone that, said that it was strange and weird and that I wasn't really part of the team (?) and they weren't my friends.

I was shocked and a bit upset and responded that I didn't see why I shouldn't discuss it as it shouldn't have shame attached.

I did speak to colleague A later who was suprised at this conversation and explained she had spoken to assessor as she was concerned she had not been supportive enough (which I reassured her wasn't the case as I wasn't seeking support).

It's been playing on my mind a bit since and I keep thinking if it had been that my DD or DS had been the victim of an assault (non sexual) then that conversation wouldn't have happened. It wouldn't have raised an eyebrow - but maybe I'm wrong? What if it was a domestic assault? And it made me wonder if part of the issue is that we do attach shame and stigma to any sort of gendered violence and if so how to challenge that.

I'm interested in people's thoughts on it, if it was inappropriate to mention it then why was it? What about secondary survivors - does that mean that you can't tell anyone, or does that relate more to giving detailed accounts? And where would you draw the lines? If it's not inappropriate then is there a good way to broach it with the assessor for if a similar situation occurred with future students?

Fwiw I don't think strange was a thoughtful choice of words either way. And DD wouldn't object to me mentioning it, her opinion is that it wasn't her fault so why should she care who knows - I know this isn't a mentality universally shared by victims of any sort of crime.

[HPsauciness]

Yes, I wouldn't probably pass on the info that my colleague told me about her dd being sexually assaulted and going to trial, unless she specifically said, it's fine to mention it to anyone, it's not a secret. I have had people tell me all types of things over the years, abortions, fraud, affairs, death of a child, I never pass that type of stuff on to management/others who don't need to know, why on earth would I?

I also think the colleague blathering to the mentor about the OP's cars breaking down/moving house/A levels isn't very likely- there is something called 'tellability' in a story, and these are not just interesting enough, the colleague passed it on because it was more dramatic and perhaps it may have triggered something for her, who knows? When students tell me stuff sometimes, I find it slightly triggering in a way that a story about a house move simply isn't. Doesn't mean she shouldn't have shared, but it does mean others may react to it in a different way than some other types of story.