Kimleigh Smith was a normal 17-year-old college student when the worst imaginable thing happened to her.

She was a cheerleader for the football team and the players invited her to a party where she was gang raped.

Smith spoke at El Camino during the Psychology Club meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 23 about the incident and how she’s thrived since it happened.

Smith, an actress known for starring in “The Princess Diaries” and “Bad Words,” said that for eight years she repressed the memory of what happened to her even when her friends asked her about the incident.

All she remembers is waking up with “blood rolling down her legs,” getting up and not recalling the previous night.

There were many dangerous situations she put herself in without knowing, unconsciously, all her actions led back to the rape, she said.

Under certain circumstances Smith would become paralyzed and could not speak, she said.

“I am a rape survivor, now a thriver,” Smith said.

Smith is now an advocate for sexual assault victims and she goes around different campuses to speak to students about her life story.

“My mission on Earth is to help people be awesome,” Smith said.

During the meeting, Smith had all the students in the room stand up, touch their heart and say to themselves: “I am awesome.”

“(I became an advocate) once I realized that I had a powerful voice,” Smith said.

Some students were there because they heard about the meeting from their professors, while others were there because they were interested in hearing Smith’s story.

“I heard about (the meeting) from my (psychology) professor Amy Himsel, and also because I am very interested in Psychology,” Arianna Anderson, 18, undecided, said.

The president of the Psychology Club, Steven Park, said Smith’s story is “very profund,” and “she’s very entertaining.”

The Psychology Club found Smith through the “Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network,” which is a site that helps victims of abuse, Park said.

Smith has a one-woman show about her survival, which is called “Totally,” and is performed throughout the country.

For more information about Smith, visit her website at www.kimleighsmith.com. She can also be contacted via email at [email protected].