Amanda
I was fourteen years old when I was raped by a classmate. It is a moment that will forever be engraved in my mind and is a dark secret that follows me everywhere I go. I have never told anyone but my therapist and even with her I haven’t really spoken much about it. I feel so much shame for what happened and the fact that I didn’t tell anyone.
I was in the eighth grade and had to stay after school to make up a quiz. When I was done, I went to my locker and walked down the stairs to the main floor of the school and opened the door to go outside. Then I realized that I needed to grab my gym clothes to take home and wash, so I turned around and walked to the girls’ locker room to get my clothes. While I was standing at my gym locker I heard a noise and turned around. He was standing in the doorway and I asked what he was doing.
At that moment this overwhelming fear came over me, and when I turned back around to stuff my clothes in my backpack, he came up to me and grabbed my arm. I asked what he was doing and told him to let go. He told me that I was a whore and that he was going to show me. He still had a strong hold on my arm and I couldn’t get away as he yanked on my arm and pulled me out of the locker room and down the stairs to the basement of the school. I started crying at that moment because I didn’t know what he was going to do. He pulled me into the weight room and shoved me to the floor. I told him to stop and let me go but he kept telling me that he was going to show me and he unzipped my shorts and pulled them and my underwear down. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run out of there. But I was frozen with fear and the only sound that would come out was my sobs. He unzipped his pants and began raping me. I kept begging him to stop but he wouldn’t and I looked up at the ceiling and prayed that he would stop. When he was finished he told me not to say anything to anyone because they wouldn’t believe me and I was a slut that deserved it. He said that if I told anyone he would come after me. I was shaking and crying as he quickly got up, zipped up his pants and left the room. I sat there crying for a few minutes and finally stood up and pulled up my pants. I slowly walked out of the weight room, scared that he would be standing outside but no one was there. I quickly ran up the stairs to the locker to grab my bag and ran out of the school.
When I got to my house no one was home so I ran up to my room and collapsed on my bed and laid there and cried. I then got up and grabbed some clean clothes out of my dresser and went downstairs to take a shower. I felt so dirty and disgusting, I wanted to wash every part of my body. After I showered I went back to my bedroom and laid back down on my bed and cried for a really long time. I was terrified and didn’t know what to do. I thought that if I told someone they wouldn’t believe me or they would blame me. I thought people would think horrible things about me and the thought of anyone knowing what had happened made me feel ashamed.
I had to go back to school the next day and pretend that nothing had happened, and my rapist was in a few of my classes. I became withdrawn and started cutting myself, and a lot of people started to become concerned about me, but I couldn’t tell. Luckily, after school got out in May, my family and I moved to another town and I didn’t have to see him again.
Seventeen years later, I can still remember everything like it happened yesterday. I have recently found out that my rapist lives in another state and I feel relief that I will probably never see him again. But I still live with the guilt that I never told anyone and he may have done the same thing to someone else. I am writing this here to speak out about what happened. And my hope is that if someone reading this has been raped and not told anyone, please seek out help. You deserve to have support through this time and to be heard. We all do.
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Evelyn, age 21
Editor’s note: The single most-used search phrase that lands Internet users on Violence UnSilenced is, “Was it still rape if I was drunk?”
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I said “No”, didn’t I? I don’t actually remember. To be honest, I think I actually said “Yes.” So since I said “yes,” that means I wanted it. Means I was asking for it. Means it wasn’t rape. Right? Then why does it hurt so much?
When it first happened, I didn’t care. Or at least I told myself that. There was nothing I could do about it. I said yes, I was drunk, and who knows, I probably wanted it at the time. Besides, I barely remember it anyway, so does it really matter?
He was only the second person I had sex with. I barely knew him. I actually didn’t really like him that much but I went to his house for a party because my friends were going. I remember drinking a glass of jungle juice. I remember talking to people and I remember having a good time. Then I stop remembering clearly. I remember laying in a bed. My friend was there and she pulled my dress down to cover my exposed butt. I remember calling his name. I don’t remember why. I remember being touched. I remember telling him to put on a condom. He told me he already had one on. I don’t remember that either. Then, I remember waking up. Some people I didn’t know took me home. It was still night, I don’t remember what time, and I went to my bed and slept until morning.
I didn’t tell anyone what happened that night. I was embarrassed. Who wouldn’t be? I got drunk at a party and had sex… got raped… I don’t know.
I wasn’t mad at him and still am not. I don’t remember what happened but I remember saying “yes,” kind of. Maybe he doesn’t know he took advantage of me. Maybe he doesn’t know he raped me. I haven’t talked to him since that night so I have no idea what he thought afterward or what he thinks now.
After it happened, no one really knew. The few people that asked me about it, I told them I didn’t really remember much about it. I was drunk. It was a mistake. But I never said it was rape.
I think it would have hurt me more to tell them I was raped. I had seen what happened to other girls that got raped by classmates and their cases were more black and white than my case. If I had said anything, no one would have believed me, and if they did, what did it matter? What could be done? Nothing.
My mistake was not admitting it to myself and not allowing myself to think about it. That ended up hurting me much more.
My opinion of sex changed after that. It was no longer special. It didn’t mean anything. I went on to have more sex, a lot more sex, all meaningless sex. And I regretted it every time. Although I never told anyone that. I lied to myself and to my friends, pretending that I enjoyed having meaningless sex, that I was independent, strong, in control. But the truth was that I only ever had drunk sex and normally cried about it in the morning.
It has been 3 years and this is the first time in my life I have let myself think about that night and the way it has affected me. I don’t know what role that experience plays in my life anymore. I now have a loving boyfriend and a wonderful sex life. I think that I am finally able to enjoy sex for the right reasons and for the first time, don’t regret it. With him, I am having sex because I love him, and he loves me, and I know that.
Maybe that is way I am finally able to let myself think about that night. Because that night no longer controls my feelings about sex. I have finally overcome that night, overcome him. But now I feel the pain, the hurt, that I refused it let myself feel for all that time. And it hurts. And I cry. I cry both because of the rape and because of the role I let it play in my life. I cry because although I have overcome the control it used to have on my life, I know it will still influence my current relationship and any future relationships. But mostly, I cry because, as much as I try not to, I still blame myself for letting it happen.
I still have a long way to go until I fully understand and come to terms with being raped. But I have taken the first big step by finally allowing myself to think about that night and feel the emotions that I have been holding in. I said “yes,” but it was still rape, and admitting that changes everything for me.
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Anonymous
I’ve started and stopped writing this story down for this site so many times. I just really don’t want to write it down. I’ve never done that. I’ve told it a few times, but I’ve never written it down. If I write it down, I can’t doubt that it really happened anymore.
I was five years old. It was early evening. I had just had a bath and I was wearing underpants and a bathrobe. The bathrobe was light blue and fuzzy and had big pearly blue buttons, three quarter length sleeves and a peter pan collar and it only came to about my knees. The underpants were Carters, cotton, white with little pink and purple flowers on them. My best friend lived across the street from me and she and her family were away on vacation and a teenage cousin of theirs was house-sitting for them and taking care of their dog. My mother had hired him to wash some windows and he had to go back across the street to feed the dog. I asked if I could go with him because I loved their dog and wanted to see him.
When we got into their house, the cousin took me into a back bedroom. It was starting to get dark. He said that he was going to show me how babies were made. He took off my bathrobe and my underpants. He took off his shirt and took me over to the bed. He laid down on his back and positioned me straddled across his thighs. He unzipped his pants and took something out and started rubbing it. He put it up against my vagina but didn’t push it in. He started rubbing it and eventually some stuff came out. He told me that that’s how babies were made. I didn’t understand what was happening, or had just happened, but I knew that it was wrong and I was very scared, but too scared to cry as that would make me vulnerable. He got up, helped me get dressed and said, “don’t tell anyone, or else.” He was bent over me and was holding a finger up, like you do when you’re warning someone about something. He didn’t say what would happened if I told, he just left that “…or else” hanging there in the air between us like a knife. I didn’t know what he would do if I told, but I knew it was bad.
I remember every second of what happened in that room. I remember what I looked like. I was small and I had a short, pixie haircut, dark brown. I remember the dim light in the room and the placement of the furniture. And especially, I remember when he told me not to tell anyone or else. I remember the expression on my face and him bending over me I don’t remember how I got back home and I don’t remember what I did after getting home.
Every night for the next seven years, I believed that he was outside my bedroom window and would know if I told anyone. I believed that he was following me wherever I went and was just around every corner, within earshot, and would know if I told. I lived in fear for seven years and I cried myself to sleep every night. Every night. For seven years. But I cried quietly because I didn’t want him to know that I was crying because that would make me vulnerable. Even though we moved twice during these years, it never occurred to me to wonder if he had followed us. Of course he did. He was watching me and would know if I told.
Finally, when I was twelve, I couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe I was finally old enough to begin to doubt if it was really reasonable that he had followed us and was outside my window at night. One night, after I had gone to bed and started quietly crying under the covers like I did every night, I got back up and went into the living room and told my mother that I needed to tell her something. She was very concerned and took me into the bathroom. I don’t remember what I said but I remember her being very upset and worried. I remember her asking me if he hurt me. Looking back, I’m sure she wanted to know if he penetrated me, which he had not. I don’t remember anything else about this conversation except that I was crying throughout. After that I stopped crying myself to sleep every night.
When I was sixteen I was walking home from school with a friend and she started telling me about something that had happened to her when she was young, with an older guy. I don’t remember anything about her story. I just remember that I suddenly remembered what had happened to me and realized that from the time I had told my mother at twelve I had completely forgotten about it until my friend started telling me her story. It had never been spoken of again in my house. I wasn’t taken to a doctor, or a therapist, I had never been questioned by anyone again about it since I had told my mother what had happened. Not that I think it necessarily should have been, but it’s just weird that it just kind of faded away. This was in the late 1960’s so I guess things like this were just handled differently in those days.
When I was in my early thirties I was having dinner with a group of girlfriends. I think there were 7 or 8 of us around the table. Somehow the conversation got onto the topic of sexual abuse against women and EVERY SINGLE WOMAN around that table had experienced some kind of abuse. Someone’s father molested them, someone’s brother raped them, a teacher, a stranger, a date rape situation, etc. EVERY SINGLE ONE of us. That’s how common it is.
I always feel like I don’t have a right to have any residual issues around what happened to me. So many people have had way worse things happen to them. It only happened to me the one time, and there wasn’t even any penetration. I sometimes think about how I would like to find the guy who did this to me and make something bad happen to him, yell at him, scream at him, tell the police what he did to me, tell his whole family what he did, tell his boss, etc. But then I think, he was just a teenager. He didn’t mean to do anything bad to me…he probably just thought I would forget about it. Why am I apologizing for him? Why am I letting him off the hook?
I never feel safe. When I fantasize about where and how I’d live if I won the lottery and could go anywhere I wanted to, it’s all about safety. I’d have a house with a state of the art security system. I’d have a property that no one could penetrate. I’d never have to worry if someone could get in and hurt me. They could never get close to me. Also, I’d never have to leave my house. I’d have everything I need delivered to me in a safe way, a drop box or something, so that I’d never have to go out where it’s dangerous and where I’d be vulnerable. I don’t trust anyone. At all. I have an eating disorder that serves to ensure that no one will be attracted to me or be able to get close to me. I create layers of protection around my body. I have depression and anxiety issues. I’m afraid of the dark. I’m hyper-vigilant about my person and my whereabouts. The list goes on. I believe that most, if not all, of these issues stem from what happened to me, but I feel guilty about that because much worse things have happened to other people.
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A husband’s story
I know this isn’t a story of abuse from a firsthand account so I don’t know if I am wasting time typing this but… maybe at the end I will feel better having told someone besides my own therapist?
I married my high school sweetheart and spent seventeen wonderful years with her until her early passing three years ago.
A year and a half later I met my current wife who, three months after we met, told me of being sexually abused by her step-father.
My wife (now) is an amazing person. She has a healthy self-esteem and is a very positive person. To know her like I have, it would be hard to see any evidence of molestation from her daily attitude and the way she carries herself.
When we met, we were nothing alike? She was a party girl. She drank… a lot. I don’t know if she was an alcoholic per se (I grew up with a true one) but she certainly drank beyond what I would call ‘casual.’ In conversation early on, she told me she had slept with many guys before we met. See the pattern?
I feel like she is a ticking time bomb? No, I’m afraid of it.
I have never heard details of her abuse…and quite frankly, I don’t think I want to. Recently she slipped out that her step-father lives a town away and to be honest, I would like to choke him out after a slow beating. The thought of that man walking around free not having the same thing done to him in a prison nauseates me. My wife has no comment really, she simply says, “It was in the past, I don’t think about it anymore so you shouldn’t either.”
For God sakes, I love her. I know what I have said already doesn’t sound very Christ-like, but I am a Christian. I hate this. I have bad dreams about this. I worry about it throughout the day at times. This man that I have never met is holding ME prisoner. No, I know I am nowhere near the victim my wife was and I don’t say any of this to garner any pity, because my wife is the one that was really destroyed by this, but I am angry about it.
I don’t want to talk about this with my wife and dredge up bad memories. She seems to have selectively (and amazingly) blocked things out?!?!?! I can’t. Or haven’t been able to. I am sick.
I don’t really know what to do with what I have been given. My wife is very quiet during sex with me, but not a ‘dead-fish’ by any means. I keep thinking something will trigger her backwards…and I scared.
If anyone has any advice, I would love to apply something to what has become a source of constant and silent stress.
Signed,
A loving husband
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