Anonymous
I was eager to grow up, to explore the world like every kid. What I didn’t know was that I would lose my innocence so violently.
Some people might not believe this story. It might sound too fake but it’s not. I wish it was.
As I entered my teen years I demanded more freedom from my parents. I wanted to go out with my friends and have fun. And surprisingly enough, my strict dad agreed.
It was early in the evening and I was walking to the coffee shop where I had a date with my girlfriends. He was riding a white motorcycle, his hair was grey and his eyes deep blue. He asked me for directions, then he stopped his engine and started talking to me. I don’t remember all we talked about but when he laid his fingers on me, feeling me up, I remember the horror. I remember that I tried to scream but no words came out of my mouth. It was early evening, the roads were almost vacant, there was no one around.
He raped me there, pulled down my jeans, turn my back and raped me. Then he left, leaving me breathless.
I pulled up my pants, spat out the dirt and rushed to the coffee shop confused and embarrassed. I played cool, I tried to not cry.
When I returned home I saw all the blood and freaked out.
I didn’t say a word to anyone but that day I lost myself and I lost control.
I was living two lives. In the first one I was the good innocent daughter with the great grades, in the other I was the wild teenager, skipping classes. I started smoking and drinking and trying drugs and doing all the stuff my dad was always afraid of… but my parents back then were working 12 hours per day, they were too tired to notice and I was too good at hiding myself.
::
I was 16. I hardly knew them, I don’t remember much except that I was in a coffee shop drinking a hot cup of coffee and chatting with them and the next thing I remember is me, laying on a couch and someone was penetrating me. And then another one. And then again. I screamed from the pain and the fear, now I knew what was going on, now I wasn’t a scared 13 years old, I wanted to fight, I really wanted to. They told me to shut the fuck up, they held a blade on my neck and told me that if I screamed again, they would slit my throat and let me bleed to death. I stayed silent.
When they finished they drove me to a bus station. I walked to a nearby shop and bought a big bottle of water, I don’t remember how I went home. The next day I called one of those helplines. I talked to a psychologist all he told me was; ‘Yes, you’ve been raped.’ Nothing else. Only this.
Once again I lost control.
I skipped classes, my grades went down the drain, I was smoking like a chimney and I was drinking like a snake. And all these lies… all these lies my god… to everyone, to everything. No one could control me, no one would get a word from me about why I was acting like this.
One night I was at the bus station waiting for my bus when I saw a guy eyeing me up and down. He walked past me two times, the third time he came closer. He dragged me to a corner and he got his penis out.
I freaked out, I saw my whole life passing through my eyes, I froze.
I don’t know where I found the strength but I screamed. I was fucking screaming my lungs out kicking and punching him.
Some people got out of their homes, chased him as he was running away. Asked me if I was ok. I said yes and went back home.
That night I decided that enough was enough. Either I would fight it or I would lay there waiting for the death to come.
It’s been a decade since that night. I asked for help, I gave interviews, of course action couldn’t be taken. I didn’t know any of them. Had no names and in a city of millions it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
I still have nightmares, it took me years to understand it wasn’t my fault. Despite losing control and doing stupid things like drinking, my appearance wasn’t provoking, my behaviour wasn’t provoking, I was a shy, lost to myself girl.
Still to this day I don’t understand why they did it. But they did it.
Almost no one else knows besides the authorities and my therapist. These people are still there and every single time I’m outside my house I’m looking for them. Scanning faces.
I don’t seek revenge anymore, I just want to know why they did it. Why they destroyed me. And I hope there aren’t any other victims, that they satisfied their ‘need’ on me.
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Danielle
My earliest memory is lying in my crib. It’s dark and very cold. I see the shadow cross the room towards me. I hear the chair slide through the thick carpeting. Hovering over me is a large form. I feel the snap. I cannot move anything and I begin to cry. I feel the pillow cover my face. And I immediately stop crying. The pillow is tucked underneath my head. The shadow slips from my sight. The chair is placed back and I am alone. I begin to scream. My Dad runs into my room. Lights make me scream louder.
I was 2. I was almost killed in my crib by my older half-brother. He had tried pulling my head off. Instead he merely pinched nerves in my spinal column. I was immobile for a month I think. I have no one to ask.
My memories are clear. I remember my 2nd birthday party. I was given Mickey Mouse. He was almost as tall as me. If you squeezed his hands he would walk. It is the only party from my childhood I can remember.
My memory is eidetic. It is as if my brain is apologizing for the black hole that my childhood slipped into. I have only 3 real memories of my older brother. Playing D&D at the dining room table; being asked to look at his privates; Watching him let out our black lab as I held my kitten in my arms outside. The moment frozen as the dog, like the General in Watership Down, leaped at my face and stole off with my kitten in its jaws.
Over the years bits and pieces returned. After reading “Flowers in the Attic,” I lost about 6 hours. I was curled up in a ball under my bed. I was crying and rocking and saying “don’t make a sound” over and over.
I tried to tell my father of the abuse. The details I gave are gone to my mind. They ran me to a doctor who told them I was a liar. No sexual abuse noticed. OF COURSE NOT! How can you see the gallons of semen I swallowed if you are looking into my vagina? Did you check my anus to see the scaring of the objects inserted that I was forced to defecate and then lick clean? No. But back then I had no memory of those abuses, back then I was a liar. I was a horrible person that thought dirty and terrible things. “Be quiet and stop embarrassing us.”
But they all knew. Everyone knew and no one stopped it.
I now remember having a seizure while eating cream of wheat cereal. My half-brother made it for me. I could not stomach it. We were starving and you did not waste food. He kept adding milk to make it easier to pour it down my throat. More and more I was choking. My mind split and I watched my body rock and shimmy on the kitchen floor. He watched in the same way he watched my kitten die. Detached and scientific, He left me on the floor.
I was molested by a few of my mother’s boyfriends. I remembered only one instance. It has the quality of a dream. I lay in bed at his house. My mom passed out in the living room. I do not know how I got to his bed. I remember laying. I remember him touching my already woman sized breasts, I remember picking up my mom’s high heel and imbedding it into his scrotum. I remember telling her and her promising to never make me go over there again. Two weeks later we returned.
Years later, we found a box of mementos that belonged to that man. He was dead and my mother dragged his crap from storage unit to unit for years. Inside a jumbo cooler were dozens of pictures of naked children. He had his own darkroom and processed the images himself. Thankfully I and my little brother were not in the pile. I burned the images. There were awful books about twisted sexual fantasy. I was afraid to throw them into the garbage. I did not want anyone to think that we were the owners. It took 11 more years to destroy those books. I lived with them, another secret waiting to surface and destroy whatever reputation I had left.
I am fairly sure I lost my virginity in a hotel room. (I have no memory of this happening.) I then went through an elaborate dance about how I needed to lose my virginity on my own terms. The boy was having his own meltdown at the time. It is only in hindsight I realize that the act I recall as my actual 1st time was not. Who knows when it may have occurred? I block out sexual actions.
I was 11 when I first pulled out an eyelash. I remember the act in clear detail. This was after my half-brother was out of the house. I had been abused physically, sexually and mentally by him for about 7 years or so by then. This was the start of my OCD’s. Trichotillomania. It did not have a name back then for me. It was just another secret to hold close.
I remember going to bed on one side of the water bed I shared with my baby brother and waking each morning on the other side. I remember masturbating at a very early age, preschool perhaps.
I dreamed for years about the room where he humiliated me. The room that was to become my bedroom after he moved away, more insult to my injuries. We lived isolated in a rural area. It was a quarter mile to the nearest playmate. And she no longer would come to our house. When my best friend told me that he was hurting her I punched her in the face. We rolled on the floor like hell-cats. Then we stopped and continued playing with her Barbie’s. We died their hair black with cigarette ashes and buried in the lawn. Years later her grandparents bought that house. She had to live in that same room with her mother. Both of us forced to lie in that room. Silently dying. Always silent.
So I was forced into beatings and performing oral sex to have a playmate. “You want to play catch? You know what you need to do.” When my baby brother came along, it became: “If you don’t I’ll hurt him. You know I will.” I am fairly sure that I was brought out to perform in front of his demented pubescent friends. I may have even been passed along. A toy or favor from their fly king.
My mother was a drunk and drug addict with mental issues. The proper diagnosis I believe is Borderline Personality Disorder. Back when I was trying to free my baby brother from my mother’s household they called her a sociopath with psychotic tendencies. You did not tell her anything. The beatings were so awful my child’s mind could not block them. I was literally thrown away by my mother. It was from her moving car. Dumped off as trash in front of my father’s home a small garbage bag holding the only things I was permitted to take with me. More importantly, I had left my baby brother defenseless. This will matter later.
I have been with my husband, who is to my count the 2nd man I ever had sex with of my own accord, for over half my life now. He is the same age as my half-brother. They were born at the same naval hospital 3 months apart. We met in college. He was my boss and faculty (technically). I hated him at first (not really ironically). Then we grew on each other. Our first sexual experience was a disaster. I was curled fetal on his bed. I was regressed. I did not know who he was; I thought he was my brother attacking me. Somehow that 25 year old man was able to hold me. Quiet me. Protect me. NO ONE had ever done those things for me, not my mother, father, teachers, clergy or grandparents. To all of them I was dirty, lying or prey.
Over the years this has happened many times. My husband has survived my suicide attempts, in-patient psychiatric care and breakdown after breakdown. He is my rock. I am blessed to have him.
But he really can’t understand. I did not sleep through the night until I was 32 years old. I didn’t understand why I feared sleep. It was the only peacefulness I got.
I was deep into my PTSD. I was warned by my doctor to not drink alcohol with my medication. I had a trauma with my little brother and his baby-momma. She snatched from my hands her little girl, who was the spitting image of the baby I raised and tried to protect and ultimately abandoned and failed.
We all ran away to a friend’s camp. Gay camp. Thank god. I was not threatened by the men there. I got blistering, stupidly, dangerously drunk. I had been taking my anti-anxiety medication. I almost died. I have no memories of the night. Sadly my husband and all the men at the camp do.
But that night, I recall a dream I had. I fought off my half-brother from hurting my baby brother. I physically beat him from me. I hid my baby from the man.
It was not a dream. For hours this memory was replayed in pantomime with my husband as stand-in for the child I had failed to protect. For hours I attacked dirty laundry and tried to shove my 6’3” husband under a bed. I told him to be silent or we would die. I could not be brought into the present. My husband was afraid I was lost to him forever. He was unsure if he should call an ambulance.
I got all this afterward. I awoke in the morning. Bruised from head to foot, I was half dead. I knew who he was, I knew where we were. He had to go to a family function. I could see he was afraid to leave me. I remembered. I understood. That night’s vigil was about putting my body between my abuser and my baby brother. I was 32. I did not need to protect him anymore. I slept for 2 straight days.
I still have bad nights. My husband still can trigger my PTSD. I fight. I win. I reclaimed my body. I cannot allow silence to reign any longer. So I am telling! And no one can stop me, hurt me or make me think ‘I made all this up’. My mind has allowed information to trickle back; I am no longer paralyzed by these revelations; I accept them. I am grateful. I am stronger than I ever imagined.
And here is the truth: If you are reading this, YOU survived too. You are stronger than anything someone can do to your body. You have won. And together we will create for ourselves the world we want: a safe, loving, and better place. A world where one person will lift another up until we all stand together and hold close those who are strong and brave and survived.
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Sarah
I was attending college at the time, staying in the dorm on campus. It was the spring semester of my freshman year. I was 18 years old.
That night my roommate was begging me to go to a frat party with her and a friend of ours named John. I eventually gave in because I did not want her to go alone with John. I did not trust him. Two of his friends came along and not long after arriving at the party, they decide to go back to their apartment with John and invited my roommate and I along. I didn’t want to go but I didn’t want her to be alone with any of them.
At the apartment, they convinced me to have something to drink. By the time I was done with about half of my drink, my roommate offered to top me off. I refused but she kept insisting, so I let her. A red flag went off when I took a sip. I had a feeling she had put something stronger in it, but I told myself she would never do that. I’m not sure how much I had to drink after that or who handled my drink or what was in it. After some time at the apartment, John’s friends decide they want to go out to a club. My roommate and I were not old enough to get in, so John offered to take us back to the dorm.
What I thought would be an end to the night, only got longer. John invited us to his room, which was one floor below us. I had a horrible feeling inside of me when we got off on his floor, but she wanted to go, so I went with her. My roommate did not end up staying long though. She said she wanted to go to bed, so I said I was going with her. She told me no and said I should stay there to hang out. I told her I was going to bed with her and grabbed my keys to leave. She came up to me, telling me I should stay, took my keys and set them down. I had no energy to argue. When she left, John came over and tried dancing with me. He turned me around, picked me up, and started kissing me. He carried me to his bed, got on top of me, and asked me if I wanted to have sex. I said no; that I didn’t want to. He kissed me so hard and asked me again. I said I didn’t want to. He was so strong and I couldn’t find the energy to fight him. I think I eventually blacked out as I do not remember much after that.
The next thing I remember is feeling his weight off of me and seeing him standing up getting something. I knew I had to get up and leave so I sat up and said I had to go home. He told me no, to stay there, came over next to me and pulled me on top of him. His bed was bunked so I grabbed on to the bottom of the top bed, and pulled as hard as I could to get away. He finally let go and I put my clothes on as fast as I could and left. I remember sitting down on my bed and putting my head in my hands wanting to cry. I told myself I couldn’t though because my roommate was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her up.
The next couple of months were the hardest of my life. He told everyone I was lying about what happened, even though I had only told my roommate and one other person. My roommate tried to get me to talk to him and ended up taking his side when she realized I wanted nothing to do with him.
I now realize that all that happened was not my fault. That first night I did what I thought a good friend would do; I looked out for her, watched her back, but didn’t realize that no one was watching mine. I thought I would never be able to move past it but I’ve worked hard to get where I am today and to continue moving forward. I moved past the depression I felt; the isolation that consumed me that semester and into the following year. After one more year of staying at that school, I decided to transfer. I did go through some counseling and I’ve had amazing support along the way. This journey has only made me a stronger person and no longer defines who I am.
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Sarah writes at STARS: Standing Together Against Rape and Sexual Assault.
Andrea
I wanted to let you know what a large role your site played in giving me the courage to leave my abusive husband.
I would come into work every day and check to see if there was a new story. Somehow I needed validation that what he was doing was wrong, and that it was abusive, and that leaving him was the only way to get out of the situation. I looked to the web community for my assurance that I was doing the right thing. The other’s stories that eerily echoed my situation gave me the courage to face what had to be done.
I lived through five years of all types of verbal and emotional abuse. I lived through two years of threats of violence, intimidation, and physical abuse, including trapping me inside various rooms, much shoving against the wall or counter or door, holding me down, and several instances of strangling.
Some of this happened in front of our two children, who were 3 and 4 when I finally got the strength to get him out of the house. Things were getting steadily worse over a three month time-frame with more incidents of violence and no peace at all. After an incident where I had to appease him to keep my kids safe, I had had enough. I saw a lawyer, provided an affidavit of the abuse, went before a judge to tell my story, and was given a temporary protective order and the right to have him forcibly removed from the house as I filed for divorce.
This was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life, but I have not regretted it for one minute. It has been over a year and I am in a much better place. He sees the kids and will work up to almost the standard visitation schedule for our state, but I am sad he will never be a good role model and that we will never have an intact family. I am angry that I will have to be ever watchful because I am almost certain he will start treating the kids the same way he treated me – at the very least screaming, name calling and threats of violence.
I am glad I did it. I did it for my kids, I did it for me, and I hope one day to be a positive influence on women who need to make the same tough decision.
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