Jourdan
December 1 2007, I am in eighth grade. It was a hard year, I was mad at the world, cutting myself, had an eating disorder and was doing any drug I could get my hand on.
My speech and debate team was doing a tournament at the local high school and my ex-boyfriend who was a freshman in high school was helping out at the tournament. He said he wanted to catch up with me, but he wanted to do it in private so he took me to the band hallway of the high school and we sat down against the wall and started talking. It was like old times when we were dating, he made me feel safe. He put one of his headphones in my ears and we started listening to his dark depressing music. We started making out but some kid saw us so we went to find somewhere more private….this place was the handicapped stall of the girls bathroom. We started giving each other oral sex, but I had never done it before so I wasn’t aware at the time that what I was doing was actually oral sex.
He pulled my leggings down and pulled my dress up over my head. He pulled his pants and boxers down and got on top of me. I started screaming NO NO NO I don’t want to do this! He didn’t listen, I tried to fight and kick him and hit him and bite him, but I’m 4’10 and 90 pounds and he is 6’2 and 230 pounds. I screamed but we were in a pretty secluded part of the building. The rape lasted about thirty minutes and when he was done, he got up pulled his pants up and walked out. I put my clothes on and walked out to go to the award ceremony for the speech tournament. When I got to where my classmates where the teacher asked me if I was alright all I said was he took something from me, and I can’t get it back. Then I went to sit down. After the speech tournament I went to babysit for a family for four hours, then I went home and took a shower and another shower and another shower.
At school two days later the teacher had figured out what happened or what she thought had happened because Spencer ( my rapist) had bragged about having sex with me to her son. She reported it to the counselor who reported it to the police, but they didn’t report a rape….they reported unlawful sex on school property at a school sponsored event, meaning I was just as much as fault as Spencer. They called me into the office to talk to me about my punishment, but the counselor who I was very close with knew something else was up. She took me out of the room and asked me for the whole story…I looked away…She asked me if I was raped…and I just started crying. They then reported the rape to the police who made me go get a rape kit even though I washed away all the evidence and shredded the clothes I had been wearing. All they found from the rape kit was bruising and a torn hymen. I didn’t want to press charges cause I knew that Spencer was bi-polar and often went off his medicine, plus the cops said there wasn’t enough evidence for a case anyway. Spencer got suspended for six weeks .
I got pregnant because Spencer didn’t use a condom and I didn’t tell anyone in time to get the morning after pill. I miscarried at four months. I wasn’t ready for a baby, I was only fourteen and I hadn’t told my parents. After the rape they weren’t very supportive they denied it ever happened and avoided the topic at all costs. When I miscarried the school counselor took me to the emergency room not my parents. I was such a mess then any kid I had would have turned out totally screwed up, but part of me was upset when I lost my baby, I still can’t walk through the baby clothes section without crying.
I still wake up in the middle of the night from flashbacks of the rape. I miss Spencer. Not the Spencer who raped me but the Spencer I used to know who wrote me poems and gave me roses. I still feel like the rape was my fault , if only I hadn’t gone into that bathroom stall with him. I feel dirty and ashamed. When does the shame go away. When can I go a week without thinking about that day. When is December 1 going to be just another day.
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Jeni AKA Lucky Star
Let me start of by saying that there are many who think that I am brave for posting this blog. I am not brave. I am just no longer afraid. I am not that victim that I was in the past. i am not the confused, lost and shamed person that I was back then. I KNOW it was not my fault. I KNOW that I did not bring it on myself or make it happen. I did not ask for it. I did not cause it. I did not play hard to get or give them a reason to hurt me. I did nothing wrong.
I was raped when I was 15 by my boyfriend. I was raped when I was 18 by my boyfriend. I was raped when I was 21 by a man that I was on a date with. I was raped when I was 22 by my neighbor. I was raped again when I was 22 by my live in boyfriend. I was raped when I was 23 by my husband. I was raped when I was 29 by a guy I met on a dating site. It is easy to think that it can never happen to you…until it does. I was always a hopeless romantic. I always thought that I would find that happily ever after and that I would have my 2.5 kids and my house in the suburbs and my dog and my cat and my nice car and that life would be great. I never asked for any of this. I never asked to be raped.
What really gets to me is the fact that so many young and old out there, male and female, let others convince them that it IS their fault. That they DID ask for it. That they DID something to cause it. My heart breaks for those who are still victims. Those who still let these horrible events that have happened to them rule and sometimes ruin their lives.
I made a vow to myself. I will not be silent. I will not let someone who hurt me kill my voice. I will not let someone who hurt me take away my pride in who and what I am. I will not let someone else have that power over me. I hope that others will find their way to this place within themselves. To this peace that KNOWS that I am worthy of love and I am worthy of acceptance and that I love myself and accept myself. To the place inside that knows that I am a good and kind and beautiful person and I am deserving of happiness and love and light. To the place where they can say “I am a victim NO MORE!”and they can know that “I am a SURVIVOR!”.
This is my wish for anyone who has ever been sexually or otherwise assaulted, physically, verbally,mentally or emotionally abused. Get help and get out. Be a survivor. Do not let them make you a victim any longer.
If you feel that you are alone, know that you are not. I am here and I may not know you, but I love you. I love your heart and your spirit and your determination and I will be your friend. I will be your friend and I will give you my support and my help even if it is only in encouraging words.
Jeni AKA Lucky Star writes at Victim No More.
Beth
Where do I start?
First time I remember it happening I was around five. My Mom and Grandma and older sister went Christmas shopping and left me with him. I was laying in my mom’s bed watching tv when I heard him coming. I know that it had to have happened before because I remember thinking, “If I can just curl up in a ball he can’t touch me and he’ll go away.” Well it didn’t work. He came in and started touching me through my clothes, then made me take my clothes off.
Sometimes he would just touch me. Other times he would perform oral sex on me or make me do oral sex on him. Once I got older, he would rape me.
I lived with the shame and fear for eight years that I can think of. I never said anything to my mom because I didn’t think she would believe me. How many grandfathers molest and rape their granddaughters? There were times when I didn’t think I could take anymore of it and I just wanted to run away. I didn’t want anyone to ever find out. What if they thought I didn’t say anything because I liked it? I didn’t want any of my friends or family to label me as a sick freak and blame me.
Finally when I was 13 I had a friend that I could tell anything to. And I had a boyfriend that I knew would stand beside me no matter what. So I told my best friend and told my boyfriend in a letter. I asked them not to tell anyone else. But neither of them listened. I thank them everyday for not listening.
I was called into the office at school where they asked me about what I had told them. I broke down in tears and told them everything. It was such a relief. No one thought I was sick. No one blamed me at all. The police took my statement and he was arrested that night. My family didn’t believe me until four years later when he was critcally ill and thought he was dying. Then he confessed.
Now I’m 24 years old. I still struggle with the feelings that I have over the whole situation. I hope that one day I will be able to accept what happened and move on, but I won’t know until that day comes.
Charlotte
Maybe it was being the youngest? Maybe it was growing up with a workaholic father and a narcissistic mother? Maybe it was having siblings who didn’t want to spend time with me? Are these the aspects of my childhood that painted a target on my head? I will never know who or what planted the needy seed within my six-year-old heart, but it was there. My aunt saw the tiny seedling desperate for love and attention, and she decided to help tend my garden.
Of course, I am painting the picture as bright and happy because that is how it began for me. My heart sang songs of joy that an adult would take so much interest in me. We chatted about crafts because I was a creator. My mother tells stories about the piles of artwork and crafts that she tossed into the garbage because I made so much it caused a storage problem. Before I knew it, my aunt was making pom-pom bears and potholders with me. She showered my plant with the attention is so desperately craved. This is how she slowing began to poison my soul.
The moment she realized my defenses were down and the trust bond was strong enough. She pounced. It was a family gathering. The floor was covered in children playing surrounded by chairs of adults jabbering on about the world. My aunt was not talking to anyone. She sat alone watching the children. I felt so special when she asked me to sit in her lap. It was like Charlie finding the golden ticket. Only my golden ticket came with a price. I remember thinking how cool it was to be sitting in the circle of adults. As I watched my siblings and cousins playing, it happened. Her hand slowing snaked into my flowered panties to find a cavern I didn’t even know I had. My heart stopped as I felt her fingers probing me. She must have felt my response because she whispered into my ear that it was okay. When she was finished with me, she patted me on the bottom and sent me back to the floor, but somehow I no longer belonged there.
I would love to say that this is where it all stopped, and she had her fill. Unfortunately, I can’t. My aunt lured me into her room many times with crafts and the promise to fulfill my yearning for attention. The crafts would not last long before my aunt would begin to explore my caverns further with her own body and/or foreign objects. When she forced me to explore her body, the “ick” feeling that I had been ignoring was screaming. There was no ignoring it anymore.
My new mission became slipping out of her grip that felt like a vice. My aunt knew that something had changed. I would jump through childhood hoops to avoid any moment that might mean I would find myself alone with her. Eventually, she stopped trying, but she continued to call me her “special girl” and give me inappropriately tight hugs whenever possible.
Was it puberty? Was it my exploration with masturbation? Was it my blooming interest in both sexes? Who knows what aspects of my life illuminated the past, but when I was 13 years old, the memories of what happened that I had brushed off for so long surfaced. I said to myself for the first time that I was sexually abused.
I told a few of my closest friends. Some of them shared their own stories with me, but no one really “got me”. I was the ignored statistic. The female sexually abused by a female. The media likes to pretend that men are the only perpetrators, but that is such a lie. As I was blossoming into a woman, I struggled with defining what womanhood meant because the woman I had been closest to in my life was a monster. How could I hate her and not hate myself? I felt so alone. It took years for me to realize that womanhood is defined by your heart.
My soul moves me to share my story today, so other girls, women, boys and men are not the forgotten statistic. You are not alone! I also want parents to read this and know that women can be abusers, too.
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