Category Archives: Rape

December 7, 2011 · 8:22 am

My first time was not my first time

For as long as I can recall I’ve never been a virgin. I remember in my teen years, when my peers were proud of their virginity and spoke about it often. At the time I was fortunate not to be asked blatantly whether I was still a virgin, I’m not sure if I would have been honest. Even more importantly, I remember being grateful that it was not part of my culture to be tested for virginity. I would have disgraced my family, and would have had to explain myself. So I hid my virginity status, mostly helped by assumptions that I must be a virgin since I’m such an introvert.

The question came up with my boyfriend years later though and I couldn’t run away from it, this time it was blatantly asked and required an answer. He did everything right this one evening, got me to the point where my mind was begging him to enter me. Unlike the other times, I let him go all the way, as they say. Suddenly he was huge on top of me, heavy; I disconnected. I opened my eyes and looked at him intensely, no longer feeling the pleasure of the thrust, gentle as he was, but terror of being pressed down. Moans and groans of pleasure turned into winces of pain and panic.

There was something painfully familiar with picture. Me vulnerable. Him powerful. Me the victim, he the perpetrator. He was my unknowing rapist. He was enjoying a moment that brought me pain and displeasure and fear and vulnerability and hatred…I willed him to stop, my mind screamed, but my mouth did not cooperate. Here I was again, helpless, pressed down, small. The object of this man’s pleasure.

He must have felt the disconnection, rather delayed but felt it nonetheless. I would be grateful later for his recognition of my displeasure, for his attentiveness to my responses. At the moment though, he was that perpetrator and I hated him. He stopped, pulled away slightly, I took a deep quivering breath. He looked at me, “are you okay?” he asked and hugged me tightly.  I cried in his arms, realising our special moment had been haunted. Something good came out of this experience though: I am unshaken in the belief that not all men are the same.

He asked much later in our lives, ‘when we made love for the first time, was it your first time?” I responded, “voluntarily, yes.” My first time- and second, and third and fourth were in fact at the age of five, with a sixteen-year-old uncle.

I’m not fond of sharing stories about my first time; it was anything but special and loving. Every day is yet another struggle to lock it away  into the deepest part of my unconscious mind.

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May 3, 2011 · 2:48 pm

The First Time I Told My Mother About My Sexual Assault

When it happened, I didn’t think much of it. I’d never been one of the popular girls, and I’d kissed only one person before, although I was seventeen. I was drunk and we kissed, and then it was more and I said no, and asked him to stop, and I cried, and he held me down with his knees and forced his penis into my mouth.

The next day, I saw him and he didn’t even look at me. I’ve never seen him again, and I don’t think he’d recognise me if he did.

He was a year or two younger than me, and dating my a friend of a friend: I hadn’t known he’d had a girlfriend, and I felt guilty. I woke up and vomited and blamed myself, and I felt guilty for years. I put it down to stupidity and regretted it and I thought I got over it. But I started thinking about it the year before last, when I was twenty two, and I started to think about the occurrence differently.

I spoke to friends about it, and went to a therapist, and eventually, when I felt like I was dealing with it , I told my mother about it.

She told me she thought I was overreacting. That people make mistakes. That it would be better if I just forgot about it.

And part of me knew she was right. But all I’d wanted was a hug.

We’ve never spoken about it again.

It could have been so much worse and I feel guilty even dwelling on this, as though I’m making a bigger deal out of it than I ought to, because it could have been worse.

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December 15, 2010 · 11:31 am

The first time I realised it was actually rape

The first time I realised it was actually rape, was the day after it happened. I knew what it was, and it was rape. I didn’t want to think about it though, so I didn’t. Not until now, when I have to face him. It was easy to ignore what had happened, because we don’t live in the same town anymore. But I’m moving back there. Where he lives. And I’m terrified.

I knew it was rape, but I wouldn’t believe that it was. Not until I started reading all the columns and news stories during the 16 days of activism against women and child abuse. That when I knew it was rape, and I couldn’t deny it anymore.

Until now, I hadn’t thought about all those protests I participated in, as part of the 1-in-9 campaign. I had forgotten about it. I taped my mouth shut for 24 hours in solidarity with the 8 out of 9 rape survivors who, because of social pressure, never report their rape(s). I fought for the rights of rape survivors, I prayed for them, and voiced my anger at the denial of their justice. I cried with them and laughed with them. And now, I am one of them.

How ironic.

Three years later, and here I sit denying myself my own justice. Because I am too shit scared.

He was a friend of mine. Actually, he was my ex-boyfriend’s best friend. He is my closest friend’s ex-boyfriend. He is a serial womaniser, and treats women as the means to satiate his sexual desires. I once heard he had slept with over 70 women. I am now one of them. But how many others also said ‘no’?

We were friends – but only God knows why. I think I trust people too much. I tried to support him through his bad break-up with my close friend. But because I have breasts and vagina, he saw my support as sexual flattery. I told him then, months ago, it would never happen. It was too complicated, too many people will get hurt. “It will never happen,” I told him.

How naive.

He told me he wanted to do “naughty things” to me, but if I didn’t want it, he would “control” himself. He continued making sexual jokes and comments, even when I told him they made me uncomfortable.

So I avoided him. I would not go to see my friends in the town where he lives, because I scared I would see him. I told him again and again that it would never happen between us. He asked me why I wouldn’t visit. In jest, I told him it was because I didn’t trust him. He told me I could trust him, but not when he had been drinking, “haha”. I told him it would never happen between us. He said he understood. He said “you’re still my super Journo friend whom I respect whole heartedly (sic)”. I believed him.

How stupid. How absolutely incredibly fucking stupid.

He came to my town, I suggested we meet up for drinks for old time’s sake. I was lonely, vulnerable in a new town, and honestly just wanted a friend to hang out with at a bar.  He said I could trust him – and I believed him.

He came to my house, so that I could introduce him to my dogs. I love my dogs – they mean everything to me. I was black-out drunk. I don’t remember much.

I do remember he kissed me. I do remember he carried me to my bedroom. I do remember he undressed me.

And I do remember saying no. I do remember stopping him. I do remember telling him that too many people would get hurt if we did this. I remember telling him I cared too much about my friend – I love her dearly. I don’t remember what he said in response, and I don’t remember what I said then.

But I know he didn’t stop.

The next day my thighs and my vagina hurt – I lied on my couch all day thinking about what happened. I showered twice. I cried and hugged my dogs. I slept on the couch that night, because I didn’t want to go near my bed – the scene of the crime – and the thought made me feel nauseated.

I considered laying a charge at the police. I have written evidence that I told him, months prior to that night, that I did not want to have sex with him. But would they believe me? I was black-out drunk. He was at my house, where I live alone with my two dogs. I took him home the next day. He has a reputation for sleeping around. Would anyone believe that I said ‘no’? That I tried to stop him? That I physically covered my vagina with my hands and told him, in no uncertain terms, that I did not want to have sex with him?

No one knows about that night. We are the only people that know. If I laid a charge against him, my friend will know. She will be hurt by me, after I tried so hard to protect her, and I was there for her, and I listened to her cry. I don’t want to hurt her. Everyone will know about that night. They will make my life hell. They will say it was not rape. They will question why I only reported in now, months after the fact. They will question, question, question.

But now I am moving back to the town where he lives. It’s a small town, and we have the same friends.

What the fuck am I supposed to do? I feel like I am betraying the cause by not charging him with rape.

But God, I am so scared. What should I do?

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