Tag Archives: rape

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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December 8, 2010 · 12:17 pm

The First Time I Had To Deal With Rape

I was 18 years old the first time I had to deal with rape. I lived in a complex and my next door neighbour was my best friend, like an older sister really. One night her boyfriend was dropping her off at the front gate, they lingered over their good bye – which was just enough time for 3 men to hijack them and take them to the local township. They gang raped my friend and forced her boyfriend to listen to it at gunpoint.

I cried for weeks at the loss of my friend. She disappeared into herself for a long time and I couldn’t reach her. Seven years down the line and we are like sisters again. But we never talk about it.

I was 18 years old the second time I had to deal with rape. A group of us from my school all went to the same university. It was our first year and we were hitting life with a big stick. Our university has an intervarsity sports tournament annually – it was a huge party and campus was just one big jam. I can remember the exact moment I heard that my friend had been gang raped. I was in one of the dance clubs and a school friend came up to me and said “I can’t believe it, * has been raped.”. I just stood there for a while, people pushed past me and elbowed me and gave me rude stares for not getting out of the way. I left the club and walked home in a daze. I had the longest shower I can remember ever taking, and then lay on the floor in my towel and sobbed. My friends found me hours later in the same position. Two women that I had grown up with and loved and laughed with had been violated in ways that I could not imagine. I cried because it was unfair and our innocence was being ripped from us.

I watched my friend destroy herself because she was raped. She lost all sense of self preservation and actively put herself into dangerous situations because she felt as though she had lost everything already. She wanted to die and didn’t care about the people in her life that wanted her to live more than anything in this world. The police system failed her and let her rapists go free because of one mistake in a document.

Another friend was raped in her resident’s room at university, the rapist then walked the corridors of our res trying all the doors to see if they were unlocked. I slept in fear for weeks and weeks because I was meant to be safe in my home. He was given kitchen duty and she left the university because she was breaking inside.

My other friend left the country because she could no longer take all the stares and comments from our community. To this day she is referred to as the girl who was raped. As if this is now the defining element of her life. People start sentences with “Oh shame, yes, how is the poor dear?” and I just want to hit them in the face because she is wonderful and sparkly and fun and generous and anything but a rape victim any more. Their language drove her out.

I have recently moved to another country and most of my friends now are North Americans. We all love how safe it is here…we can walk home at 2am, drunk and laughing hysterically, in a group or alone and nothing will happen. You will get to your door and get into your bed and wake up feeling less than ideal, but you are safe. I mentioned how back home in SA you just can’t do this, not if you have any sense of self preservation. They said it was the same where they were from, but that nothing had ever happened to them or their friends. I wished I could say the same. They don’t know what it feels like to watch someone have to rebuild their lives because something so precious was taken away from them.

My friends and our parents became afraid of telephone calls that started with crying because for a while it meant that someone had been raped. I called my mother in distress once and the first thing she asked me was if I had been raped. She lives in constant fear of this.

Every year since that first time someone in my life has been raped. Each time I become more afraid and less trusting of men. Each time I cry less because I am less soft. I am angry and that makes me hard. I am blood boiling angry that people I love have been injured on every level of their beings. I feel helpless and that makes me even angrier.

We live in a constant state of fear in South Africa and it is not normal. It makes us angry and suspicious. It makes us hard and scared. It is abnormal and it must change.

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