A Different Rape Thread, Another Rape Survivor: My Story

[RapeSurvivor]

I wasn't sure if I should post this in the other rape thread or start a new thread. I think maybe this one should be a new thread.

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There is some controversy about who is responsible. I see some great information out here and that is encouraging. I also see some attitudes that hold the victim partially responsible. That is sad.

 

When I was younger I dressed like my friends did. We were young women and discovering our sexuality and our power. It’s a flirt, fun, and confusing time for young women. I wore tight clothes, high-heels, showed cleavage, and flirted with my body and my words. Just like millions of other young women.

 

I dated, but I didn’t have sex---that was for later when I was in love and had a commitment from someone. I always stopped in time. ALWAYS. I felt bad a couple of times because I felt like a tease. We were necking and petting and I put on the brakes. He had to recover from the whip-lash. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for they guys, but we both got carried away. As I matured I was able to recognize the warning signs and put the brakes on a bit earlier---usually. Sometimes the kissing and touching felt so good I didn’t think about anything but the tingle of the moment.

 

One night I was with someone I’d gone out with a couple times before in a group. I’d never been out alone with him. I wanted to because I liked him. He was popular in the group and I admit, I wanted to kiss him and be held by him. I had no intention of having sex with him. I was a virgin.

 

We had a great time that night. Laughing, holding hands, kissing. On the way home he pulled over in a park and stopped the car. I’d been there before --- it was our town’s ‘make out point.’

 

I jokingly pushed his hand away when he tried to reach under my shirt. We kept kissing, he kept teasing, and then I backed off and said I needed to catch my breath. He pulled back too and smiled at me. It was a nice time. Passion and youth---a heady mixture.

 

He reached for me again and I snuggled into his embrace. The car had bench seats---this was some years ago. He was more insistent this time. I pushed and he pushed back. I stopped kissing and he got angry. I told him that we needed to stop. I’d gone farther then this before with others and they stopped. I let a couple of guys fondle my breasts on top of my clothes before and let them rub their penis against my leg, and still we stopped. I’d been pushing this guys hands away—even on top of my clothes, but he wasn’t taking NO for an answer. He forced me down, removed my clothes and raped me. I can’t say any more than that because it still makes me feel ill. I was left bruised and bloody. He was all sweet afterward – like it was the way it was supposed to be. He talked to me about how he enjoyed the evening as he drove me home. He even walked me to the door and tried to kiss me goodnight.

 

I had to get a hold of myself before I went inside. I was able to get to the bathroom before anyone saw me, and I was able to hide the bruises. I didn’t tell anyone for a long time. Someone notices how I was avoiding the guy though and noticed how I had changed.

 

It was more than a week later before I told anyone and word rapidly got around to my mother. She was mortified and didn’t want to deal with it. She thought I was a slut. My own mother.

 

Thankfully, a school counselor found out and took me aside and got me help. I went to a doctor who confirmed it. The convinced me that I needed to prosecute the guy. They took pictures. The police were involved. My mother went to counseling with me and they tried to educate her too. At home she was so embarrassed and said she couldn’t face anyone and “How Could I?”

 

I felt responsible. I gained weight. I stopped wearing nice clothes. I lost my friends. I didn’t date. I have lied about this for many, many years. I’ve just cut those years out of my life and told people that I didn’t date when I was in school. I almost believe it myself. It was only a year and a half that I was a ‘normal’ teenager.

 

The guy? Charges were pressed. He said I wanted it and that I had been teasing him. The other ‘friends’ in the group also testified about how we dressed and flirted---all of us girls. The guys said we were ‘asking for it’ and if we didn’t want to have sex, we would not have dressed or acted like we did. He walked away with his buddies slapping him on the back like a hero and I was shunned.

 

My life changed. I hated myself for years. I was depressed. I felt responsible. Even the rape counselors could not get through to me and after a while, I stopped going. I kept the information and read it though, and later on in life I went to general counseling which helped me to deal with this. I’m still trying to deal. That’s why I’m posting as a guest and not under my member name. I’m not ready yet.

 

The Internet is a great place for information. LoveShack is absolutely wonderful. However, I know that opening up myself in ANY public forum, is opening myself up for the ridicule and blame that I experienced years ago. Those attitudes have not gone away---though I think there are fewer people who believe that way now, then there was years ago.

 

In that respect, I think that victims of abuse (whether rape, or other physical abuse) who are experiencing a crisis (and a crisis can last for months or even years) should only use LoveShack as a secondary source of support AFTER their own crisis hotline or crisis center---who can deal directly with the victim and the particulars of the case. LS, as wonderful as it is, is a sounding board and information center, not a professionally staffed counseling center, and not a safe-harbor like a rape counseling center or women’s shelter.

 

Opinions of people with similar experiences, or of those with no similar experience are great and informative and helpful. But they are only opinions after all.

[lydiamarie]

originally i hadn't wanted to write my story because of anonimity issues. then i didn't want to respond to the infamous post because even if it was conceded that i was not to blame, i didn't want everyone whose story was not exactly like mine to doubt that it was not her fault.

 

i went to therapy today (got into an appointment on a cancelation). my therapist said one of the most wonderful things to me. that i have to take the power away from him and deal with it in my own head. it was just one day. one horrible day in an entire lifetime.

 

 

it was nearing finals week and i decided to have a couple very close friends over for a girls night. we got a bottle of rum and a couple of bottles of coke. i didn't intend to get very drunk, i had never been drunk before, but as i started drinking, my judgement got worse. 'what harm could one more shot do?' i thought.

 

sometime after it had started to hit me, one of my friends called a couple of her close guy friends to come over. they brought a friend. three of them, three of us. i started blacking out and was going to go lie down. alone. the guy i didn't know before that night grabbed my hand and pulled me into my room. he undressed me and pushed me onto the bed. i was so drunk that i fell off of my bed.

 

i was so confused about what was going on. i remember very little of what happened because i either passed out or blacked out for hours that night. i remember trying to keep my clothes on and i remember telling him no over and over again. i remember him telling me 'shh, it's okay.' and asking me if i liked what he was doing. how could i like being raped? i remember trying to push him off me. and trying to push him off me again. and i remember coming to hours later to see him still in me, doing things to me. i realized he didn't have a condom on. i realized that there was nothing that i could do to stop him (i asked him again to stop, to no avail) so i reached into my nightstand to where i had two condoms hidden away 'just in case'. he said he couldn't get it on. he made me do it.

 

i was too drunk to struggle hard enough for many bruises. i didn't bleed even though it was my first (and only) time with a man, but my sisters didn't bleed when they were with their sweethearts for the first time. all the women in my family are married or engaged to the only men that they have ever slept with. that is what i wanted for myself. the only marks i had on my body were places that i wouldn't show and don't want to talk about.

 

it took me a week before i could get the smell of him off me. maybe it was just my imagination. it took me two weeks to start eating again. it was longer before i could forget the way he felt. it haunted me all day long. i would walk to class and start crying as i remembered what he had done to me. i would see someone who looked like him out of the corner of my eye and start panicking.

 

it took me a while before i would let anyone touch me again. my best friend my furious, demanded that i tell who had done it so it could be 'taken care of'. it was the first time i really told anyone what had happened to me. he called it rape. i had been too afraid to use that word even in my own head.

 

the day after it happened i went to the hospital to take the morning after pill. that baby that could have been still haunts me. i don't think i'll ever get over the guilt.

[midori]

I just want to say thank you to both of you for sharing your stories. I think before anyone assumes they know anything about rape, they ought to hear some first-hand accounts from people who have had to go through with it, and deal with the aftermath.

 

Lydiamarie, I've never been raped, but I was once sexually assaulted, and I can relate to the feeling of not being able to get rid of the attacker's presence on my body. Specifically, his hand squeezing my right breast while he leered at me. It's such an awful intrusion to be able to sense it days later .. or weeks later.

 

In my case, I had the pleasure of hunting the little creep down with the help of a pissed-off female undercover detective (it was a teenaged kid who grabbed me on the street and tried to grope me, then threatened to hit me while his two buddies hung back laughing. It was the middle of the day, in the dead of winter, on a quiet residential street. I was wearing a thick coat and no one could possibly argue that I in any way invited the attack. They were middle class boys who weren't wanting for anything except knowing how to treat fellow humans with respect). I watched with glee as the stunned little twit was stopped and searched on the street a few days later while walking home from school. And I had the pleasure of seeing him prosecuted and getting sentenced to do community service and attend an anger management class. His parents, who at first tried to convince the police that I was lying about the whole thing, shut up upon learning that I was much older than they (or their son) thought I was (I was 30 at the time -- I look young), and certainly wasn't trying to "get back" at their son for some imagined slight by lodging a false accusation.

 

A year after the boy's sentencing, this was last summer, I ran into the mother in a grocery store. Rather, she ran into me. She told me how I'd ruined her son's senior year in high school, that his parole officer had curtailed some of his priviledges. "It wasn't that bad, you didn't get hurt, she seethed. You didn't have to prosecute him." I think they'd been led to believe by their lawyer that I was unlikely to actually show up the day of the boy's hearing so he'd probably avoid sentencing. I guess I disappointed them on that front. Boo hoo. I was flabbergasted as she fired off her little tirade -- probably less than 20 seconds but its seemed like much longer -- and then she stormed off. I couldn't speak, I was so angry! Almost as angry and upset as I'd been the day it happened. The kid's mother -- a woman like me -- was completely blaming me for what happened to her son, instead of being appalled by his behavior. An hour later, after I'd calmed down (I just left the store w/o buying anything) I had plenty that I would have wanted to say to her. If I ever have the misfortune to run into her again, maybe I will. Or maybe not. Why waste my breath, and I'd just get pissed off again in all likelihood.

 

I'm fine, not afraid to walk along that street or any other. I'm a little more aware that groups of teen-aged boys are capable of doing some nasty, random things. My experience wasn't nearly as bad as either of the above posts, but I thought I'd share my experience too so that people can see that lots of women have been sexually assaulted. It's a wide-spread problem. And the only ones who have any reason at all to be ashamed are the perpetrators.

[RapeSurvivor]

Midori, you are my hero!

 

Lydiamarie, you are not guilty of anything. Not even poor judgement. YOU did not take his hand and lead him into the bedroom. You were not even in full control of yourself because of the alcohol. And drunkeness is never consent, implied or otherwise! Even if you had not been drunk, a low-life, worthless rapist can manipulate a person into seeming, let me stress that SEEMING to participate in their own rape, when in fact they are not----they are being controled and directed.

 

I beat myself up with should-haves, could-haves, and would-haves for a long time afterward. At the time my mind was not working properly and I didn't even have alcohol to attribute it to. I was in shock. I was in disbelief. All the things I'd learned and thought I knew - were no where in my mind.

 

Parents talk to their children all the time about not getting into cars with strangers---they drill it into their heads, but children go missing all the time.

 

Rapists are master manipulators. Even after the act of rape, even now, the rapist is manipulating you. The guilt is not in you, it is in HIM.

[yes]

Although I agree the victims are certainly not to blame, i think many girls aren't educated enough about how to keep themselves out of shady situations. I wish it was emphacized that girls should not be alone with men who they've know for less than at last half-a-year, unless they're OK with sleeping with them. Yes, men shouldn't rape you EVER, BUT why not be cautious?! Robbers also shouldn't ever attack you, and it's not your fault if they do, but it is a good idea not to walk alone late at night, etc (everybody knows _these_ rules of safety).

 

Bottom line: don't blame the victims, but do educate girls not to drink with men they don't know well, not to go to guys' homes alone, not to go to their cars alone, etc (i'm not gonna type out a full list of Not to's here). There're plenty of semi-public places to make out in - stick to those and be safe!!!

 

my 2c,

-yes

[lydiamarie]

indeed it is important to teach our girls caution for their own safety, and our boys as well.

 

yes, your list of helpful suggestions would have saved some girls, but it would not have saved me, midori, or rapesurvivor.

[seekingtochange]

Originally posted by lydiamarie

 

yes, your list of helpful suggestions would have saved some girls, but it would not have saved me, midori, or rapesurvivor.

 

Nor would it have saved me.

 

Twice I was raped while sound asleep in my own bed (the first time) and the second time I was asleep at a relatives house in a nice cozy guest room that was prepared just for me, a welcomed guest in my Auntie's home. I was 13 the first time, 14 the second time. I was not frolicking with unsavorys, I was minding my own business, leading my own life and visiting family.

 

I understand "Yes" means well, but fyi, "Yes" - there are plenty of rape survivors that have been raped in places that should have been safe spots or personal sanctuarys. The implication you make that there is often something the rape survivor "could have done" to prevent the rape is exactly one of the myths that helps feed the self-doubt and personal pain of many rape survivors.

[midori]

Originally posted by seekingtochange

 

I understand "Yes" means well, but fyi, "Yes" - there are plenty of rape survivors that have been raped in places that should have been safe spots or personal sanctuarys. The implication you make that there is often something the rape survivor "could have done" to prevent the rape is exactly one of the myths that helps feed the self-doubt and personal pain of many rape survivors.

 

I think I understand the point that yes was making, and that is that personal safety is something that everyone should take responsibility for. It's a given that you should be safe in your own home, or in your aunt's house, just as it was a given that I should be safe walking down the street in broad daylight. I don't think that yes was suggesting that in every case of attack there is something the victim failed to do to make herself (or himself!) safe. What I hear her saying is that when rape is discussed, the issue of taking responsibility for personal safety often gets muted by the louder message that the rape victim is not to blame for the rape.

 

It's such a tricky issue, because as lydiamarie pointed out, yes's advice wouldn't have helped you, me, her, or RapeSurvivor. But not every situation is so cut-and-dry, and it would be a shame if young women weren't sufficiently cautious because they'd been given the impression that saying "no" ought to be enough to guarantee their safety, and if it isn't then someone else is to blame. Sure, that's true in principle, but I'd rather have someone avoid a situation where they would be especially vulnerable -- if it's possible to avoid it. It's not always possible to avoid.

 

And when it does happen to a woman (or a man, as Paul pointed out in the other thread, rape victims are not always women), I think it does little good for anyone to point out that she could have avoided the situation. To use yes's analogy of robbery, I'd say that if I heard about my friend having been robbed at knifepoint while walking home late at night, the first thing out of my mouth would not have been "oh you brought that on yourself -- if only you hadn't been walking home late at night by yourself." To be honest I wouldn't even say it after he or she had calmed down a bit. Chances are pretty good that they know they shouldn't have been walking home through the park by themselves at 2 a.m. Chances are they're kicking themselves for having been so stupid.

 

Someone once tried to mug me -- long story, won't do all the details -- and it turns out I'd been walking through an area of a strange (to me) city that I probably shouldn't have been in at all, and certainly not alone. I didn't know it beforehand, but afterwards when I reflected on it I realized I should have seen the danger. It was scary --although I managed to fight the people off (again, long story and it worked out in my favor not because I'm tough or brave, other circumstances favored me) -- and after it happened I sure didn't need anyone saying "hey midori, didn't you know you shouldn't have been walking there? You were asking for it!" Even though that was probably the case. But it would have been nice to know beforehand!

 

So that's the crux of the problem as I see it: rape isn't discussed usually until someone mentions that they've been raped. In that context, the appropriate response is to be supportive of the victim and not to point out the errors she made (if she in fact did make an error, not always the case). Because the bottom line is that lack of consent equals rape. A woman too drunk to give her consent has not given her consent! A sleeping woman has not given her consent! A woman who says no has explicitly not given her consent! And yet, if rape is rarely if ever discussed otherwise, or only discussed in terms of "it's wrong and if it happens to you it's not your fault," where are the important warning messages, like those that yes was trying to make: be careful about who you go out with, especially alone. Be careful about whom you allow to bring you a drink because you dont' know if they'll spike it with something. Etc. There has to be a place for those very useful cautions, even though they won't help in every situation.

[yes]

I agree that taking precautions cannot guarantee safety - neither from rape nor from many other terrible things. However, my "not to" list could've, for e.g. helped RapeSurvivor, who was alone in a car with someone she had only been with several times before then, in groups. Certainly this doesn't mean that she is to blame. But it means that had she been taught not to go anywhere alone with people she doesn't know well, she could've avoided being raped. In lydiamarie's case, avoiding getting drunk might've helped her. Again, i'm not blaming you girls - what happened to you is absolutely terrible and not your fault. I just wish someone had taught you what not to do in order to avoid shady situations.

 

My mother gave me a long list of not-to's, and i have followed some of them very well (e.g. never getting drunk). Some others I didn't follow, and have been very lucky to come out unharmed, but later i realized what danger i was putting myself in, and now i'm more cautious.

 

Take care girls, i hope you can heal and i wish you the best of luck.

-yes

[RapeSurvivor]

Originally posted by yes

I agree that taking precautions cannot guarantee safety - neither from rape nor from many other terrible things. However, my "not to" list could've, for e.g. helped RapeSurvivor, who was alone in a car with someone she had only been with several times before then, in groups. Certainly this doesn't mean that she is to blame. But it means that had she been taught not to go anywhere alone with people she doesn't know well, she could've avoided being raped. In lydiamarie's case, avoiding getting drunk might've helped her. Again, i'm not blaming you girls - what happened to you is absolutely terrible and not your fault. I just wish someone had taught you what not to do in order to avoid shady situations.

 

My mother gave me a long list of not-to's, and i have followed some of them very well (e.g. never getting drunk). Some others I didn't follow, and have been very lucky to come out unharmed, but later i realized what danger i was putting myself in, and now i'm more cautious.

 

Take care girls, i hope you can heal and i wish you the best of luck.

-yes

 

Let me address this, because your statement has some HUGE errors. First. I'm smart. I was smart back then too. I'd dated, I knew how to handle myself. My mother and other family members taught me about saying no and about self defense. You are jumping to a conclusion that I didn't know what to do, and you are saying that I should not have been in that car. False on both accounts. These are the kind of ignorant and arrogant statements that hurt rape victims, and empower rapists. My mother, along with her blaming me--blamed herself. She told me and told me and told me about how to protect myself and I was not able to. I was overpowered and she blamed herself. I didn't know that then, I just thought she was ashamed of me and blamed me too.

 

I knew the guy. We'd hung out in groups. I knew other girls he had dated. It wasn't some guy I met in a bar a couple of times and went out with. There was never any indication of him being anything but an honest guy. I expected him to try something---most girls do, and I expected him to stop when I said no. I don't know of anyone then, or now, that waits a year to get to know someone before they go on a one-on-one date with someone.

 

The evening was like any other date, he picked me up at home, met my mother, we went out and had a nice time, and then we went to the park and he raped me.

 

Let me tell you something that I hope to God you never have to know first-hand. When a human being is in a dangerous, fast-moving, crisis situation the brain chemicals fire differently, actions and reactions are skewed. Sometimes there are physical changes to the body. Evidence the person who is able to life a car off of an injured child. I fought in every way that I knew how to. I screamed. I kicked. He was stronger. I could not get away. I was also not wrong to be in the car with him in the first place.

 

How do you know when you know someone well? When you are around them, when you interact with them semi-frequently, when others who know them talk about them. The rape could not be avoided. A RAPE is the commission of a violent, sexual act against someone against their will. None of the rapes that have ever happened could have been avoided. The situation of any rape does not change the fact that a person said NO and was forced against their will. An unconscious person, or one impaired by drugs or alcohol is an implied NO and being taken advantage of in that state is the same thing as rape. You can go and talk to an attorney in any state about that. The omission of saying NO (verbally or my recognized signing) does not constitute a Yes or approval.

 

Parents tell their children all the time what TO do and what NOT to do in many given situations. They tell their children over and over and over again. Don't go with strangers. Don't get into a strange car. Don't smoke. Don't do drugs. And parents tell their children WHY and HOW to say no, or to avoid situations, or how to get out of a situation. How many kids, who can repeat their parents warnings back to them, are taken every day by some person who asks them to help search for a lost puppy? How many teenagers and adults go on dates with people they've known for a while and end up being beaten and/or raped by the person? There are no accurate figures because women/men are afraid to come forward because of attitudes like yours.

 

People said to me "if only you had not gone with him..." "Why did you go out with him?" "Why didn't you run--didn't your mother ever teach you to scream and run?" I heard it ALL. I was talked down to and treated like if only I had been SMARTER, I would not have been raped. It has taken me YEARS to work through this.

 

The men's attitudes hurt, but its the women's attitudes that are the worst and do the worst damage. Telling me that I could have avoided being raped if I had not gone with a man I had only been out and around with a few times before is so sadly wrong and mistaken. You know only what I put in my thread, and you jumped to the conclusion that YOU could have easily avoided the rape because YOUR mother taught you how. A rape victim (and some courts and jury's) would reduce that down to: It was MY fault. I contributed to my own rape.

 

You have to REALLY think about what you are saying and how and why you are saying it. Telling someone how they could have avoided something by explaining your view on the events leading up to the rape or crime, is like telling someone who was hit by a car that they shouldn't have stepped off the curb.

[midori]

Originally posted by RapeSurvivor

 

The men's attitudes hurt, but its the women's attitudes that are the worst and do the worst damage. Telling me that I could have avoided being raped if I had not gone with a man I had only been out and around with a few times before is so sadly wrong and mistaken. You know only what I put in my thread, and you jumped to the conclusion that YOU could have easily avoided the rape because YOUR mother taught you how. A rape victim (and some courts and jury's) would reduce that down to: It was MY fault. I contributed to my own rape.

 

You have to REALLY think about what you are saying and how and why you are saying it. Telling someone how they could have avoided something by explaining your view on the events leading up to the rape or crime, is like telling someone who was hit by a car that they shouldn't have stepped off the curb.

 

I think that the way some people react upon hearing about something awful that happened to another person is to think for a split-second, "my god that could happen to me" and to then tamp down that fear by finding avoidable errors, errors that they can tell themselves they won't make. That's how they make themselves feel safe. When people respond with "look how you could have avoided that situation," I don't think it's necessarily so much about blaming the victim as it is about reassuring themselves that it won't happen to them because they know better. But regardless of how it's intended, suggesting ways a rape victim might have prevented being raped is always going to sound like blaming the victim. There's no way around that, and that's the last thing a violated person who's hurting needs to hear.

[moimeme]

It's actually dangerous to persuade yourself that you're so smart you can avoid all trouble. Rather, people should learn to defend themselves in case they do get into trouble. No human can be one hundred percent alert, aware, and present to every single situation all the time. And, as fate will have it often, it is the brief moment of inattention, the evening you were just so tired you weren't right on the ball, or the one time you ignore your instincts that trouble will choose to hit.

 

Yes, people tell themselves they can avoid trouble. It's a form of denial. They'll also believe they'll never have the heart attack, the cancer, or the car accident. Denial won't help you if you get into trouble.

 

The wisest course of action is to take a course on self-defense. If you can't make it to a course, then read up on it. You may not prevent the intruder that breaks in to your house or someone you trust from attacking you, but you can increase your chances of survival and perhaps escape.

 

And never, never, ever, think you've got it all figured out. That way lies disaster. Young people tend to think they know it all. The older you get, the more you realize you know little and that you knew much less when you were young. Understand you are never safer than anyone else. Just luckier.

[lydiamarie]

i hadn't intended to get drunk, just a little tipsy. i was drinking with two girlfriends. in my own apartment. if i was going to drink, how much safer could i have been?

 

being sober would not have saved me from being raped. if anything, i would have had fewer reservations about having men (friends, remember) over to my apartment if i had been sober. the man i didn't know would still have been invited without my consent, without my knowledge.

 

being sober would not have magically made me be able to overpower the man who attacked me. i am just over five feet. he is well over six. he is in the military-very strong. i'm athletic, but i am no match for him-he must have weighed nearly twice as much as i did.

 

being sober would not have made him understand me when i said no. it wouldn't have made him understand me when i tried to push him off. he understood. he did it anyway.

 

if anything, i'm thankful that i was that drunk. it means that i had minimal physical injury and it means that i have very little memory of what happened-i remember the beginning and the end, and a few patches in the middle, but there are hours unaccounted for. and i am thankful that i have few memories to haunt me.

[milla]

I was raped when I was 21. I went out on a date with this guy and we were a little tipsy and we went to this little park, I just thought we would sit and make out for a bit and I remember pulling away when he wanted to go INTO the park, but he insisted and I thought I was just being silly so I relented and then he wouldn't stop. I said NO. I said no again and again. I said "I don't want to!" and "stop it!"... I pushed his hands off me but he was like an octopus and he just wouldn't stop. He was 6'2 and a bodybuilder, he was huge and I started freaking out thinking "he could kill me here if I make a scene"... I sensed a psychotic streak in him, as if he'd be the type of guy who might smack you for "giving him lip" or something, so after I realized what was going to happen whether I struggled or gave in, I just let him get it over with. I was in this dark little isolated park with this crazy guy who would not stop and who could snap my neck like a twig if he wanted to and I didn't want to set him off. I didn't want to walk out of there with a black eye or worse, not at all.

 

I've coped with it quite well. I don't ever talk about it. No one knows about it at all. I didn't report it because I was in a foreign country and he was a son of a family friend and in that country they would definitely say I asked for it, without a doubt. Not to mention the humiliation and inevitable gossip, and jesus christ I could never ever face my mother if she knew. She wouldn't blame me at all... I just could never ever discuss such a thing with her or face the rest of our family or the pity. I would LOATHE to be pitied and continuously asked how I feel about it. It's over. It happened. What can I do now? I was dumb, I know. So what do you want me to say about it now?? Hmmmm?? And yes, my mother did warn me. I remember her telling me that men in this country don't play around so be careful. But we we're just having a nice time, I had a bit to drink and he was good looking and charming and it never occured to me that he might rape me in the park until it was too late.

 

Very bad judgement on my part (duh). I choose to never think about it or talk about it and not feel any emotions about it and so far it's worked for me. I'm not even upset writing this out. It just never happened (but it did). Maybe it wasn't as traumatic because I wasn't a virgin. Or maybe because even when it was happening to me I took a very cold response and chose to grit my teeth and bear it and then vow never to let it happen to me again. I don't know. But it's working for me. I just try to be as unfeeling and pragmatic about it as I can be. I'm 25 now.

[yes]

Originally posted by midori

I think that the way some people react upon hearing about something awful that happened to another person is to think for a split-second, "my god that could happen to me" and to then tamp down that fear by finding avoidable errors, errors that they can tell themselves they won't make. That's how they make themselves feel safe. When people respond with "look how you could have avoided that situation," I don't think it's necessarily so much about blaming the victim as it is about reassuring themselves that it won't happen to them because they know better. But regardless of how it's intended, suggesting ways a rape victim might have prevented being raped is always going to sound like blaming the victim. There's no way around that, and that's the last thing a violated person who's hurting needs to hear.

 

I think I mentioned at least three times in my post that I don't mean to blame the victims. What I did suggest is that people take more precautions, that i believe could prevent some rapes (yes, not all rapes, i know, thanks very much). I think it's important to remember not to rely on saying NO, but to keep in mind he may not listen, and worry abt what u'd do then (pepper spay? ). I don't believe i can avoid trouble - but i do believe that the more precautions i take, the less likely i am to end up in trouble.

 

As for how long you should know a guy before a one-on-one date -- such a date is fine, but sticking to public places is advisable. Deserted parking lots, town's make-out spots, etc are all to be left 'til later, in my book - if all i want is making out. Yet again, I'm not blaming anyone for what happened to 'em. They did the best they could. What I am saying is - since such **** happens, plz do take as much precaution, as you can!

 

that's all from me in this thread,

-yes

[shamen]

I was also date raped, as I mentioned in the other thread. It was a guy that I was dating at the time, very similiar to rapesurvivor's story (except that I didn't have the guts to tell any adults about it at the time and never prosecuted). While it's been almost 20 years, I don't think that I've ever written down the details, even here. Just that I was date raped. It's still too weird to talk about the details yet.

 

I do however, feel as over it as I can get at this point in my life.

 

I didn't think about why I was getting so upset in the post started by the moderators (Capitald's) when someone kept bringing up the point that they wouldn't go into a hotel with someone. I kept pointing out that most people are raped by someone that they knew and how are you going to avoid that? That I was going to live my life as fully as I could...

 

Wow, thank you so much for helping me to understand WHY I was so fired up about it!

 

I know that I could not have avoided it. He was stronger, captain of the football team, someone I'd known for a long time, someone I was dating. Just because I went somewhere to make out with the guy didn't give him the right to rape me.