Melissa's Story

I was raped. At least one in four women, statistically, will be sexually assaulted at some point during their lives. So why is it no one ever hears about it from anyone they know? I’ll answer that for you…we blame ourselves for letting it happen and we assume everyone else will too, or even worse, they will pity us and never look at us the same way again. Not only do we have to go through the physical and emotional trauma of being raped but every time someone looks at us with pity filling their eyes, we have to experience it again. So, sometimes it is just easier and less humiliating to keep it to ourselves. Plus, most of us at some time or another have seen a woman who has gone to court and testified in a rape trial, either in our town or on the news. Not only did she have to relive the most humiliating and painful experience of her life, but she had to do it in open court in front of everyone she knew. Then the defense will inevitably trot out every insignificant detail of her sexual history, including every guy with whom she's been intimate, positions, her likes and dislikes in bed, and anything that might possibly be considered sexual exploration. Basically, any and all of her most private moments are on open display for the entire world. Defense attorneys destroy rape victims on the witness stand and it is all part of their job. Is it any wonder more women do not come forward?

I knew my rapist. He and I had been on a few dates. I knew his parents and he knew mine. We lived in a small town and everyone thought he was such a great guy. It never bothered anyone that I was so young and dating a man nearly ten years my senior. Like I said, everyone knew him and liked him. The first time it happened, I was fifteen. We were in his bedroom, in his parents’ house, just hanging out. At least that’s what I thought. We kissed a little and then when he started to get more and more aggressive, I tried to push him away and told him I wasn’t ready for that kind of relationship. That was of little concern to him.

I was a virgin. The physical pain was almost unbearable. When he pushed into me, while holding both of my hands over my head as I struggled and screamed, I could feel my flesh being ripped apart. Of course now, I know that was because there was absolutely no lubrication. It’s not as if he was concerned with my enjoyment. My screams became so loud and blood curdling at one point that his mother came downstairs to see what was happening. She looked in and saw. As I begged her to help me, she slowly ascended the stairs and walked away muttering, "slut”, under her breath. I've often wondered what it was about me that made what was happening okay in her mind.

After it was over, I laid there with torn clothes and blood running from my nose, lip, and vagina for the better part of an hour. He then told me to get up and he would take me home. I was in total shock, and he acted as if it were just another day. I thought to myself, “maybe this is what’s supposed to happen.” When we walked back upstairs, I heard his mother on the phone. She had apparently started making calls during the rape. By the time I left his house that day, the story had already been developed. I was the town tramp. The mother of my rapist had told everyone who would listen, including the mothers of my closest friends, that I was downstairs having sex with her son…willingly. Everyone believed her. She was a respected member of the community, a business owner from a ‘good’ family. I was nobody. My friends were no longer allowed to associate with me or even talk to me on the phone. Even my mother believed the rumor when she heard it at work the next day. She never asked me what happened or if it was true, she only said I needed to watch myself…that it was a small town and people talked. I never clarified it for her. I still haven't.

So, I stayed with him. I figured everyone couldn’t be wrong. I must be what they said. Maybe sex was supposed to hurt. Maybe it was always taken by force. For the next three months of my life, he raped me almost daily. Every time, I screamed, I fought, I cried. He liked it that way. But if I got too loud or fought too hard, he would beat me until I gave in. There was a fine line I constantly sought to find but rarely did. I never thought I deserved it, but I thought it was part of growing up. I thought it happened to everyone. My father was a drunk, so my home had never been free of violence, so it was almost normal for me, until something snapped.

It was Christmas time. My parents had split up and I had moved in with my father for a short period of time because it was easier to hide in plain sight there. He worked nights and I went to school all day. So, it was like living alone. One night, my rapist came over after my father had gone to work. He showed up drunk and with a friend. I didn’t know the friend, but I had heard of him. All the girls in town wanted to date him.

They came inside the house and before I could even sit down on the couch, my rapist had thrown me against the living room wall. He was drunk. I knew what he wanted, but I just couldn’t. I was already hurting so badly from the previous night’s attack that I could barely sit. I tried to tell him no…I tried to explain. But before I could even get the words out, he was punching me in the face. He pushed/pulled me back to my bedroom. He tossed me onto the bed and fell on top of me. I just couldn’t do it again. I kicked, I scratched, and I bit anything that got near me. But it only made him madder. I could taste my own blood and every time it filled my mouth, I would spit it in his face. But he didn’t stop. He ripped my clothes, tore my panties, and forced himself inside me. He got tired of that after a few minutes though and he rolled me onto my stomach, forcing himself inside me anally. It was the first time that had happened. And it hurt like no other physical pain I had ever felt. There was no lube, no easing into it, just one fast, hard slamming movement. I was completely incapable of motion. As he held my face down into the pillow, he grunted in my ear, “You need to learn how to take care of a man. If you did, you might not have to get it like this.” As if to further drive the point home, he raised my head and slammed it down onto the side of the iron bed frame leaving me disoriented and seeing stars. I was in and out of consciousness after that.

When it was over, he got off me to leave. At least I thought it was over. But as he proved to me repeatedly, I was a poor judge of what he wanted. He pulled me up by my hair and dragged me into the living room where his friend was calmly sitting, watching television. He asked his friend if he wanted a piece of me. His friend replied, “Nah, man. I think we should probably go.” But my rapist didn’t think so. He was a long way from accomplishing what he truly wanted that night. He tore at my clothes some more and once again pushed me against the wall. As he did, a large framed picture fell on his foot. It only agitated him further. He picked up the picture and as I tried to punch him, he turned it glass-side down and busted it over my head. Glass was everywhere. I slid down the wall and onto the floor, landing dizzily in a pile of it.

He started kicking me in the ribs and head. Blood flooded my eyes. My eyelashes stuck together as it quickly began to dry. I lost the ability to see when the kicks were coming. He wasn't letting up though. Every scream or wince made him laugh. When his foot made contact with my mouth, I knew that was it. Please don't think I'm simply being melodramatic when I say that I knew the day of my death had arrived and it would be at his hands. He was going to kill me this time. It was no longer a possibility. It was a certainty. That intent was written all over his pasty face. His laughter grew deep and horrifying. And his movements became swift and precise.

There's something that happens to a person inside that moment. It's the reason I can sit and listen to soldiers talk with such empathy now. When the moment comes that you know you are going to die, everything else fades away. It leaves you with a determination, an icy, cold clarity that I've never had at any other moment. Part of me did die on that floor. But another part, the part that remains, crawled to her knees and then to her feet. My body was so bruised and torn that I couldn't lift my arms to block his blows. I could not defend myself. I could barely see him through my matted eyelashes or hear him through my ringing ears. But there was one thing I could do. I decided in that moment that if I was going to die, I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of dying at his feet on the floor defeated like some animal, I would die standing.

It was small; I was small. But it was my one little act of defiance. It was all I had. He would beat me down and laugh as he watched me struggle to rise again. But I did...every single time. I have no idea where the strength came from but each time I fell, it was there. My body ached and I could hear the throbbing in my head. My breathing was labored but I managed to keep enough air in my lungs to keep from passing out. I had to stay awake. I had to make him see that even if he killed me, he had never truly owned even the tiniest piece of me.

I guess his friend decided I had been through enough for one night, or was not anxious to witness a murder, because he took my rapist by the arm and drug him outside and put him in the car. The friend poked his head back in the door and tossed me a pack of cigarettes. He said he bet I could use one. And then they were gone.

But until the car started and pulled out of the drive, I remained on my feet. And as small as it may have been, that act saved me. It turned the night into my victory, not my victimization.

I sat in the floor for a long time, covered in glass, with blood running into my eyes and drying on my skin. Eventually, the phone rang. It was Greg, my only friend. The only one I had left. When he heard my voice, he asked me what was wrong and when I wouldn’t tell him, he said he’d be right over. And he was there in record time. He pushed the door open and found me there…blood pouring from every orifice, my hair matted and tangled with dried blood and glass, my clothes torn and barely hanging off my body, and huge shards of glass poking out of my head. He fell down on his knees and cried. He tried to hug me, but I couldn’t stand his hands on my skin. They were too heavy…it hurt so much. He begged me to go to the police but I wouldn’t. The trial just kept popping into my mind. I knew they would say I deserved it, like they had with my cousin after her ex-husband raped and murdered her. I knew they would say if I didn’t like that kind of treatment I wouldn’t have stayed for so long. I told him no…no police.

He pulled me up off the floor. I told him I needed to get the blood off me. He took me to the bathroom and sat me down on the side of the bathtub. Then he proceeded to pull all the glass shards from my head. There was one big piece right at my hairline. It left a large gash. I still have a scar there today. When he tried to pull the remnants of my tattered clothing off, I realized I couldn’t lift my arms. He found a pair of scissors and cut them off me to reveal the sight of my purple and red skin beneath. I was covered in cuts and bruises. He turned on the shower and let it warm up a little, then he helped me over into it. He tried using a washcloth on my skin, but it hurt too much. So he just used his hands and the water. He was the only man I would have trusted at that moment. He was my best friend…my only friend.

Later that night, Greg paid a visit to my rapist. I won’t say what happened, but at least I knew he paid a price for what he had taken from me. And at least my rapist knew he would never again be able to hurt me.

I lost my innocence to a rapist. I lost my trust in men for a long time. I lost my self-respect and my dignity. Only now, many years later, can I tell the story without feeling guilty or humiliated by it. But at fifteen years old, I could never have told anyone that story…especially on a witness stand. I was just a naïve little girl back then; I am a grown woman now. But I still cry for that little girl on occasion. No one ever told her it wasn’t her fault. No one ever told her she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. No one ever held her and told her everything would be okay. No one ever said, “It happened to me too.”

So, for any of you who can identify with this…It’s not your fault. You didn’t deserve it. Everything will be okay one day. And it happened to me too.


Update: Greg died a few years ago. We were best friends for fifteen years. He had taken pictures of me that night, just in case. I burned them the night that I buried him.