Helen's Story

Here is something very few people know about me-I hate pale blue bathroom tile.

There are many very personal details about me on this blog. I talk a lot about sex, and I have no problem with doing that here. When it comes to sex and sex topics, pretty much anything goes with me (and…er…has done, too). But there are a few things that I will not do in bed: no Fido. No little Lars. Bless the beasts and the children, and protect them from the rigors of the bedroom.

And I will not have anal sex.

This is not because it is a religious problem with me. It’s not because I find it repulsive. It’s not due to the whole silly adage that “if it goes out the hole, it doesn’t go in” (if you believe that one, perhaps you should strike off blow-jobs, folks. And since no one wants to strike that one off…)

The reason I do not have anal sex is not only do I not find it comfortable, but I was raped that way when I was 19.

I was living with a partner at the time, and one day in the shower, he forced it. I remember that we were arguing at the time. What about, I am not sure-it seems irrelevant now that there are bigger issues. The steam of the shower was strong, the argument was heated, and something made my partner snap. He grabbed me and pushed me against the wall, holding my head against a towel bar (WHY do people put towel bars in the shower? Why?). He was a weight lifter, and much stronger than me, and since I was on the curved end of the bathtub and struggling to hold my purchase on where I stood, I wasn’t able to wiggle around much.

And then he forced himself into me. Anally. I remember searing, blinding pain. He grabbed some shampoo to aid in getting it in easier, and the pain was accompanied by stinging the likes of which I had never felt. It was as though I had been sliding down a slide of razor blades and landed in a pool of alcohol. I had this weird, heavy weighty feeling inside of me like I had to go to the bathroom.

He held my face hard against the towel bar and all I could see was the shoddy caulking job that held the towel bar on the wall, bits of lumpy grey caulk with protruding bits. I could see the clear shower curtain, and the open bathroom door.
And the pale blue tile that my face was held against.

I think I croaked out the word no. Or maybe I didn’t. I can’t really recall, and if I said anything, it is unlikely he heard me anyway. I remember that the front of my body was outside of the spray of the shower and I was freezing. The back of my body was scalding hot from the steam and perhaps the pain, which was very, very real. He finished, and got out of the shower.

And I just stood there.

You know that scene in “Leaving Las Vegas” where the prostitute who has been raped anally just sits in the shower and bleeds? That is exactly what I did. I just stood there and bled, dripping out a mixture of bright red blood and semen. I stood there until the hot water went cold, and then I finally I got out of the shower, dried off, and went about my life.

We broke up very soon after. And even though I live across the Atlantic now, a restraining order I have against him still stands. The truth is, I don’t hate him and I don’t wish him ill. I actually don’t even think about him. The last I heard he had married and had a kid. And you know, I hope he has a good life. I don’t even wish any vengeance on him. If you rape someone, you obviously have issues-and my hope is that someday he gets his sorted out.

There are a lot of bloggers that have addressed the issue of rape, including Layne, Jim, Jamie, and many others. For a lot of people, rape is something that has been the pinnacle of trauma, and it changes the person forever due to the horrible forced sexual situation. And the truth of the matter is, rape is horrible. It is about complete and utter loss of control. It is about abuse, pain, and anger. It is violation the likes of which you can’t come back from.

But for me, being raped did not change my life. It is not something I think about, hardly ever, really. I am not burying it and hiding it, I just won’t let it own me. I know that I handle it a bit differently than most people-neither better nor worse, this is just the way that I played with the hand I was dealt. Everyone handles things differently. I have some issues with my life, but none of them stem back to this incident-for that's all it was-one ugly, horrible incident.

The thing of it is, I took a step back from what happened and said: Yup. That was a bad situation, and I never want to be there again. And what happened was this: he took advantage of my body. He tried to take away my security and peace of mind. He tried to take control and show me that he is stronger than I am. But he doesn’t get to have that. I am not going to give this guy my peace of mind.

So he may have fucked my body, but he sure as hell does not have the chance to fuck with my spirit.

What happened afterwards? Well, I bled for a few days, so much so that I even had to wear a maxi-pad. I had a funny crease-mark shape on the side of my cheek where my face was held against the towel bar. But that was about it, and physically and emotionally I just moved on. I have plenty of horrible memories about other things that I re-live and struggle with. This is not one of them. Because I just won’t let him hurt me like that.

The only lingering side effects from what happened are this:

I will not have anal sex.

I get viciously angry at men that hurt women.

And I absolutely, positively hate pale blue tile.

***This was re-posted with Helen's permission from her blog, Everyday Stranger.***

Lynn's Story

It was my sixteenth birthday, April 9 1990, and I had a lot to celebrate. I had already lived through years of abuse and neglect at the hands of my mother. I had survived being bounced between foster homes and some pretty heavy drug abuse. I had cleaned up my act and was doing well in school and for the first time in my life, I had some hope that I would actually have a future worth looking forward to. Thirty minutes was all it would take to change my life forever.

I had gone out to shoot some pool with some friends on the evening of my sixteenth birthday. Around 10:30 pm I managed to snag a ride halfway home with a friend’s parents. They dropped me off and I had about a 30-minute walk to my home. I was less than five minutes from home when I saw him. A tall, skinny, older man, walking towards me in the dark. He walked past me and then turned around and started walking back towards me. I crossed the street, but eventually had to cross back because I lived on that side of the road.

He approached me and asked me for directions to some fictional place. It all happened in a matter of seconds, he grabbed me and threw me down the embankment. I screamed and tried to fight him off and he told me that he had a knife and would cut my heart out if I continued to scream. He walked me through the darkness into a grove of trees, nearby. He told me to take off my clothes. He ransacked my purse and then told me he knew my address and if I told anyone, he would come back and kill me. He raped me. I have never felt fear like that in my life. As I lay there, I tried to memorize his face, his features. I couldn’t imagine surviving this and having him walking the streets. Never knowing if I might see him again.

When it was over I ran home and my foster mother took me to the hospital. I wrote an uncomfortably detailed statement for the cops, and my own doctor showed up to do the rape exam. I don’t remember feeling much of anything at that time. I was numb…in shock, I guess. A few days later, the cops showed up at my house with a photo line up and I picked him out. He was arrested a few days after that and sat in jail waiting for court.

Meanwhile, I still had to go back to school and try to finish the 10th grade and pretend that I was ok and nothing had happened. The administrators at my school knew what had happened to me and they cut me a lot of slack. I failed every one of my final exams that year because I just couldn’t get my shit together to study. The school passed me in every course, anyway.

The preliminary hearing was held in May and the trial was in June, (just before final exams). Somewhere in the middle of that, he escaped from jail. The jail that was a 15-minute drive from where I lived. I read about it in the paper before the cops called to tell me. Aside from going to school, I didn’t leave the house at all until he was caught two weeks later.

At the trial, I was on the stand for three hours. Two of those three was for cross-examination. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, to sit in that courtroom and look at the man who raped me, in the light of day, while his attorney tried to discredit every single thing I said. To speak every detail of what he did to me, because he didn’t just rape me. He made me choose what kind of oral sex he would have with me. He beat me and burned me with cigarettes and forced me to act like I enjoyed it all. And I had to tell the world every sick detail. I remember the Crown attorney telling me that I should be as detailed as possible because the judge we had hated rapists and details would improve the likelihood of a conviction.

He was found guilty and sentenced to 6 years that October. But that wasn’t the end of it. I found out after trial that he was a serial rapist and had raped many young women including his own family members. He had been tried before but had never been convicted. His victims were usually younger than me and had a difficult time identifying him.

I went back to court a few more times in the years that followed. The first time was to testify at another victims trial. To establish M.O. and for identification purposes. The next two times were for his dangerous offender hearing. Every time I went to court, it dredged up the old memories. I would have to re-read my statement and the court transcripts and re-live it all again. I told myself that any hell I went through was worth it as long as he didn’t hurt anyone else again.

He died in prison a few months before his release date. But I’m still here. Still trying to figure out how to live with the after effects. 16 years later and I’m only just beginning to understand what he took from me. I’ve been alone with this pain for a long time and I don’t know if I will ever be ok, but I do know how important it is to know that others have survived. To know that I’m really not alone. To know that it wasn’t my fault and I’m not tainted goods. To know that I have a voice and that the most important thing I’ve ever done was pushing past my fear and my shame so that I could walk into the courthouse and do everything in my power to not let anyone else be hurt like I was.

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Jenn's Story

I have never been actually raped but I have been attacked on numerous occasions and twice have had to have intervention.

There was a guy I went to high school with (he was actually a friend of my first love). I guess he figured that since I was with his friend I'd kick down to him too. He used to corner me and trap me every chance he got. I knew that he had date raped three other girls and I was always scared of him. But he'd always play if off like we were just playing around.

One time though (we were in EMS training together) while I was strapped to a back board, (we all had to be to get certified, it's supposed to teach you compassion for your victims) he climbed on top of me and started trying to get my shirt off, as though I would just be quiet??? I started yelling, because I couldn't move. I was completely helpless, which is the worst feeling in the world, and my boyfriend at the time, his friend, saw what was happening and literally threw this guy off of me. I thought he was going to beat him senseless.

When I finally got unstrapped and calmed down, my bf at the time tried to get me to tell him what happened. The fucker thought that somehow I had led his friend on. It was a mess. Anyway, about two years after that, long after we had broken up and each moved on, he apologized for not believing me and for being so blind as to the person his (by then) ex-friend was. The guy is now a firefighter who works in he same department as my dad and some of my good friends and a couple ex's. They all know the person he is and HATE him. They asked me to file charges against him (for several other things) but I wouldn't do it. I knew that the working environment he has every single day is far worse than anything the law could ever do to him...karma comes back around. His captain is one of my best friends.

The time that scared me worse than that (I still haven't fully recovered from the fear) happened when I was in Mexico. I guess that because I was rescued, I should be thankful that I was able to learn to take care not to put myself in dangerous positions. I never walk by myself at night, I don't go into unlit areas with men I don't trust explicitly, etc.

Anyway I used to live in Mexico for a month every summer, teaching english. We lived in Ensenada but on the way back to Cali we used to stop in Tijuana to shop and have lunch. I already knew not to go off alone and all that (hell I'd been going there for seven years by that point). But we were in a market on a side street and in the span of 15 seconds I had gone from looking at jewelry with a friend to being carried (yeah literally carried) off against my will by two big guys. I was fighting with them and yelling at them (in Spanish and in English) and kicking so they started dragging me instead. They got me down a dark alley and they started pulling me down some stairs. They were saying the awful things they wanted to do to me, in spanish, like I didn't understand them...it still gives me chills to think about it.

I was still kicking and screaming and when they had me most of the way down the stairs. (There was a big heavy door at the bottom. There was no way I could have gotten away.) A friend of mine had realized I was missing and he came running after me. He was yelling at the guys in English and then in Spanish for them to get their hands off of his wife before he called the cops. He forced them back and pulled me away from them.

I'm still not sure how he managed to get me away from them; it must have been rage. They took off since some of my other friends were coming up by that point. I was so scared and bruised from fighting with them, Ryan had to pretty much carry me back to our vehicles. He wouldn't leave my side for any reason the whole rest of the way home. I know in my heart, that if Ryan hadn't found me exactly when he did, I wouldn't be here to write this all down.

Still anyone grabbing my arm from behind is enough to send me into a rage and this happened several years ago. I still went back to Mexico after that (I still love Ensenada). But I refuse to go into TJ without a man I trust holding onto me the entire time.

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.