Samantha
[Moderator's note: When 16-year-old Samantha first sent me her story several months ago, I didn't want to run it. I asked her instead to please seek professional help immediately. Unfortunately, because of the visibility of this site, I do on occasion receive desperate messages from people who are suffering in real time. I try to keep the resources page stocked but beyond that I feel helpless to do anything, because I am in no way a professional. I do the best I can to spread awareness on this site and provide a relatively safe forum for survivors, but I am not equipped to help victims in crisis.
Samantha wrote again recently to let me know she is in a much better place, the details of which appear in her own postscript. I decided to run her story so that she may gain the emotional support that is given so freely and well here, and because she is apparently now receiving professional help. She also feels very strongly about speaking out in the hopes of helping others like her.
If you are in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233
If you have been sexually assaulted, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673
If you are feeling suicidal, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255
Additional links, both local and international, are listed on the VU resources page. If at any time you would like me to add links to that page, please email maggie [at] violenceunsilenced [dot] com. ]
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I know it’s only been a short time. But I want to get my story out there NOW. So people like me don’t have to think safety comes years from now, but it can happen today. At anytime, and anywhere.
My story.
It starts when I was ten. My mom left my dad for another man. At the time I guess she just wanted to feel alive again, and not stuck in the same relationship. This was because she was diagnosed with cancer. Later that year, we got a call from her boyfriend saying my mom had passed away. Thanks, mom.
My dad didn’t know how to raise me. I was an only child, his parenting sucked, and in the few years he tried to raise me, he failed. He started drinking when my mom was diagnosed and just never stopped after she left him. A few weeks after we got the news that she’d passed away, my dad started to beat me.
I remember hiding the bruises in 5th grade. Not playing on the playground because it hurt too much to move. Not being able to sit still or make eye contact with anyone anymore. At home I was always afraid. So I had to stay in my room and never do anything or otherwise I got punished. It was always because he was “making me a beautiful woman,” that’s what he said, anyway. I must be disciplined to become the perfect daughter.
I could never become that for him. I would try so hard, but I just was never good enough. As I grew older I saw that family is just a concept; it’s an ideal. He’s just a man. I have no doubt this isn’t how he wanted to turn out. No man grows up imagining he’ll be the type of guy who lives a life of anger, who hurts his own little girl. But this is where time and circumstance and bad choices and unconscious living has led him. He probably couldn’t even see it.
He would get so drunk that he would pass out some nights. When I was 11 turning 12 he got a group of friends and would just drink constantly at my house. I was at the age where my body matured and these other men saw this. They would sneak into my room when they thought I was asleep and just stand there. Like the little creeps they were. My dad passed out early one night because he had been drinking since he got up, and all my dad’s “friends” came up stairs. This time it was different, though. My dad was passed out, and there was no one there to stop them.
That night, March 13, 2004, I was raped by five men.
picked me up that night. I was put into a foster home that was even worse than my original home. Abby was her name, my new sister, the only sibling I would ever have. She and I were inseparable. Anywhere she went, I would go. You would never find us more than a few feet apart from each other. I was 12 at the time, and she would have been 15.
I wrote this almost four months ago, when I tried to end my life again. I saw no reason to live. But by the mercy of God, I found a way out. Life is better now. I still have my days of weakness, I still struggle with all my old beliefs, but I am learning to be a new me. I got the help I needed at a clinic for my drug addiction, I will be 3 months clean on June 5. I left the foster home I was in. I’m seeing a therapist with my new family. I never found Abby though, but I will continue to search for her.
This is a story of growing success, and I AM A SURVIVOR.
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Erin
My story begins when I was 17. I started working for a family owned business. The husband would often make comments to me about my appearance, about how I smelled nice, but I didn’t take it as the warning I should have. Instead I brushed it off. He was married. He was a father. Surely he meant no harm.
I worked there for two years, continuing to work in the summer even after I’d finished my first year of college. I remember how I almost didn’t want to work, but the lure of money was too much to resist. I remember how I almost didn’t go to work that night. How I lingered at home, feeling sad for no reason, wishing I didn’t have to work. But I did.
And so, in the early hours of June 3rd, after a long night of working at a car show, he raped me. The restaurant had closed, and we were sitting there talking. He engaged me in a political debate, and I can never resist politics. He gave me a cup of Pepsi, and then, things were blurry. Thinking I was tired and my contacts were old, I shook it off. We were sitting in tall chairs, across from one another, when he suddenly pressed forward and kissed me. I grabbed his wrists and said, “No. NO,” pushing him away, but he came at me again. I told him no, and tried to push him away, but I couldn’t. I knew he’d locked the door to the restaurant from the inside. I knew he had the key. I knew I couldn’t leave.
And so, in a move that will always haunt me, I stopped resisting. I arched my ribs into the hard metal of the chair, moving as far away as I could. I closed my eyes tight and didn’t speak. I wish I’d fought more, but I was afraid. Still, I didn’t believe he’d rape me until I heard the clink of his belt buckle hitting the tile floor. To this day, that sound makes me shiver. The chair was awkward, so he told me to move to the floor. I did. I remember lying with my head against the garbage can, eyes shut tight, but when I picture it now, I see it from above. My hands grabbing blindly at the air, the top of his head, the radio that was playing Ballroom Blitz. It’s been nearly nine years, and I still can’t listen to that song.
Then it was over. He handed me a towel. He told me to never let anyone make me feel less beautiful, laughable because he made me feel uglier than I’ve ever felt. I drove home, praying for a cop to pull me over. As I neared the S-curve by my parents’ house, I thought about driving straight off it, but I didn’t. Even then, I knew I was worth more than that. My mom was angry because I was so late and she was worried. She yelled at me, asking if I was with my then boyfriend, now husband. I told her I wasn’t, frantically insisting that she call him and ask. Frantic, so frantic. I don’t remember what I told her, but I didn’t TELL her. Not yet. I went to bed, pretending to sleep for three hours, until I got up at 7, took the hottest bath I’ve ever taken, and drove to a friend’s work. I told her I’d cheated on my boyfriend. Cheated. She asked me for details, I gave them, and she told me that I didn’t cheat on him. She told me what I needed to hear, and I’ll forever love her for it.
Two days later, I quit my job. I told my mom he made a pass at me and that’s why I quit. She knew, though, and kept asking if he stopped when I told him. Eventually I cracked and told her. Then I told the police and the lawyers, spending the next year and a half fighting the legal system. Feeling like I was being raped again and again. Having to describe the shape and color of my underwear to his leering lawyer, knowing full well that those underwear were entered as evidence, that he knew they were pink and sparkly and what the HELL did that matter. Finally, three weeks before we were set to go to trial, one of the prosecutors told me they were dropping the case. He said I didn’t bleed enough. Sure, they found some blood in my underwear, but he said that when you’re really raped, you bleed a lot more. He said that “my story” sounded more like romance than rape, because rapists don’t kiss you. He said that rapists find you in a dark alley and throw you against a wall. He seemed to know so much about rape that I wanted to ask him if he’d ever been raped, instead I fled the room in tears, collapsing on the floor of a dirty bathroom, throwing up. Purging myself of a year and a half of pain, embarrassment, and self-loathing.
I don’t regret telling. Even though they dismissed me, if he hurts another girl like he hurt me, and she tells, it’ll be on record that I pressed charges. Maybe he won’t get away with it again. Maybe the legal fees he incurred, the loss of his business (but sadly not the loss of his wife, as she spent that year and a half slandering me), maybe even his own embarrassment, will make him think twice.
Is there a good way to end this? I don’t know. The smell of his cologne still haunts me. If I see a bald man, my heart races. I get scared when I’m alone at night. Sometimes I have nightmares. I’ve seen him a few times since, the last time I held my head high and walked past, but inside I was shaking. But despite all of these things I now carry with me, I also carry with me a strength. The knowledge that I’ve faced down evil and survived. The knowledge that he didn’t take away my ability to love and even, my ability to trust. In one act, he took so much, and yet… there’s still so much I have.
If you’re reading this, maybe you’ve been here before, maybe you’re STILL there, trying to face down those demons. In writing this, I hope you know you’re not alone. I hope you know that you’re better than what happened to you, that you’re stronger than what happened to you, and that although it will always a PART of you, it doesn’t have to DEFINE you. That you’re beautiful in spite of the violence that you’ve endured–that you’re beautiful because of what you’ve endured.
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Erin writes at School Teacher by Day, Superhero by Night. Today, June 3, is the ninth anniversary of her rape.
