Audrey
[TRIGGER WARNING: What follows is a detailed brutal account of rape and violence. Please protect yourself accordingly.]
I remember the spit on my face as he screamed, his face just far enough away from mine for our noses not to touch. He pulled away and thumped my forehead, daring me to respond, daring me to stand up to him.
The first time I remember his screaming, I was three years old. I wondered why Daddy hated me so much.
Fast forward one year. With a new baby in the house, we spent our days wading through tension, thick like molasses. The fighting a constant, high-volume drone of screaming, cursing, and begging for mercy, a sad soundtrack to the life of a frightened child. The screaming was unremarkable most days, as I tested the air daily, my insides twisting in fear as the barometer ratcheted up, up, up. When the explosions happened, I spent days wearing extra layers to hide bruises, cringing at the sound of a slammed door, hiding silently in my room, begging God for one more day without a fist falling on my fragile body.
When the baby was still new my parents entered, once more, into their familiar dance of threats, screaming, and rage. Before long, the baby woke and screamed in her fear, still raw and new, still unaware that this was our normal. From down the hall, his voice boomed. ”Shut that fucking baby up, or I will shut her up.” No part of me doubted him. Fearing for her life, desperate to save her, I crawled into her crib and carefully pulled her out with me. I sang to her, my voice cracking, and cradled her in my arms until, by the grace of God, she was quiet. The memories are like snapshots in my mind. Flash, the door slamming. Flash, the shotgun raised, cocked, pointed at her head. Flash, tail lights driving away as my mother left us alone with him. We were dead. I carried my baby sister into the closet with me, sure that we would soon be dead, and for once, relieved. It would be over soon. I prayed that God would take us quickly.
Fast forward four years. Yet another baby, and every day a dance of a different kind, one step forward in prayer, begging for God’s mercy and protection, and two steps back with bruises, insults, and tears. The middle sister was old enough to incur our father’s wrath at this point, and for the next 14 years I stepped in between my father and my sisters and mother on a daily basis. He went after one of us at least once a day. Because I was strong, I would come running when I heard him screaming at someone, and I would step in between the two, pulling his focus and anger to me. I took the hit for them every time I could.
The memories of sexual abuse are seared into my brain, ever present, always painful. An uncle who lived with us made it his habit to rape me, just 6 years old, every time my parents left my 2 year old sister and me alone with him. He locked the baby in the back bedroom and found me hiding in my parents’ closet. Suddenly, a pain in my head, my soft brown hair wrapped, rope-style, around his hand. Then, a hard, soft fall onto my parents’ bed. He tore at my clothes, his open hand falling freely on my face. Shivering, naked, he demanded I spread my legs. “Wider, wider. Don’t make me tell you again.” He pinched my delicate, untouched skin, twisted, pulled, thumped. When he put his fingers in, one at a time, I thought I might vomit from the pain. When he pointed in the direction of the baby’s room and said, “If you don’t sit still, I will do this to her,” my fighting ceased. I lay still throughout the torture, and when I thought it couldn’t get worse, he flipped me onto my stomach, pressed my face into the pillow, and raped me with violent fervor. I don’t know how long it lasted, but I remember being dragged by my hair onto my knees again. He held my nose closed until I opened my mouth, and I tasted blood, my blood, as he came in my mouth. I retched, struggled not to throw up, fully believing that doing so would result in death.
I thought it was over, but his rage ran so deep. On my back again, the torture resumed. He dug his calloused fingers into my cuts and tears. I’d whimper in pain, desperate not to cry out, and when I opened my mouth to gasp, his bloody fingers would be shoved back into my mouth. The taste of my blood haunts me. He told me I was bad and that I had to be punished. The torture ended with me bent over the bed, naked still, as he whipped me from my shoulder blades down to my knees with his belt. I was always so bruised anyway that no one noticed. I don’t know how many times it happened, but he raped me in this fashion many times between the ages of 6 and 8, when he finally disappeared from our lives forever.
In high school: Valedictorian. Student Body President. Volunteer. Mentor. Christian leader. I worked almost full time to help pay our bills. I cooked dinner, helped my sisters with homework, and kept the house clean. None of it mattered. In private, my sisters called me “Mom.” When my parents were away, their eyes looked to me constantly as a source of hope, comfort, and normalcy. When they returned, so did the screaming.
“You’re such a fucking bitch. I’m ashamed to call you my daughter.” My dad would praise me to his friends, but in private, I knew the truth. I was a “worthless bitch.”
When I married my husband, I waited for the day he would hit me or yell at me. I believed that was just how men treated women. We have been married six years now, and he has never once raised his voice. Every day that goes by with his hand gentle on my face and his voice falling softly, like rain, over my life, I learn that men can be good. His kind words and gentle hands have worked steadily over the years, first by placing a ring on my finger, then carrying me across the threshold, then sweetly cradling our babies’ in his strong arms, to heal my wounds. His love for me is a salve that eases the hurt, though the scars remain and will probably always will.
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Audrey does not have a blog or website. This is her first time speaking out in detail.
Kimberly
It has taken me a very long time to tell the details of my rape. Twenty-three years, in fact. My husband is the only one I have ever fully told. But I can not live with the silence anymore. It is eating me up inside.
I was thirteen and babysitting for a family friend. My mom dropped me off that evening. I brought a night gown with me. I was wearing a green turtleneck, and big bulky sweater with jeans that zipped up the left side instead of the front. I definitely was not dressed to draw attention to myself.
When I got there his wife was working in the kitchen, cooking fish and washing dishes. I was holding the baby. HE had been getting ready in the other room. He came into the living room and came over to me and the baby.
He played with the baby while I was holding him and that is when he kissed me. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything. I was in shock and worried about upsetting his wife. Then he decided to run out and get gas. He wanted me to ride with him, but I refused. He kept bugging me until finally his wife told him to leave me alone and go get gas. So he left for a little while. She got ready and I continued to play with the baby.
When they left for the concert, I called my Mom and begged her to come and get me when they got back instead of having me spend the night. I didn’t tell her why. She said she was not going to get up in the middle of the night when I could just stay where I was. I am not sure what I thought would happen if I told her, but it doesn’t really matter now.
That night when I got ready for bed I decided not to put on my gown. Instead I slept in my jeans & turtleneck on the couch. I remember lying on the couch and hearing someone in the bathroom. I could see the bathroom light go off and heard him walking towards me. I can still remember my heart pounding in my ears.
He was behind me, touching, kissing, and started searching the front of my jeans for the zipper. He tasted like chewing tobacco. Crying, I rolled away from him onto my left side to try and hide the zipper.
That is when he pulled away. At first I thought that was it, he was going back to bed. But instead he came around the couch and faced me. He found that damned zipper & readjusted my position on the couch. I pleaded with him to stop. I just remember saying over and over, “Please don’t do this, please, no. Please.” I was bawling.
He leaned into my body and again told me to just go along with him and it wouldn’t hurt. Then he kissed me harder than I have ever been kissed and pushed himself between my legs. I felt a searing, ripping pain as he put himself inside of me. I cried out. That is when he put his hand over my mouth.
I tried to push him off, but he was so strong. The more I fought, the rougher he got. So eventually I stopped struggling. Once I stopped fighting he kissed and played and had his way. When he finished he kissed me and said, “See, it wasn’t that bad.” He left me there alone to cry the rest of the night. I don’t know how his wife did not hear what happened, maybe she did. I have no idea.
I never babysat for them again. I have seen him twice. Once when a family friend got killed in a car accident and he was at the funeral, and once when I was out to eat with my husband. I have not spoken to him or had anything other than eye contact with him in all these 23 years.
He tried to contact me through Facebook this past spring. Of course I blocked his ass, but it just brought back all the Hell he put me through.
I am now trying to get past all of it. I am much stronger now than I was when I was 13 and he will not win this battle. I am going to continue to be the extraordinary person I am, despite what he did. He may have stirred up some terrible memories for me, but I will not let him hurt me again.
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Kimberly writes at After Silence, and tweets as @AfterSilence.
Bee
It has been two years, ten months, and nineteen days.
I am incapable sometimes of even thinking that, because there are days when I refuse to acknowledge it at all. Because of the events surrounding it and the way the few people I chose to tell reacted, for a very, very long time I chose to believe the lie that it was my fault. That I asked for it, and that I deserved or in some way caused what happened.
But tonight, I’m stepping out and saying this.
I did NOT deserve it.
I said no.
I begged.
I cried afterward, stared in shock at the blood and knew, simply knew, that what I had held onto for seventeen years, what I had waited so long to give to someone I loved, had been taken from me. I didn’t know what to do.
After that, it didn’t matter anymore. I was so afraid, so ashamed.
I told, finally told, and the person I chose to tell told me it took two to tango, that if he’d actually raped me, he should be in jail and that I hadn’t done anything about it so obviously I was covering up for the fact that I had just given in to my desires.
My desires?
Up until that point in my life, I had done absolutely NOTHING with a boy. I was as innocent as they come. My clothes had never come off. My guilt had been over trifling, embarrassingly prude encounters with the few boyfriends I’d had before. I had never once wanted that. I was almost afraid of that. I was saving it. I understood and I believed that it wasn’t something I wanted to throw away or willingly hold out to any passerby. I wanted very desperately to have something special, to be in love with the person I gave that precious gift to.
My desire was to keep my clothes on. My desire was for the word ‘no’ to hold meaning, to cause a cease-fire. My desire?
My desire was for someone to believe me when I finally told the truth.
My desire was to be comforted, held while I cried.
My desire was for someone to rescue me from him, for someone to take the shaking, terrified little girl I had become since that horrible day and tell her it was alright. Tell her she didn’t deserve it. Tell her that she deserved to be listened to, that when she said no, she should be believed. When she yelled no, when she cried stop, when she pushed and fought back, that anyone, especially someone who claimed to care about her, should have stopped, should have respected her, should have ended the sick, empty stealing of something that wasn’t ever, ever supposed to be theirs.
Two years, ten months, and nineteen days later, I know that the word I’ve been so afraid to put on it is true. He raped me. I did not ask for it. I did not want it. No means no, stop means stop, fighting back signals panic and any man or boy who cannot respect that and continues anyway will forever wear the title, the banner, the name–rapist.
My heart still breaks when I think of what was taken from me that day. When I remember the people I needed most failing me, not believing that he could have done it. Not comforting me, not taking me to get help, not prosecuting him to the fullest extent of the law. Seventeen, so innocent, so incredibly afraid.
But now, I am a survivor.
I have not been destroyed.
I will not remain silent.
I am strong.
Thanks,
Bee, 19 years old.
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Bee writes at The Caged Bird Sings.
Nora
This unfortunately is not my only story of abuse. Somehow what my ex-boyfriend did to me shadows what my other perpetrators did to me. I think it is because I chose to speak and out and report it, but the aftermath of reporting it exacerbated the trauma for me. However, I am slowly starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel to go back on track to recovery and healing.
It started one drunken night my sophomore year of college. I drank too much and I was going in and out of consciousness. I do remember that in efforts to be friendly with another student I had seen around campus last year, I agreed to check out his room at a dorm I had never visited before. I remember going uphill and going to his room and sitting in a big, soft comfy round chair. The next moment, he came to me and kissed me and then pulled me into his bedroom. He did not wait for any signs of consent; I shook my head no as he pulled down my underwear, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was working quickly to get what he wanted. I didn’t feel anything; I think I was too drunk to think anything beyond, “I don’t do this; this isn’t happening.” He finished and then walked me back to my room.
I didn’t know what it was for a long time. We began to date a few weeks after that and had a very volatile relationship. It was very emotionally and mentally abusive. He would often berate me for being stupid, even though we both went to a very high ranking school and I was receiving a scholarship to go there. He would justify treating me badly because *I* always caused it and if I just did things correctly he would never be mean. Once he even called the cops after he tried to attack me and got ME arrested instead of him. Once he saw that the school and police would believe him, he never thought once to hold back the emotional abuse. He made me feel sorry for him that his parents were afraid I’d follow him at night instead of realizing what happened to me was unfair.
At the beginning of junior year, we were temporarily broken up and I tried my best to avoid him. It was Halloween weekend and I was dressed up. My friend and I went to his fraternity house since I was still friendly with most of his brothers. After two drinks there, I started to get sick. Most of my memory for the rest of the night was gone. Suddenly I was upstairs puking in the living room with my ex taking care of me. He offered to walk me home since my friend was too intoxicated to help. I remember trying to run away from him and banging on my suite door to try to get away telling him to leave me alone as I ran to my own room. Then I remember my clothes being changed and being taken to his apartment off campus. I also vaguely remember a few seconds where he was on top of me in the dark.
The next day I had a feeling what he did wasn’t right, but with the police and school on his side what was the point of saying anything? I thought by resuming the relationship I would erase all the bad things and show that I wasn’t a bad person. I was just in love and we were young and made mistakes. The emotional abuse continued until he went abroad and I spent a semester home and an internship in a new city to try to forget what happened.
The next year we resumed our relationship once again. He would tell me that we were meant to be together and would spend the rest of our lives together. Then he would say I was too stupid to be with him. We broke up again for the final time. Unfortunately the abuse didn’t end there. One drunken night he was kicked out of a bar for physically threatening me. I somehow felt bad and accompanied him home because he was obviously very intoxicated. That night he said, “I hope you get raped again, you bitch” (he knew of my past attacks) and said, “I hope you fucking die.” He grabbed my arm at one point and then threw my arm. It hurt my shoulder so much that I couldn’t use it for a week.
I was so scared and depressed that I hid in my apartment for the rest of the semester. I only left in the middle of the night to get food, but most of the time I ordered in. Finally, fed up, I called my dad in the middle of the night crying and he drove almost 600 miles round trip to pick me up in the middle of the night and take me back home.
That’s when I finally realized what had happened to me wasn’t okay and I didn’t deserve it. I was looking forward to reporting him and finally showing that he couldn’t get away with treating people this way. Unfortunately, my school quickly burst my bubble. They didn’t properly help me with reporting to the police, so I wrote a statement and somehow it got lost in the system and it wasn’t actually an official report. I went to the school and they promised they’d put him through the judicial process; I never heard from them again. And then when it came to my schooling they had no sympathy. They never accommodated me, never helped me ease back into an environment both triggering and difficult. I didn’t do well and they finally expelled me. When I appealed and explained the situation? They said they had no obligation to help me.
So now all my dreams that I had for my life after the age of 18 have been shattered. I never got to study abroad. I didn’t get my degree from a good school. I have lost or been isolated from all my friends. I live at home with no money and I’m heartbroken that I got expelled because I was abused and the school didn’t understand and refused to help. I have lost my trust in police departments and men. I have an arrest record now.
But I sometimes get enough strength to fight. I made a website about how the school mistreated me. They found it and now are scared of media criticism and loss of reputation. Now they’re trying actively to change the sexual assault policy. While it is so bittersweet that somehow my blog has made my old school realize what they’ve done is wrong and they’re going to fix it, I am so glad that this is happening. I do find some solace in knowing I helped facilitate the start of change at my school that could help thousands of survivors at that school to come. I just hope for my own happy ending.
Thank you so much for reading my story. I just want to say college rape survivors are not alone and something can be done to help bring change. If I can bring change (through one little website) anyone can.
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Nora’s website is I Was Raped at Tufts University, and she tweets as @_waga.
