My Rapist Added Me on Facebook

I haven’t been the most faithful blogger. I have a lot to catch up on here, and many loose ends to tie.

I thought I’d log in just to vent.

My idiot loser limp-d*** rapist had the nerve to send me a friendship request on Facebook an hour ago.

Every year he does something like this, maybe trying to be cute – who knows what goes through that animal’s mind. Last year he mentioned my birthday on Twitter. The year before, he sent me an e-mail notifying me about an apartment available in the area.

I will not friend you on a boat.

I will not friend you, f***ing goat.

I do not like your f***ing spam.

Go die in a fire.

Maybe do something novel, like move on with your life, forget my name, and marry the horse face that I hear you got engaged to since I exposed your rape confession, N. You could even end this legal battle we’re fighting and be gracious enough to settle so that I can move on with my life, instead of stalking me all over the web like you’re clearly doing. Tell everyone at your church to stop trying to contact me, too.

Who am I kidding? I know you won’t stop until I inevitably win the lawsuit and shut you and your rape sanctuary (I mean, church) down forever. Until that delicious day arrives:

(photo credit: http://dominiqueleone.bandcamp.com)

A Letter to My Rapist

Dear N,

I’ve been missing in action for so long that I know you thought I was gone for good. You never hesitate to tell the world when you think you’ve won. I’m sorry to disappoint you this time.

It took me quite a while – almost 2 years to be exact – but I’m back. And just like I promised, I’m armed with the truth and ready for war.

Remember when you were driving me home, after you held me in place and got your sexual jollies out of me on that cold cut of wooden table, and I screamed that you should have killed me? I meant it, but back then it was for a different reason. Because of what you did to me, I wanted to die. I used to pray every night that I would go to sleep and stay that way. I kept breathing, every day feeling angrier than the day before because my prayer went unanswered.

Today, I’m so glad I told you those words, because I’m alive with blood boiling in my veins, and you are finally, finally going to be made to regret the terrible things you did to me. You’re going to remember my name one more time. When everything is said and done and your life and reputation lie in ruins around you – just like you did to me – you will sorely wish that on the day you raped me, you used some of your perverted strength to put me in the ground. That instead of handing me my skirt and driving me home, you beat me to death or drove me off a cliff. Because you left me alive, God has avenged me.

I would do anything to be around on the day that you get the sheet of paper that tells you I’m back – but you can imagine me sitting at home with a bowl of popcorn and a smile instead.

Thank you for giving me the most satisfying moment of my life.

Until we meet again,

E.A.

Moving On from Rape is Easier Said than Done

Remember this girl from season 5 of American Idol? It was the one where Taylor Hicks, the one who bore a slight resemblance to Jay Leno, won. About a month ago, you couldn’t tell me her single below wasn’t my theme song:

and not because of the music, but the lyrics:

I’m over your hands,
and I’m over your mouth.
Trying to drag me down,
and fill me with self-doubt.
oh..

…
Moving on, it’s my time,
you never were a friend of mine.
Hurt at first, a little bit,
but now I’m so over.
I’m so over it..

Don’t call,
don’t come by,
ain’t no use,
don’t ask me why,
you’ll never change,
there’ll be no more crying in the rain.

I took a break from my new blog back in September for an emergency trip I had to make, got lazy, and weeks after I returned I missed blogging. To be honest, though, I wasn’t in a hurry to come back. :-s

Hear (Read?) Me Out

I mentioned yesterday that I was struggling with time management, which is true. A lot has changed for me between September and now. I got involved with an attorney. I did some more “spring cleaning” down my list of friends and got rid of a few so-calleds who claimed to support me, but really were just loving the E.A. is Falling Apart Show. In October I found a new job that I actually like, where I get along with my co-workers and the pay is great. I’ve even started creatively writing again, something that I used to love and lost interest in after the incidents of last year. Thoughts of being raped didn’t take up so much of my day. Compare this all to, say, July 2011: nursing wounds from my church community, running with not much more than a suitcase and the contents in my wallet to my mother for support and getting none, dumped by the criminal justice system, nowhere to go, no hope for the future, lots of rage.

Finally, I’m through with this shit! I had myself convinced. I’d come back to the blog from time to time to approve comments, but I put off replying to a few. I thought, “well…I’m kind of in a different head space these days. Things are looking up for me. It wouldn’t be genuine of me to keep posting when I’m pretty sure I’m over being raped.” But I noticed while I was away that my number of blog hits really grew. People were typing terms like “i was raped” and “fran drescher rape” into search engines and reaching this tiny unfinished blog. They reminded me of when I used to wake up every morning already in tears. I felt guilty that I had nothing to say.

Rape: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Then, yesterday happened. My half-sister C, one of the relatives who lives in the city where I met N, called to say hi. We had always been close, and C stuck by my side when she found out what happened. At one point in our conversation, C mentioned my uncle and his wife at my former church, living as though they never heard of me. I was okay until C told me that she was disgusted that, even after I posted pictures of proof on Facebook, no one in the church cared, everyone still supported N and his family, and N’s career was really taking off. I’d always suspected that was the case (after all, to this day only 1 member of that church reached out to apologize for the way she treated me), but hearing it confirmed from an eyewitness hurt me more than I thought it would. I actually spent the rest of the night crying.

I pulled up this blog, re-read the posts, re-read the comments, and realized that on the outside, my circumstances are improving, but internally not much has changed. Some things like this post (Chris’ e-mail) still make my blood boil, and questions like this (where’s God?) are still on my mind. I wanted to “get to the finish line” in the beginning, and tried to rush through the recovery process. But if outward success is an accurate way of measuring inner healing, then why are accomplished celebrities like Tyler Perry still finding it necessary to get on “Oprah” and pour out their bitterness? Because 1, 5, 10, 20 years down the line, the effects of rape still pack a pretty mean punch.

You Have to Pass “Go”, But You Don’t Need All Properties to Win

A reader’s comment I read yesterday really helped bring the truth back home to me. It can take days, and it can take years. There really isn’t any way to run from the healing process, speed it up, or take any short cuts, and thinking you’ll be the exception is one way of denying yourself some sorely needed and deserved TLC. Because of the heavy sense of shame that came with my experiences, I put pressure on myself to get free. But in one of my earlier posts I compared being a rape victim to going through the death of someone you loved, and there’s nothing shameful about losing someone you’re close to. When people find out you’re grieving a death in the family, most will instantly give you the benefit of time and sympathy to recover. Should it be any different for a rape victim: someone who suffered a debilitating violation of their body and spirit through no fault (or invitation) of their own? Even if no one else is sympathetic to your needs because of rape stigma, you should be sympathetic to yourself. It’s incredibly hard to heal, but when you make yourself identify the rape as the obstacle, and not the wounded self that you want to escape, your efforts will be concentrated in the right direction. This is a distinction I want to start making for myself.

The other thing about the healing process I’m learning is that there are no rules in terms of what you need and need not to do to help yourself recover. By that I mean, what works for one victim may not work for another, and vice versa. Based on experience and studying several cases, counselors and survivors may suggest things that have a known record of being helpful, but that doesn’t mean that you have to take those suggestions in order to heal, especially if you feel you’re not ready or that the suggestion would make you uncomfortable – such as praying if you’re not religious. I tried a few unconventional things that helped me, which I’ll definitely share in the near future. I’ll also share my experience with suggestions that I tried and found unhelpful, even though they’ve been great for other rape victims.

Back to WTS

The long and the short of it is that I still have a lot of (admittedly scary) work to do to get to the point where I see being a rape victim as just another part of my past. I’m just really glad that this blog is still here for me to do it in.

An Upset Reader Wonders if I’m The Blogger Who Cried Rape

I received an e-mail from a male reader named “Chris” over the weekend. He wrote:

E.A.

i stumbled upon your blog and after reading through a number of your posts, i just had to write to you. before i begin allow me to inform you that i am a 41 year old guy and have had 3 female friends that were sexually assaulted:

‘J’ was raped, beaten and left for dead by a stranger that had actually targeted a friend of hers and mistook her for the friend; he’s still in jail and my friends parents blamed her for the attack, because she dressed “sexy”.

‘K’ was raped by a guy she new for 6 months, she’s a black girl living in harlem, he was a black guy (he’s also in jail), the attack left her scarred enough that she won’t date a black guy anymore.

‘H’ was attacked on a subway car but 3 latinos, she put up a fight and in the process they broke her arm and gave her a black eye and while they didn’t rape her they did molest her before she was rescued. one of the attackers was jailed.

the reason i am mentioning the above is because i want to make it clear that i am not “pro-rape”, i am not unsympathetic to the plight of a rape victim nor do i believe that women are put on this planet for men’s personal amusement.

having said that, after reading your blog, i have trouble seeing how you define the second “attack” as a “rape”. here is what you said:

you had been “seeing” ‘N’ for about 2 years and based on your accounts the two of you had been sexually involved up until the day of the “attack”. the reality is that a rapist doesn’t wait 2 years to sexually assault you, if this guy had actually “targeted” you from the first time you met (as you seem to believe) he would have assaulted you the first time you guys went on a date.

you also make it clear that you went to that location willingly and with the intent of having sex; i can tell you as a man, when you have a girl that is with you willingly and for the expressed purpose of having sex with you, it’s very difficult to stop yourself mid act. a perfect example from my life back when i was in my 20’s:

i had a “sex buddy”, let’s call her ‘M’ [Note from E.A.: Chris gives an explicit description of a situation that I don’t think is appropriate for display here, so I cut it out. I read what he described as sex that was agreed upon that went wrong when M started to feel pain.]
the reality is that the entire incident of her complaining about the pain to my pulling out took about 30 seconds, would you consider that as my having raped her? when you’re in that mode and in the middle of the sex act it’s almost impossible to just stop yourself in a split second because at that moment you’re acting on pure biological instinct, it takes a few moments for your cognitive abilities to kick in and for reason to take over and allow you to stop.

it sounds to me like the second “attack” falls in this category and evidence for this is right in your blog:

1) the DA refused to press charges against “N”, despite a recorded “confession”.

2) you have been unable to find an attorney willing to pursue a civil case against him.

3) in your own blog you post an article that if you’ve been raped once you’re statistically likely to be raped again (a mathematically nonsensical claim; your chances of being raped are independent of your rape status, the odds are not cumulative); this shows me that you have a mindset where you expect to be victimized again.

allow me to make this perfectly clear, i sympathize with you 100 percent, no person deserves to be sexually assaulted and while i couldn’t find the details of your first assault on your blog, i will share with you that i have stepped more than a few times to prevent a women from being attacked and had i been present i would have done my best to ensure that you weren’t attacked either.

when i was in college, i “dated” (i honestly don’t know what to call what we had) a girl, let’s call her ‘D’; this girl was adopted and though i didn’t discover this until years later, she had been the victim of incest (hence her adoption). looking back on it, it certainly puts her behavior with me in a light that allows me to understand what transpired between her and i. ‘D’ had numerous intimacy issues, and it was very hard to know how to act around her; while on a date she would spontaneously take my hand and hold it, have me put my arm around her, give me a tight hug, tell me how much she liked me, tell me how if we were married she would be willing to do all sorts of experimenting sexually including light bondage and anal but the very next moment of i tried to caress her face or tell her how beautiful she looked she would pull away in anger and shout at me “don’t touch me!!!” or “no i’m not” (when i told her she was beautiful). this went on for years until i finally told her how i felt about her, i told her i loved her and she responded by telling me she never wanted to speak to me again, that of she had known how i felt about her all along she would have stopped speaking to me years ago and that if i didn’t leave her alone was was going to go to the cops.

quite frankly i was shocked at her reaction, considering we had talked about getting married and having kids and so on, i couldn’t understand what the hell happened. i later found out about the incest and it did put things in perspective, it helped me understand this girl (which 10 years later i still have never spoken to her again) and i was kind of able to make sense of why she “mourned” st. valentine’s day (if you wanted her to go ballistic and get all pissed of all i had to do was buy her flowers or a gift for st. valentine’s day).

‘J’ is an even bigger mess; this is a women (she’s no 44, the attack happened when she was 17 IIRC) who i knew for more than a decade, we had expressed feelings of love for one another, we had been intimate on more than one occasion, we used to wrestle like little kids and yet every once in a while a “trigger” would go off in her head and while we were wrestling and i got her pinned in a compromising position, she would get very hostile and angry and yell at me “get off of me” with a real serious look on her face, one time she had actually punched me in the face and another kicked me in the crotch and after i got off her, her demeanor changed and she was back to normal hugging me and telling me how much i meant.

this woman was very screwed up mentally by the assault, she got very into S&M, she loved tying men up, gagging them and whipping them, beating them, biting them, and off course raping them; basically using a strap on and violently penetrating them anally.

so why have i told you all this? because reading through your blog paints for a me a picture of a young women (you say you’re 25) that went through at least one horrendous incident and who has understandably been scarred. you are also fearful of being attacked again (an understandable reaction) and you are trying to make sense of it all and your blog is an attempt to try to “own” the attack, so as to not let it define you.

if i may allow me to give you a few suggestions, which perhaps you may have either already considered or actually pursued:

1) get yourself some therapy, not from a support group but from a license professional psychiatrist and i would recommend seeing 2 separate ones, a man and a woman, so that you can get the feedback from 2 different viewpoints.

2) i think you would benefit greatly from intense martial arts training and weight lifting; you need to feel strong and confident; i was bullied all the way through high school and was beaten up more times that i can remember. during the summer of my junior into senior year i decided i was tired of being the small, fat kid that always got picked on and started doing 500 pushups and 500 situps a night; by the time school started again i had shot up a couple of inches and suddenly i was in shape and few people would mess with me. after i got out of high school i started lifting weights and studying martial arts religiously and quite frankly it’s come in handy more than a couple of times. i think psychologically you would benefit from such training immensely.

3) lastly, you can’t let these experiences change you to the point where you feel the need to “dress down”; where you feel scared to dress in a manner that’s flattering to you or makes you look attractive and you also shouldn’t let it effect you in such a way that you can’t take a compliment from a guy.

lastly you ask if God cares; i honestly don’t know. part of me wants to point out that when you consider how many wars there have been, how much heartache in mankind’s collective history, all the natural disasters and all the victims of crimes through the ages, one has to wonder if a) there even is a God, in the biblical sense and b) if there is a God if perhaps He is incapable of caring about life forms such as us.

since you have a religious background (‘D’ was a Pentecostal Christian), surely you must know that the bible of full of acts of cruelty by God, a fact that explicitly contradicts John 3:14. i supposed one answer is that since God granted all mankind free will that He does not interfere in mankind’s free exercise of said free will, even when such exercise violates someone else’s free will (because fundamentally most crimes come down to a free will violation, if you really think about it), but this also flies in the face of biblical teachings were disobeying God leads to eternal damnation, thus meaning we have free will that we aren’t supposed to use.

then there is the evolutionary viewpoint of rape, where some anthropologists have postulated that rape is an evolutionary tool left over from our cavemen ancestors that ensured the survival of the species by being an instrument of maximizing dna distribution, thus increasing the likelihood of survival of the human race.

for what it’s worth you have my sympathies for what you’ve been through and i wish you the best, i hope that it wasn’t out of line to email you and i hope that in some small way some of what i wrote either helps you now or in the future.

-chris.

I didn’t want to post the e-mail when I first read it because of the personal friends’ stories he gave, even though he did protect their identities by changing names for initials. But I got a second e-mail from Chris a few hours later that changed my mind:

E.A.

sorry to bother but i just had to write, i just read your account of your first “rape” and you have a very liberal definition of the term and quite frankly i find it a tad offensive that you would actually start a blog claiming you were “raped”, especially when i think of what my poor friends actually went through.

by your own admission you and ‘J’ had been very sexually active and you were an enthusiastic participant in your sexual trysts; you also admit that you “silently consented”; i hate to break this to you but when you’re in a relationship with someone that you claim you were inseparable with and he climbs into bed with you and initiates sexual relations with you and you “silently consent” then you weren’t raped!!!

do you know what rape is? it’s someone trying to have sex with you, you say ‘”no” and they force you to have sex anyway. neither one of your accounts comes anywhere near to being rape.

you need serious help, not because you are a “rape” survivor but because you’re nuts, you have a personality disorder where you feel the need to portray yourself as a victim in order to gain sympathy.

i can’t believe i actually felt sorry for you, thinking you had been the victim of a sexual assault.

Now I’ll share the reply I sent him:

Hello, Chris,

Thanks for writing. I’m a little upset by the way you addressed me especially in your second e-mail titled “first ‘attack’ “, and especially considering the fact that you don’t know me as a person, but I don’t mind trying to explain myself to you once respectfully.

I appreciate that you’re a male, considerably older than me, and I believe all of your accounts of your friends having been raped in the past. I will agree that they suffered ordeals more violent than what I went through, but I think it’s rather judgmental of you to imply that because I wasn’t beaten like your unfortunate friend J or attacked by a stranger like your unfortunate friend H, that my experiences don’t qualify as rape. [Note from E.A.: I addressed the comment he made about his unfortunate friend K, but I cut it out here to preserve my own identity for now.]

I’ll invite you to do a bit of research on Google or the laws in your state/country where you live, and find out for yourself what the legal definition of rape is. Both of my experiences fall under the definition of acquaintance or date rape. According to www.clarku.edu:

“When a person knows his/her attacker (partner, family member, doctor, neighbor, co-worker, etc.) it is considered an “acquaintance rape”.  Because of the personal connection to the perpetrator, the survivor may not classify what has happened as rape.  Acquaintance rapes account for more than 75% of all reported rapes.”

It also seems to be the type of rape that gets the least amount of respect, simply because a common assumption from people who have never experienced rape (such as yourself) is that a victim can’t be acquainted with a “real” attacker. It’s assumed that it’s not possible for a rapist to prime a victim for rape by getting to know them and getting in a position where the victim can be blindsided, in the same way that a robber might ‘case’ a house for weeks before deciding to break in. I left out a lot of details on my blog (my memory of the past 3 years isn’t perfect 100% of the time), but if I had mentioned that one of the first confessions ‘N’ made to me while we were still friends was that his biggest fear was “accidentally raping somebody someday”, would that give my story a little more credibility in your eyes? Because that is what he said, and I foolishly ignored the warning sign. I also ignored the way he laughed at the rape scene in the movie “300”. Why should he have had to assault me on the first day that we went on a date? He had known and gone to church with my relatives for years, and his family is a huge part of that church. It would have been very risky of him to try an assault like that so soon after meeting me, a new girl to his community. But when the assault did finally happen, everybody in the church knew that we had been dating already for a year, and that was a perfect set-up for watering the truth of my story down. This may also be how people who rape their spouses operate – I don’t know, I’m not a rapist, but it’s plausible and spousal rape is recognized as a crime, too, if you would like to look that up.

I did make it clear that I went to the location thinking of having sex, but I was also clear in saying that I didn’t stop N mid-act. I asked him to stop before he held my thighs open and inserted himself, pulled out and pretended he hadn’t done anything, and then inserted himself again and continued to have sex with me until he was finished and I asked him to pull out because of the pain. That’s not consent or changing my mind last minute by any legal definition. I don’t think the situation you described with M is rape, because I have a basic understanding of what rape actually is. I don’t even think the situation you described with M is similar.

You discredit me as a victim for 2 reasons that I never gave on my blog. I did say that the DA ended up dropping charges against N for ‘insufficient evidence’, but I also said that the police who were instructed to collect evidence never did. I had 2 witnesses who were able to attest that they heard N’s confession in full detail, and they were never questioned by the police. I also have text messages from N naming what he did to me as rape. Showing my phone to the DA is what convinced him to accept the case in the first place, so how is the negligence of the criminal justice system proof that I’m a liar? If you check the statistics given on RAINN.org, you’ll find that most reports of rape are ignored and/or never lead to charges. Does that mean that only convicted rapists are real rapists? I also did say that I was unable to find an attorney who would answer my calls – at the time the blog post was written. I’ve found representation since last week. Maybe I should announce that on my blog for anyone who believes I’m full of shit. And in my article about statistically being likely to be raped again, I quoted the statistic I found that I did not make up myself, I vented my upset with that discovery, and I gave my guesses for why that may be the case. I never once said that any rape victim should expect re-victimization.

After the rather harsh e-mail you sent me as a follow-up saying that I have a personality disorder and that I’m a liar, I don’t believe for a second that you’re sympathetic to any claim of rape that didn’t happen to a personal friend of yours, and I know you’re in the majority of insensitive, self-righteous, and clueless people out in the world, the same type of people who made me feel like shit at my church because they couldn’t see me as a human being the same way they saw their friends. I pray someday you’ll change your narrow views, but I won’t stop trying to speak up for others like me if you don’t. My blog is new and I plan to talk about my experience with one-on-one counseling therapy, but thank you for your other suggestion of taking self-defense classes. I should also thank you for giving me inspiration for another blog post.

I’ll treat your words with respect if you’ll do the same for me. There are plenty of writers in the blog universe that will entertain harassment from readers that are not even part of their target audience. I’m not one of them.

E.A.

The post Chris inspired will be up tomorrow, and after that I’ll get back to my series on Sammi Giancola of Jersey Shore. Enjoy your Labor Day, everyone 🙂

Does God Care About A Rape Victim?

Here is a place where you’re allowed to be angry, hopeful, triumphant.

After doing a series on famous people who have lived through rape (read part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 here if you’re interested), I wasn’t planning to write anything depressing as my next post, but today I was hit by a nasty wave of depression. Have you ever had a day where everything suddenly feels hopeless and futile? The kind where you find yourself crying so hard that you can’t talk, your thoughts are dark, and every bone in your body aches from the pain of just existing? That’s the kind of depression I’m feeling. To pretend like it’s anything else would be dishonest of me.

After my second rape and the psychological aftermath, I’ve found that I spend a lot of time questioning why I’m alive, and also where God is in all of it. If you know my story, you might remember that I once was a religious Christian. I grew up Catholic and went to church with my family every Sunday, and I was the kind of kid that loved the idea of a great fatherly spirit watching over me – maybe because I grew up in an unloving household. I always believed that God was my only guaranteed friend, and when I became an adult and decided that the Catholic faith wasn’t for me, I still wanted to be part of a church and still wanted to know how to be closer to Him. I wasn’t “Cathy Christian” at all, I mean, I still sinned like everybody else. But I tried to live by the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments and was introduced to a church that I thought supported those beliefs. That was where I met N, the man who raped me last year and pretty much destroyed my public reputation and life.

I don’t understand why God would allow so many miserable things to happen to me, all in such a short span of time. I’m trying to file a lawsuit against N for personal injury with the evidence I’m still holding, but I’m frustrated because although I’ve contacted a handful of lawyers this week looking for representation, I haven’t heard from anyone. I still remember what it felt like to have the district prosecutor’s office call me in July and tell me that my case wasn’t worth pursuing, even though the recorded confession that I had from N was what got the prosecution to take the case in the first place. What will I do if no lawyer wants to represent me even for a civil charge? I don’t even want to imagine being cast aside again. I don’t think I can bear that agony again.

But that’s what happens to so many rape victims around the world, and also sexual abuse victims, incest victims, victims who were molested … they never get justice. According to RAINN – the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network founded by alternative rock singer Tori Amos – 15 out of every 16 rapists will never spend a day in jail. Of the estimated 39% of attacks that are reported to the police, only 16.3% of those reports lead to a jail sentence for a rapist.

Isn’t God keeping track of all of this?

I was taught that God is all-seeing and all-powerful, and that even though He doesn’t just hand out blessings and happiness like a spiritual Santa Claus, He is a God of justice and mercy. It was hard for me to see where some atheists and unbelievers are coming from until very recently. I don’t mean to give the impression that I’m trying to convince anyone reading of being for or against any religion – I believe in religious tolerance even if I am/was a Christian. But now I can’t decide what I believe anymore, and I feel rather betrayed at times for trusting God. I’ve stopped going to the church where N and Pastor D are, and haven’t really felt the need to look for another church of any kind. I don’t pray that much anymore, just sort of argue with God and cry – it feels like I’m really talking to myself. It’s like, what is the point of all this suffering? To teach me a lesson in how to absorb pain? Why does God deny justice to the family of a 4-year-old child that’s molested and murdered by a psycho caretaker? Why does God allow the courts to throw out complaint after complaint and devastate so many victims trying to seek help from the legal system? Should anyone look at the example life of a suffering or paralyzed victim and be excited to believe in God?

Today I really don’t know what to think, but I’m welcoming any and all feedback. I know somebody out there can help me find some clarity.

Part 2 of 2: The Worst Year of My Life

This is a continuation of my nightmare with N. Click the link to read about the second time I was raped if you need a refresher.

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The Morning After

I woke up the next morning with my cell phone tucked in my hand, displaying two new text messages. Both were from N, offering another apology. Reading them made me sick in an instant.

I began to text back in a tearful fury, reminding him of what he had done to me and that I never wanted to hear from or see him again. Still, N kept replying, kept apologizing. He admitted that he had raped me and I was justified in hating him. It was too much to handle for me, so I went back to sleep and didn’t get up again until 3 in the afternoon.

A phone call from my hometown friend – nicknamed “B” – woke me up. He was reassuring, a complete godsend, and he never asked for details but believed me from the start, which I really appreciated and needed. I had no trouble accusing N to his face, but saying and thinking the word “rape” to myself actually made my vision shake, and on some level I wanted to believe I was wrong about what had happened. After talking to B, I got the idea to call the head pastor of the church where I had met N and became a member, hoping for further guidance. That was probably the biggest and most naive mistake of my life.

“B” Warned Me Not to Go There

I had a nagging feeling that I was treading down the wrong path, but I had so much faith in my leadership at the time. The pastor – I’ll call him “D” – had grown to be a trusted mentor of mine and I’d worked closely with him volunteering for the church for 2 years alongside N. I called him not knowing what I was expecting, but believing that he would be willing to help. The first time I told Pastor D over the phone that N had raped me, he ended the call quickly to tend to an “emergency” at home – a red flag I ignored. Pastor D called me back an hour later sounding skeptical about my accusation, but grudgingly took my word for it. He also let me know plainly that I could get him into trouble for having that discussion, but that he would “find a way to deal with it” and “give N a talk”. A far cry from the comfort I got from B.

I called B back immediately to vent about the lecture I’d gotten from my pastor. B set me straight – well, at least, he tried to. He thought my intentions were nice enough, but that it wasn’t worth it to think of preserving anyone’s public “good guy” image, and that was ultimately what I was doing. “Go to the police, forget the church,” B told me, “what N did was a crime and he should pay for it with a criminal charge, not a pastor’s scolding. And what if the church doesn’t want to help?” But I was scared of scandalizing my new community. I worried about my uncle finding out and telling my family back home, and really I was scared of dealing with N again and going through criminal charges. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone knowing I was a rape magnet. I listened to B, nodded my head at his logic, but continued on my path.

The Tribe Has Spoken

I waited for Pastor D to call me with an update for 3 weeks. In that time I went from a snotty, crying mess to an enraged zombie. I wasn’t eating, and even though classes for a new college degree program I had been dying to start ran at the beginning of fall, I never went. I rarely left my house, and I checked my phone every minute. I contemplated suicide and sent a lot of miserable texts to N venting my anger, which he rarely replied, and if at all, only to say things like “I’m sorry”, “what can I say?”, “maybe you need counseling” – as if I had been the one to invite my situation. I finally broke down and told my uncle what had happened, and his angry call to the pastor got us a private meeting with himself and N. There, I showed the pastor all the text message correspondence I had saved as proof of what N did, and Pastor D assured my uncle and I that the church would decide on a suitable punishment for N’s behavior. I thought all would be well at last, and I could put the rape behind me knowing that I stood up for myself this time – not like with J.

A week or so after that, somebody let out my secret. Everyone in our church – parents, young adults, children – heard that I was raped by N. But N was a church darling, loved and respected by everyone, his mother was a prominent member of the choir, and nobody wanted to believe it. They made it easy for N to spread vicious lies about me. He and his mother told people that I had conjured up my story to “get back at him for dumping me”, as a plot to “extort him for money”, and that I “had a history with drugs and depression” that was twisting my sense of reality. Up until that point, I had stopped attending the church – I didn’t want to see anyone after the rape. But my uncle convinced me to return, to “put on a bold face”, and I came back to whispers and sidelong glances. I felt like an ex-convict.

Nearly four months after the rape, the issue was formally made public to the church by the pastors and leadership as the topic of a business meeting. It wasn’t church protocol for me to sit in and listen, but I snuck into the church and listened to the discussion from a viewing room above the sanctuary. I heard Pastor D tell the congregation that the membership of two youth was subject to suspension for indulging in fornication. I heard him say that N had approached him with feelings of guilt for fornicating with me, and because of that N wanted to accept punishment and be absolved of his sin. I heard Pastor D say that there was no truth in the rumor circulating that I had complained of being raped. I watched my uncle and his family sitting in the front of the congregation, quiet and looking ashamed. The church was allowed to vote on our punishment, and my membership was suspended. Even now when I think about it, I can’t believe it all really did happen.

Bitch. Ho. Liar.

I went to my hometown for Christmas to get away from it all, and returned with a purpose: to see N behind bars. I also went back to the church, thinking that I couldn’t and wouldn’t let anyone there get the best of me. I tried to hold my head up while I heard people that used to call me a daughter and sister in the faith whisper about me, shoot dirty looks at me during the sermon, refuse to shake my hand when it came to greeting time, leave a wide space in the pews for me to sit in isolation. No one asked for my side of the story, and really no one cared. What hurt the most was watching my uncle and his wife bow to the proud peacock that was N’s mother, never thinking twice about conversing with her and N like friends in front of me. My uncle’s wife even once said to me, “I can’t stop being friends with them just because of you. That’s not Christian behavior.”

So I stopped dealing with my relatives, moved to another place, and went to the police – all without telling anyone. The police took my statement twice before deciding that I “didn’t have a case” even with the preserved text messages on my phone, so I went ahead to a Justice of the Peace. That got me some attention from a district prosecutor, and N was charged in the spring, about 7 months after the rape. It also got me a lot of hatred in the church when the news spread. Pastor D put his voice in the mix, supporting the lie that I was a drug abuser. Another adult member, one whose daughter I used to help tutor on the weekends, said to anyone who would listen that “even a three-year-old could tell that I was lying” just before the preliminary hearing. I struggled with fits of rage and hating everyone, all the time, but I focused on making it through to a court trial and having the truth exposed.

Sucker

It didn’t happen that way. Last month, in July, I got a call from the prosecutor’s office letting me know that the charges against N had been dismissed because of “insufficient evidence”. I had the text messages saved in original format on my cell phone, but the police never bothered to investigate or forward that evidence to the prosecutor who asked for it. I never even heard from the police all through the proceedings, which began in March. I became furious. I moved back to my hometown without notice. I took pictures of the messages on my phone and posted them on the Internet for everyone in my church to see on Facebook. One person out of the 200+ church friends I used to have contacted me and apologized for not believing me, and making me feel like garbage. One.

Now it’s August, and the anniversary of my 2nd rape is fast approaching. I’m battered, bruised, and disillusioned, but I’m not finished. Something in my heart tells me I can’t afford to let go, not after everything I’ve been through and lost. I don’t think there’s anything worse that I can go through. I have nothing more to lose.

By the way … I still have the text messages.

Part 1 of 2: The Second Time I Was Raped

Click the link to read the first half of my story if you’re interested.

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I met “N” just before my 25th birthday. After successfully avoiding J for the first few months of the new year, I felt like a new person. I had finally completed a move to a new city I’d been eyeing since I was old enough to dream, and I was confident because I knew I had relatives living there who could help make the transition easier for me. (And I wouldn’t be running into J so much anymore, so that was a major plus.) I hooked up with a close uncle and his family, and they introduced me to their church. I was targeted by N on my first visit.

Not My Type

Now if I said before that J wasn’t my type at first, I was telling you the truth, but N was completely not my type. I really liked his happy-go-lucky nature and sense of humor, but I wasn’t attracted to him and pegged him as a friend from the get-go. N was a year older than me and so intelligent that it showed in his face, the one guy that most of the church youth looked up to, and in some ways he reminded me of the stepfather I lost the year before. But N was attracted to me and told my uncle’s wife plainly, hoping she would give her blessing to take me out. Very ‘Pride and Prejudice’ of him, no?

I balked at the idea of dating again. I thought it would be rude to turn him down for such a nice offer, but I really didn’t want to be involved with men again that way, and I told him on the first date – which I allowed to actually be my birthday. You can tell me now of all the dating rules I broke by letting that happen and I’ll agree with you, but back then … I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain what was going on with me. In my heart I knew what I didn’t want, but I was so new to putting up boundaries for myself that even when I protested with my lips, I still followed the lead of others. I didn’t trust my own judgment enough to enforce it, and I think that’s what ultimately did me in.

Instant Connection

It took a month for us to be labeled a couple. I’m not kidding. I told everyone and anyone who asked that N and I were good friends, and N did the same, but nobody was buying it. At church, N would make a point of seeking me out to share a joke or his opinion on the sermon, and he would sit as close to me during lessons as possible. He texted me from dawn until dusk every day without fail. Picking me up 3, 4 times a week just to hang out and see a movie or grab something to eat and drive around until it was dark was no big deal to him. His mother and my uncle were so used to seeing us together that we had pretty much blended our families. We discussed politics, philosophy, the latest video games (to betray a little bit of my inner geek for you here). We talked about everything, and I told him some things about me that I never felt comfortable telling anyone else, not even J – but one thing I couldn’t bring myself to tell N the full story about was J. Sometimes N would go against code, break down, and confess how much he wanted to be my boyfriend, but I never let those discussions last very long until I thought I was going to lose him.

The End of the Chase

Isn’t is sad/pathetic/(insert your own descriptor here) how oftentimes, we never realize how much a person is growing on us until they decide to get involved with someone else? But 2 years later, N got tired of feeling rejected and started to see another girl that we had both just met, and I missed his company a lot more than I thought I would. Long story made short, I mustered up the courage to tell him how I felt and N confessed that he didn’t really want to date anyone else, and we finally became a couple. But it was weird – I felt like I was over the moon, and N was over it before it began. He was still really attentive physically, but it didn’t feel like his heart was in it anymore, and I began to feel insecure. We started sleeping together, but soon it began to feel like that was all we still did together. N wanted a lot of space. He’d stopped talking about marrying me someday. I didn’t know what to do to keep him interested, and didn’t realize that it wasn’t me – it was that the thrill of the chase was gone.

The Attack

One day at the end of the summer in 2010, I texted N desperate to hang out, and he picked me up to go for a drive. Our plans quickly changed to a hunt for a private make-out spot, which was frustrating with the sun still high in the sky and every place haunted by the 9-to-5 crowd. His place was out of the question and so was mine – our religion prohibited sex before marriage and we were clearly going against it and didn’t want to be caught. Finally we opted for N’s deserted future workplace, which at the time was under construction. N took me around the unfinished building to see where all the offices would be, and then down to the foyer. I had never done it in such a public place before – the most adventurous I had ever gone was a dark alley inside a parked car – and I was nervous about people on the street being able to detect us. N loosened me up enough to get my skirt off, his clothes off, and I saw him reach for a condom and start to put it on. The nerves came back in a flash. I asked him to wait for a few minutes, because I didn’t feel ready yet. N said, “Sure”, and gently took my knees in both of his large hands, resting my ankles on his shoulders. Suddenly I felt pressure. I asked what he was doing, naively. N: “Nothing.” I told him I had felt him pushing his way in. N: “No, look, see? It’s out”, followed by a popping sound. I relaxed, but only by a notch. Then I felt him again.

This time, it hurt. His grip on my legs tightened, he crossed his arms around them so that it was harder for me to move. I was stunned, and I said, “You know, what you’re doing is rape” in a quiet voice that I didn’t recognize from me. All I remember after that is how much the reaction look on his face terrified me – something like a mix of rage and loathing and mocking, maybe. I got scared, and I thought about how pathetic I had been with J, not moving or screaming, and how I was doing the same thing again as N, who was easily twice or maybe 3 times my size, made feel like a world-class idiot. I can’t tell you how long it lasted, but it felt like forever. I just laid still and watched him and tried not to make it any more painful. The next thing I heard myself say was, “Can you take it out, please? It kind of hurts”, and that finally stopped him. Once we had disconnected, I shot off the carpenter’s table I had been lying on and stayed in a corner of the room, putting my skirt back on. N apologized a few times. He said he thought I was joking, but I didn’t talk. I was dumb enough to let him drive me home. I started screaming and yelling at him halfway through the ride, and he never tried to stop me. After I got out of the car, I went straight to my room, and talked myself into believing I could have a good night’s sleep. I couldn’t sleep, so I called a friend from my hometown and told him what had happened. He got angry, comforted me a bit, gave me some advice, and promised to call again in the morning. Then I finally fell asleep.