"Everyone knew something happened to me because of the injuries and craziness,
but I kept the secret of what really happened."I have just realized that it is almost nineteen years ago that I was sexually assaulted. January 4th, 1984. I was 17.
Right after it happened I had to give the police a statement. From that time till now, I never told anyone at all, ever, what actually happened. Everyone knew something happened to me because of the injuries and craziness, but I kept the secret of what really happened.
Now I think it is time for me to remember, make some sense of it, speak out, and see how that experience has shaped me and my life. What happened to me wasn't my shame. It was his.
I am doing this to aid in my own healing.
I had gone out to a movie the weekend before with a friend named Bill. It turned out that I ended up with his keys, so I offered to stop by where he worked after school and drop them off. He gave me directions as he worked in an unfamiliar part of town.
I got on the bus with my friends, same as always, but got off half way there and started to walk. It was a very cold day, and quite dark. Up here in Canada it gets dark very early in January.
After a couple of blocks I started to get scared... it was so quiet and deserted. I didn't know if it was closer to where I was going, or where I was coming from. I decided to keep going.
I was walking past a Ukrainian Catholic Church. There were ice sculptures of the nativity scene in front of the building. Later the police said he had just been waiting and hiding behind the statures.
Just when I got close to the end of the block I heard running feet behind me. Then suddenly I was knocked to the ground on my face and someone was lying on me and choking me. My first thought was "Must be Bill... this isn't a funny joke!" Then he turned my face to the side hard and said "give me a kiss, I have a knife" and I could see it wasn't Bill, it was a young guy about my age, very dirty lank brownish long hair, a little weak looking, but stronger then he looked. He looked incredibly ugly.
He "kissed" (for lack of a better word) me painfully and started rubbing himself on me then started muttering "don't worry, I'm not going to rape you." Then I had a big burst of strength and began struggling as hard as I could. He choked me harder and I passed out.
When I came too, he was dragging me into a small parking area behind the church - between where the clergy lived and the main body of the church. It was invisible from the street and the only house visible through the back lane was all dark.
He asked me to give me him my purse and any jewelry I had. I was hoping robbery was all he wanted, but I knew it wasn't. I gave him what he asked for, but I managed to secretly take off my watch - the one my grandmother had just given to me - and drop it into the snow and bury it. That seemed really important at the time. (it is worth noting that I "lost" it and everything else associated with the attack immediately.)
He kept saying I was so pretty and that he wouldn't rape me. I felt very distant and unreal - like I was there but not really. It was the first time I ever dissociated.
After that it is very tangled up. Some I only know because of the injuries. My memories are like a broken glass picture. Every fragment is hallucinogenically clear - but all the bonds and connections between them are broken. I can smell these memories, taste them, feel them... everything. I know the consistency of the snow, the colour of the mortar in the bricks, I can gag now on the smell of his saliva. Nothing ever faded - but some things are blocked. I can never see his face in my memories.
I remember him crouching over me trying to get my breasts uncovered. I hit him as hard as I could in the testicles from a bad angle tangled in my coat. His jeans protected him. He laughed at me and said I must like it rough. Then he punched me very hard in the face. I didn't feel it at all.
I remember being kicked in the face and the feel of my eyelid splitting open then there was so much blood I couldn't see.
I remember him biting my breasts and going to some quiet place far far away. Everything was in slow motion. I knew he would kill me and it would never end till I was dead. I never even felt that he broke skin repeatedly. I needed stitches, but I never felt the pain when it happened. After, the doctor told me I might have lost that nipple if he'd bit just a little bit harder. To this day I can't stand my breasts being touched.
I remember his dirty jeans and penis against my mouth. I remember choking and retching surrounded by the horrible ammonia smell of semen.
I tried to scream over and over again but couldn't make any powerful sound at all. I was more then the throat injury - I was frozen in terror. Every move was so hard and felt so slow and ineffective.
Eventually there was a sound in the church residence - a window sliding. He turned to look and I pushed him off balance as hard as I could and rolled to my feet and ran just as I was, half dressed and bleeding at -30" Celsius. I never felt the cold and I swear I never ran so fast.
I ran to the first lighted house I could see. It was across the street, over two sets of train tracks, and three houses down. I banged on the door and a man opened it. I was scared of him but asked if I could use the phone. I was weirdly in control. I called my mother and told her I was "mugged". I couldn't say the word "raped". She kept me on the phone and called my dad to pick me up on the other phone line. Then I fell apart finally, shaking and crying.
My dad came to get me. He took me to the hospital, very calm and reassuring - very "in crisis mode".
I remember knowing everyone in the hospital could see what happened to me. They put me in an exam room. My dad went to call the Rape Crisis Centre to send counselors. I was alone. That was when I saw myself in the mirror for the first time. Then I unfroze for a minute and started crying and shaking again. I looked terrifying and I terrified myself.
I had my first gynecologist exam then, as well as all the other parts of the evidence exam. I was alone again. I got stitched up. They took my clothes away. I felt uncovered and scared. They gave me a sweat suit. I had no underwear and felt bad about that.
The police asked me to go to the station and give my statement. I was very, very, very in control but I knew I was on the edge of something really bad.
The counselors were there, but I was alone when they took pictures of my injuries. Having to show my breasts to the male photographer was like another assault.
I gave my statement. It was so shameful and embarrassing. I wish it had been a woman. I didn't let my dad come with me. I thought it would hurt him too much to hear what happened. I felt judged by the police officer. I didn't know polite terms for some of what he did and I thought the police officer thought I must be a slut for knowing the words that I did.
I went to school the next day, even though my parents wanted me to stay home. But I couldn't stay. I wore sunglasses and told people I'd been mugged. By 10:00 I was hiding in a ball under the stairs. A girl I knew came to sit with me and said quietly "you weren't just mugged, were you?" I started crying. She skipped class and took me to a coffee shop.
For the next year she was my major support - her and the crisis counselors. She babysat me when I was suicidal, cared about me, didn't reject me when I started slashing myself up or dripped blood over my schoolwork in the back of class. She could reach me even when no one else could. She is still my best friend. Bonds like those are forever.
One day about two months after the assault two uniformed police came to the office of my small parochial school and took me away in a cop car. They said they had a suspect. They took me into the same room with him. No one called my parents or a counselor or anyone. I was all alone. I couldn't ID him for sure. The person there looked so scared and young, I couldn't be sure. That was when I really started to slide into hell.
The next 18 months were (in clinical terms) acute suicidal depression, dissociation, derealization, depersonalization, self mutilation, panic attacks, hypervigilence, phobia, intrusive memories, and flashbacks so acute that I thought they were real.
My therapy focused hard on a political and societal way of understanding rape. So I knew I shouldn't feel the way I did. I knew not to talk about really feeling responsible, shameful, guilty, and polluted. I just knew it was true, despite what my head was saying.
I tried group therapy, but I felt so guilty for feeling so bad for so long when I was only assaulted once. Everyone there seemed to have a better claim to there pain then me. I felt so defective.
I wish so much that I'd gotten the kind of therapy I have found now back then. I wish I'd been given antidepressants. I even wish I'd been hospitalized.
But I survived.
Life went on. I told myself I was over it, it was a long time ago, it wasn't important. But I was wrong. 2 or 3 years ago I got a diagnosis of PTSD. My life started to make sense again.
Eventually, after a child and short marriage, I got married again to my husband, had two kids in rapid succession and started a business with my husband. It was too much. My coping skills, such as they were, were overcome. I had a very serious depression with my second son 5 years ago. It started when I was pregnant and lasted almost two years. I was dissociated almost all that time. I have almost no memories of his babyhood, and the ones I have are not nice. I was completely isolated in the house. I felt dangerously sorry for my son. I thought the kids would be better off if I were dead.
Finally, after a whole day of crying on the floor I realized I might be depressed and started the process of getting help.
Now I have a marriage with a man whom I love and who loves me, but we have so many problems with PTSD. I have three beautiful boys. I still have all the same problems but I am working hard in therapy. It is hard and destabilizing, but I have to believe this is necessary.
Oh, and the attacker? He was 16. He was caught a year later. There were three victims we know of. He got two years minus a day in juvenile detention. I am looking at starting the third decade of my sentence.
Writing this and telling my story for the first time is part of the process of reclaiming my life. I hope someone else is moved to break the silence, and stop keeping someone else's shameful secret.
-Anonymous
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