Here’s How The Man Who Raped Me Covered His Tracks

Six years later I finally saw through his lies

Image by Anja from Pixabay

[Warning: descriptions of sexual violence and emotional manipulation]

Hands around my neck. A burning pain between my legs.

Another flashback hits, nine months after my first trauma memory surfaced. From a moment of calm meditation in my bed, I am plunged into terror. Gripped by another memory of rape. But this one’s different, more recent.

I was raped a second time.

As soon as the memory took hold, I knew who it was and when. We’d only met once, at a party in 2016 and I’d always felt weird about that night. There were 6+ hours I couldn’t remember.

At the time I’d let him fill in the gaps for me. A trusting person, I took his narrative as gospel. But with this new memory in mind, I was able to read between the lines. The reality of what happened that night became undeniably clear. I was drugged at a party and raped on my way home.

The next morning the man who raped me reached out on Facebook messenger.

Here’s how the conversation unfolded:

I’d woken up the next morning with the worst hangover of my life and with it, an intense feeling of shame. The extensive memory blackout unsettled me. My friends reassured me I must have drunk more than I thought. I’d had minor memory blackouts from drinking in the past, so this seemed the most likely explanation. When I received these messages, I had no reason not to believe what he said.

Reading this now, it strikes me how unnecessarily detailed his account of the evening is. It just kept coming without any prompting from me. Every message pushed me deeper into a pit of shame. The erratic behaviour he described was so out of character for me. I felt the need to apologise. Repeatedly. He kept laying it on thick.

In hindsight, the true story makes a lot more sense. After the first flashback, additional fragments of memory began to show themselves. Each new snapshot threw light on his lies. I’m now certain that he spiked my drink when I first met him in the kitchen. I remember being introduced to him and chatting. I even fancied him a bit. Admitting that makes me feel sick with fear someone will throw it back at me. Evidence that I ‘asked for it’ despite the fact no one asks to be raped.

Each new snapshot threw light on his lies

After the kitchen, my next memory is waking up in a pile of coats in one of the bedrooms. I’m confused. Someone enters and I tell them I must have fallen asleep up here, and that I’m reeeeeeally comfy. Next thing I know someone is beside me on the bed. I can’t move my body and I’m scared. I assume this is the moment he describes things moving ‘a bit fast’. But the reason I was uncomfortable isn’t because we were in someone else’s room. It’s because I was slipping in and out of consciousness as he assaulted me on that bed.

I’m unsure how I got from the coat pile to walking home. It seems likely his description of me attacking him in the hall is another case of the truth turned on its head. If I’d asked him to take me home, why would I then tell him off for following me? My ‘volatility’ sounds more like me trying to get away in fleeting moments of lucidity. It appears I failed as somewhere on that walk home he took the opportunity to rape me. This is the flashback we started with. Since it first came up, another detail has attached to it. An image of a green electricity box. I still feel wobbly whenever I see one.

The only other memory I have of that night is dragging myself up the stairs in my building. Clinging onto the handrail because my legs keep collapsing beneath me. I recently remembered a spate of these flashbacks in the months that followed the assault. My legs would give way, seemingly for no reason at all. Always when I was walking alone. It was terrifying. I’d struggle to regain control. My legs a heavy weight. Panic rising. And then it would pass. By the time I arrived at my destination, I would forget that it had happened.

This is when he really goes in with covering his tracks. Even explicitly saying my bad experiences weren’t ‘related to [him] in any way’. Why would he need to clarify that if I had no reason to think he’d done anything wrong?

He also throws in another reference to my drug use. A nice detail to undermine me should I remember and report him to the police. He does a great job painting me as an unreliable victim and himself as a disgruntled, jilted lover.

I nearly left these last screenshots out of this article, because I still feel ashamed by my response. Why did I want to meet up with him after he had raped me??

It turns out this fawning behaviour is a really common trauma response. An instinctive reaction: befriend the predator and they won’t hurt you again. Flawed logic but it’s not easy to think straight in the aftermath of trauma. Our brains short-circuit in an attempt to protect us. It’s the reason I went back to the ex who raped me as a teenager and why so many people stay with their abusive partners. It’s not our fault.

This is how abusers operate

The manipulation laid out above seems obvious to me now. The gaslighting and relentless character assassination. The many half truths and whole lies. But I couldn’t see it at the time. Until the flashbacks came up I had zero memory with which to challenge his story. That day when he messaged me, I was so unwell from the drugs he gave me. I was fragile, confused and easy to manipulate. Each message, each detail, made me feel worse and worse about myself.

I was fragile, confused and easy to manipulate

The sad truth is that knowing how abusers operate won’t protect anyone from abuse. There is little I could have done to protect myself from this man. Been more careful with my drink perhaps? But at a small gathering in a good friend’s house, that didn’t feel necessary. The reality is if someone wants to drug and rape people, they’ll find a way to do it.

I’m not sharing my story to prevent rape

It’s up to the people who rape to stop raping. But an awareness of how they operate can help us all better have each other’s backs. I wish me or my friends had spotted the manipulation that next day. I would have been able to access support, perhaps even get some form of justice, if we had. Instead I added this experience to the pile of repressed traumas on my back.

We never want to believe the worst has happened, even when all the clues are there. But the worst does happen, far more frequently than we think. So be alert to it. Look out for your friends. If something doesn’t feel right, it likely isn’t.

For six years, I carried that shame and pain without knowing where it came from. Now that I know, I’m starting to heal from it. Sharing this is another step forward in that.