The aftermath of being raped by Joe Zaczyk. How I figured it out.
See the bottom of this post for links to all previous posts on this story.
It took me a while to figure out what happened that night. I couldn’t recall everything right away. It was chaotic, confusing, and manipulative…exactly the same way the first 4 weeks had been talking to Joe Zaczyk.
After the Rape: Day 1
I wake up and text Joe a sweet sentiment. I haven’t put the pieces together yet. He promptly breaks it off with me. I have too high of expectations of him (ie. I expect my partner to be consistent with their communication and effort). He also, all of a sudden, realizes he can’t handle long distance and, in general, feels he might not be ready for a committed relationship.
We talk back and forth half of the day. He is short-tempered, defensive, and making excuses that don’t line up. Regardless of the bullshit he was spewing, it’s clear he’s made up his mind.
My last message was a simple “ok” in response to him saying he didn’t see a way forward.
My 23-yr old niece and I make plans to go see the ever-upbeat Rainbow Kitten Surprise in concert that night. It was a beautiful night. We laughed, we hugged and danced and danced and danced. Maybe it was the after-breakup high or disassociating from the trauma I hadn’t even fully accepted yet or feeling relief from being out of the push and pull that is dating Joe…whatever it was, I felt better mentally than I’d felt in weeks. I went home on cloud 9.
Then…I get another message from Joe.
My anxiety immediately returns. I thought we’d brought this to an end. He’d already broken up with me in ways only a true dirty asshole could. He nonchalantly chats like nothing happened. Pretending like he cared about my day after weeks of him barely making an effort then breaking up with me after having sex felt fake and manipulative. Then says “I feel like you want me to respond to your message but Idk what else to say.” If false empathy was fresh piss on a cold day, it would’ve been steaming on the sidewalk right then.
I replied that no, we’d already discussed it at length, I’d said “ok”. He’d made his point, I didn’t need a response. He wasn’t ready for a long-term relationship and that’s what I’m looking for. There’s nothing else for us to talk about.
I pray that’s the end of it and go to bed.
After the Rape: Day 2
The next morning, I wake up to a voice message from him…dripping again with false empathy and trendy psychology babble. I’m still unsure why he continues to message me after we’ve already established it’s over, why doesn’t he let it go? He’s many times over shown he’s not the sentimental, thoughtful type so acting like he cares about my feelings now feels very inauthentic. As he signs off, he attempts a sexy delivery, lowering his voice and saying he’ll be “thinking about me”, ending with a sultry “goodbye…for now”.
No one else (still to this day) has exuded the kind of total ick during a break-up like Joe. Creep radiates off of that guy. With the other men, you can feel the love and respect in the air. We’re kind and empathetic to each other, even if it didn’t work out between us. Truly beautiful humans.
I skip responding to the bullshit and ask him to send me his test results that proves he doesn’t have STDs. He’d mentioned weeks before he always got re-tested between partners and would show this to anyone he was planning to have sex with. I think to myself…why am I just now asking for this instead of before I had sex with him? I would never risk that normally.
He throws a fit. Our text exchange:
He never sent the results. Instead, he sent a screenshot of an email from his doctor replying to his test results (supposedly clean). I took it. I was so done dealing with him and clearly, I just needed to get checked myself.
I move on. Joe was a 4-week, constant dramatic-as-fuck chat that ended in, what I thought at the time, a one-night stand (that I couldn’t even remember) where he then dumped me via text while in the same city as me. No thank you.
I decided to message another guy, Adam, who I’d been talking to before all this went down. Why not? He lives in Denver and I liked all of our chats leading up to this. Better to see if we vibe in person while I’m in town vs go on a 4-week roller-coaster trying to figure it out via chat like I did with Joe. I ask Adam if he has time to meet up the next day. I have 2 hours before my flight. He says yes. Little did I know how much he would teach me in such a short amount of time.
After the Rape: Day 3 +
I meet Adam. I plan to just hang with him for an hour (my usual first meet standard) but he’s so enjoyable to be around (and sooo cute), I find myself wishing I had more than two hours. In a short amount of time, we ended up randomly discussing so many of the same topics that Joe and I had in our entire 4 weeks of conversing…and with Adam, I felt immediately safe. There was no anxiety. I felt heard. I felt his genuine, empathetic spirit. Kindness radiated from him. It felt (and still feels) like Adam was sent to me at just the right moment. His genuineness was my second clue that my intuition about Joe was spot on, all along. There was definitely something off about Joe and I’d known it right from the first voice message he sent me on Bumble. If only I’d listened…
When I got home from Denver, my anxiety came back full force. I started messaging Joe, waffling back and forth between being angry for all the manipulation and lies to taking on all of the blame. To say I was confused is an understatement. I’ve never, in my life, felt so confused about who someone is or felt such a lack of control over my own thoughts. My brain would not let me rest in that month that followed.
He ignored me for 5 days.
I told my girlfriends about my night with him (but left out the scary parts). Even still, hearing the night’s details immediately elicited “sounds like you got roofied” comments. I brushed them off. I wasn’t ready to let go of who I thought he was and the connection I thought we had.
Even though I wasn’t ready to say it out loud or admit it to my friends, I had a lot of questions. I asked Joe for a Facetime. I needed some clarity. Surprisingly, to this, he responded quickly. He said he’d do it as long as we didn’t talk about anything from our past. I internally rolled my eyes…what else is there to talk about? You broke up with me, we don’t have a future! Plus, I had lots of questions about “our past”. Specifically, what can you remember from that night, Joe? Because, 5 days later, I was starting to realize that I couldn’t remember much of anything and just how odd that was.
I had no idea what to expect out of him but I knew I had to do this. He’d already shown he would lie so seeing his facial expressions and body language when he answered my questions was key.
I started the call playfully. If I wanted any answers, I knew I’d need to stroke his ego and not appear as if I’m accusing him of anything, so I joked about that night, “I’m sure you had a great time but I was totally out of it so I know I couldn’t have been amazing! What do you remember?” He enjoyed this.
Btw, in all the times I said to him over that month after the rape that I “couldn’t remember anything”, or “I don’t know how I got that drunk”, or “I was totally out of it”…not once did he refute any of this or seem at all surprised.
Tell me, if you didn’t realize your date was out of their mind while you were hanging out or having sex with them, wouldn’t you be shocked when you found this out? Wouldn’t you say something like “whoa! what do you mean you can’t remember anything?!” or “really? I couldn’t tell!” or any number of other responses. With Joe, there was never anything but a knowing glimmer in his eye. Which…I found disturbing.
He didn’t tell me much more than I already knew but his body language, expressions and what he did say was enlightening enough.
- “There was a lot more things I could have blown your mind with [sexually] that I didn’t get to do to you”, he said.
- “I feel like I remember you choking me…” I said to him. His face went white. He looked uncomfortable and said “no, I just like women’s necks so I was just feeling it.” Wow. Lie. I could remember his hands squeezing my neck so hard it hurt and woke me out of unconsciousness, begging him to stop.
- “Were you trying to take my makeup off at one point?” I asked him. He looked away, not able to make eye contact and stumbling for words.
- Later on, he said, if I ever came out to Seattle, he’d love to hang out but that he’d probably have a hard time keeping his hands off of me because he’s so attracted to me and I’m so gorgeous. Right.
At the end, when we were hanging up, he blew me a fucking kiss.
I got off feeling confused again. I knew what I’d seen and heard was totally sketch but I couldn’t let go of who I thought he was (before the rape) and his inconsistent behavior towards me only made things more muddy.
But the memories from that night wouldn’t go away. They gnawed at my brain to look at them, to see them fully. I didn’t want to. I persisted in my denial. I told myself, he didn’t know, he didn’t mean to, we were drunk. My memories replied…but your body was limp. You were out cold. You didn’t drink that much. You’ve never acted remotely like this ever before on a date. You can’t even remember having a conversation with him.
My anxiety was so high now and I felt better whenever I was in contact with him, even if it wasn’t always pleasant. Could this be a more accurate account of a narcissist’s playbook, btw? Over the next few weeks… I messaged him numerous times, waffling again between my normal sanity and calling out his behavior, to groveling and trying to win him back, offering to compromise my values to keep him in my life… anything to stay connected.
In my most desperate moment, I asked him to teach me to sext, so I could be good at it for a guy in the future (he was always trying to get me to do this when we were talking before but I’d refused).
He was cold as ice to the request. He responded harshly, and in a reprimanding tone said he was “putting his energy” back into the Seattle girl he’d told me he “didn’t have an emotional connection with” and “didn’t have the ‘soul thing’ with”. Sexting with me would be disrespectful to her.
Interesting that he has now discovered his morals. So, earlier this same day, when he told me he would like to have sex with me and show me all of his amazing bedroom moves if I came in town…that is ok but not sexting? And when we were dating and he was sexting 2 other women and having sex with another, that was ok but now it’s not?
I told him I was happy he was finally giving her the attention and respect she deserves, she sounds like a great woman and left it at that.
And they persisted. They gnawed at me. They said…you can’t remember taking off your clothes. Why weren’t his clothes off if both of you were participating? Why did you leave your boots and knee-high stockings on, you wouldn’t do that…
Most of the time when I messaged him, he wouldn’t answer. But every once in a while, something seemed to trigger him and he would lash out or agree or suggest a FaceTime/phone call to talk through something. He would never respond via text to anything I asked for clarity on (as in me calling out all of his lies and inconsistencies or things I remembered about the night), he would only answer via calls. In hindsight, when I later reported this to the police, I understood why. He didn’t want any record of him admitting or saying something that could incriminate him. This isn’t his first rodeo, that was clear.
Except once. When I told him some of my guy friends said that it must have been bad sex and that’s why he dumped me. Quite the burn to a narcissist’s obsession with being amazing in bed. I said “I blame you, you’re the one that invited yourself into my Airbnb. I was totally out of it. You should’ve waited till I was sober if you wanted good sex.” He got upset and said that wasn’t true and then, he gave me my next eye-opener. He relayed to me via text just how he got to my airbnb. Verbatim: “I planned to go with you to make sure you got home safe. You seemed surprised. So I asked if you wanted me to come with you or just go home on my own. You said you wanted me to come with you.” He lied and he thinks I can’t remember.
Unfortunately for him, regardless of whatever drug I’d ingested, I was alert sporadically through the night. He doesn’t know which moments I was aware of my surroundings and which I wasn’t. What actually happened, if you can remember from my last post, is that I’d gotten into the Uber, totally forgetting he was even there, then got back out to give him a hug goodbye. When I did, he said “oh I’m coming with you!” and I said “oh ok”, drugged and pliable.
This back and forth dynamic went on for weeks. I would send a barrage of text messages. He’d mostly ignore me. Something would trigger him, he’d agree or ask to do a call/FT, he’d come onto me but also shut me down and in then, in messages after, act like I was psychotic and he was the sane one.
On the last FaceTime, he started the call out flirting. I was so tired of his game playing at this point and said “I don’t think your gf would appreciate you saying this kind of stuff to me, blowing me kisses, inviting me to Seattle, saying you’d like to have sex with me, etc”.
Oh…but now, he said, with a glimmer in his eye, he’d broken it off with her because he realized he couldn’t live without “the thing that I had and she didn’t”.
I told him to stop. Stop flirting. Stop manipulating me. Stop with the mixed messages. Stop playing mind games. Stop saying I have “the thing”. Stop blowing kisses. Just STOP. I told him he’d made his decision. He needed to stick with it.
He proposed we take a few weeks and not talk to each other, then see if we want to stay friends after that. I told him I already knew I didn’t want to be friends, I didn’t need to wait a few weeks. This is where our first real “no contact” began.
In the midst of this whole month of chaos, I was also digging deep, doing research on Joe. I found the article on Austin Bellamy Hicks, his business partner, who was accused of sexually assaulting many women (a lot of them not listed in the article btw) just last year. I found the XO Seattle drama and what went down with that (which made some of Joe’s comments to me about how much he hates “cancel culture” and how “hard it is to make friends in Seattle” make more sense). I connected with Amelia Bonow who told me even more disturbing news about Austin and the people surrounding him than what was even reported. I read articles about date rape that felt all too familiar to my own experience and behavior. I made myself truly assess what happened in the Airbnb and face head-on those nagging moments where I woke up to him doing something to me while I was clearly out cold. Even lyrics to songs Joe had written were enlightening. I talked to other women he’d dated that had similar stories to mine. And my memories continued to trickle in from the night. I kept researching and processing.
The weeks of no contact brought so much clarity. Being away from him helped me think more clearly, remember more and see things without rose-colored glasses. I still felt confused about the two personas he’d shown me but it also gave me time to, without interruption and more mixed messages from him, decipher what truly went down that night in Denver and who he really is.
And the memories persisted…like gnats on a summer day that never die no matter how many times you swat the air. I was starting to give in…starting to acknowledge what they were trying to show me. Why can you not remember more than an hour out of 6 hours? Why were you so sexual yet don’t remember feeling lust? Why did he look guilty right afterwards?
At first, I blamed not being able to remember on having too many drinks. But I’d only had 3 drinks in a 6.5 hour period of time…which would not even give me a buzz, let alone knock me out for 5 hours.
Then I thought, maybe I got more drunk than normal because of the altitude in Denver. I even said this to Joe. But The New York Times reported that as a myth.
I wanted there to be a way that this was not what it was. I tried to think of every possible way I could’ve behaved like this and every possible reason he could’ve been doing the things he’d been doing to me in innocence. I didn’t want to believe it.
Then I watched this: Tea and Consent
In that moment, watching the scene of an unconscious person being forced to “drink tea”, I could no longer deny it. He knew what he was doing to me. He knew.
My heart sank. My mind went blank. I felt all the blood leave my system. I could no longer deny it. Now, I knew.
I hadn’t been too drunk.
I hadn’t been affected by the altitude.
We hadn’t had an amazing connection.
He wasn’t who he said he was.
He knew what he was doing.
I’d been roofied.
I’d been sexually assaulted.
I’d been raped.
Joe Zaczyk is a rapist.
I sent Joe the NYT article.
I said “well fuck nvm i guess i got roofied”. I did not accuse him. I wanted to leave it open, give him the opportunity to respond like a human being.
No response.
Later that day
I saw on Instagram that he was now targeting a girl in California that looked eerily like me, we had too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. It was so creepy.
I messaged her. Our stories were the same. She hadn’t met him yet, thank god, but she was already getting the same red flags I’d gotten early on.
I sent Joe a photo of her and said “wtf”.
Still no response.
2 Days Later
I got to work to protect other women that might fall prey. I alerted the apps. Match banned him immediately across all of their apps: Tinder, Plenty of Fish, Match, Hinge and OkCupid (if you see him on any of these, report him). Bumble followed suit. Airbnb investigated him and banned him from ever being able to be a guest or a host on their site again.
As the notifications from these apps reached my inbox, Joe started trying to reach me. His main sources for targeting women had banned him, the panic in his voice was impossible to hide.
I have never responded.
After all the anxiety subsided, I had a couple days of peace…I think from finally knowing the truth. I then went into the deepest depression of my life. I beat myself up for falling for this type of man, I felt the loss of who I thought he was, and I felt the effects of being violated by someone you trust. I could barely get out of bed, and if you knew me, that couldn’t be farther from who I typically am. It was hard. Beyond words.
The next excerpt goes into this a bit more, the police reporting experience, what I’ve learned about Joe/Austin since all of Amelia, Ariella and I’s posting began and everything we’ve done to try and protect future women from falling into the same trap with these people. Plus a list of resources and my personal advice for what you can do to help yourself through a situation like this should you find yourself in it.
If you have any experiences with these men that can help build a case against them, please share and send to exposeaustinhicks@gmail.com.
Thank you in advance for helping protect the innocent.
Take me back to: Joe Zaczyk: Before You Date Him
Take me back to: Joe Zaczyk: How It Began?
Take me back to: Joe Zaczyk: That Night
Go to ALL POSTS on this subject.
Next: What Happens Next
The police reporting process, next steps you can take if in this situation and lots of resource links.
Read the Slate article written by Ariella Steinhorn about this incident and follow @manmanstudios and @ameliamaris on Instagram to stay up to date on more articles coming out.