A life framed by rape
Trigger warning: Rape, sexual assault and harrassment.
When I was 17 I was date raped by a man more than twice my age. A fact I would only start coming to terms with at the age of 29 partly thanks to the chilling narrative told through “I will destroy you”, the support of my therapeutic coach who saw something deeply rooted in the way I related to men, and the pandemic forcing me to stop and sit with my own thoughts.
Until that point my body had known exactly what had happened. But my mind couldn’t, or didn’t want to, piece together the fragmented memories. Memories of falling off my chair in an empty hotel bar, being swept onto an itchy almost hospital-waiting area type sofa, watching in panic as the sliding doors to the outside world were drawn closed, staring up at a ceiling fan as all light left my body, and as the sun came up, being found by someone laid on a balcony with no pants on.
At the time not only did I know very little about the effect of drugs versus alcohol (I thought I must’ve simply drunk too much and done something stupid but I know now that I’ve never been able to drink enough to become paralysed or even unable to remember the night before) but I also thought very little of myself too. I had realised I wasn’t heterosexual a couple of years earlier but had been so fearful of the truth that I threw myself into exaggeratedly flirting with men and proving that I liked them. I had assumed in my drunken stupor I must’ve told this man I wanted sex and that what had happened must’ve been consensual.(Note: you can’t have consensual sex if you’re inebriated!)
But deep down I obviously knew something was wrong about the whole situation. I tried to tell my mum a few months later, but I didn’t have the words or the memory to piece things together, so we quickly glossed over it as it felt too traumatic for me to really unearth the reality — even though I know now that she would’ve listened and understood. By this point I had also already begun the perpetual cycle of sexual self-harm and search for sexual power that would define my life right up until I met my best friend and husband.
I jumped from deeply harmful relationships with unworthy men where I disconnected from myself entirely during sex, to equally harmful relationships with men who I thought I desired and who would help me to reclaim my body. With them I took control of sex and became a picture of the ultimate girlfriend. This led to people close to me holding a certain picture of me. Someone who was self-confident, someone who enjoyed sex and relationships, and who was undeniably heterosexual. All of which couldn’t be further from the truth.
As I barrelled through these unhealthy relationships, and ignored what my body was trying to tell me, I experienced further incidents of attempted rape or assault which I wrote off as normal. The two that stick in my mind frame my life further and in a weird way led me to the parts of my life that I love: my partner and my work.
The other day a guy on a call about diversity and inclusion at work said he felt like “victims call things out because they want to feel powerful”. And went to on to say that there’s nothing we can do to address sexual assault after it’s occurred because the harm has happened and it’s not like it’s going to keep happening so what’s the point. I will say now that I don’t write this or speak about my truth to seek power: I’m already powerful because I took this harm and turned it into something beautiful in my life. On the latter point, the harm did keep repeating itself. Not with the same man, but with other people, and in my own mind and body. And when you haven’t had the space to work through the original Trauma it almost becomes part of your personality.
The second incident
The incident that led to my partner was the first glimpse that my trauma didn’t have to be part of who I was. It was the first time that I realised I was worth more than that.
At 21 I had a pretty good life, a good job and good friends. I went round to one of those friends houses for a party and got drunk to the point of hiccups. Their male housemate grabbed me a glass of water and told me to come lie down on his bed in order to drink it upside down. I did, and much hilarity ensued. I was not in the slightest attracted to this guy but he made a move. I politely declined, and he told me I’d led him on. He followed me around on his bed as I tried to back away. Luckily his window was open and down below my friends were smoking. I giggled as I poured my water down on them but I felt a deep sense of desperation inside. They shouted up and then carried on smoking.
By this point he was now trying to take my tights off and hold me down with his weight. I kept laughing nervously and saying no. He was a weedy guy so luckily I could roll out from underneath him. I headed for the door where he jumped in front of it and told me I was asking for it. Loud banging came from the other side just at that moment. It was my best friend Sam who had sensed my distress. We went back down to the party but I couldn’t stop crying, so Sam got me out of there rapidly without saying goodbye. He held me tightly at the bus stop as I sobbed and told me it would all be okay. We walked home for an hour when we realised no buses were coming, and he listened to me and comforted me as I shared what had happened, and made me laugh when I felt safe enough to breathe a sigh of relief. He dropped me at my door — standing at the end of my path while I found my keys as he always did. I’ve shared in other forums recently how he was the first ever guy to walk me home literally for my own safety and nothing else.
Looking back on this night I realise now how having someone there that I trusted, who immediately validated my experience and helped me process what had happened, is what is so massively lacking in most rape and assault cases. Not only do people often not know who they can turn to, but when they do turn to someone, whether that’s a friend, public services, or the public themselves, they are questioned and challenged about every detail, not heard and held. I even tried to tell the close friend that lived with this guy about it (for fear he’d attempt it with someone else) and she brushed it off with so many excuses — “but he’s got a girlfriend”, “are you sure you weren’t flirting with him?”. It is not just men who perpetuate rape culture, women can be just as bad.
But the reason I say I took power from trauma is because I cemented my friendship with Sam. I’d found someone who I could be vulnerable with, and who would be brave enough to hear my trauma. Our friendship completely transformed my whole life. After years of getting to know one another deeply, Sam and I eventually got together romantically and started our family in 2016. With him I’ve been able to start being more honest about my sexuality, and finally in this past year I’ve found the words and the courage to unravel all the pain that I’d held inside of me for more than a decade. I am one of the lucky ones. So many people who are affected by rape and assault never find someone who simply creates space for them to heal.
The third incident
The incident that I believe led to my work is one that will likely more closely align to many women’s everyday experience of men. After the incident at the party, and with the support of Sam, I’d started to find my voice and say ‘No’ to entitled men. My career had grown rapidly and I was headhunted to go work for a product team at a charity.
I was a smoker at the time and there was a guy who would often come by my desk to ask me to go for a smoke with him. Initially I’d decline because I actually felt deeply uncomfortable about smoking at work. But he was persistent, so eventually I agreed to the occasional cigarette together just to get him off my back. We built up a very disjointed companionship — one that had literally no bearing on my life, but that I started to feel was far too important to him. One night at work drinks I’d spent most of the evening avoiding him, and in fact had purposefully said out loud about dating someone else so it was heard and understood.
In spite of this, towards the end of the night he implored that we get a taxi back together as we lived in the same direction. I was pretty skint at the time (due to living on my own in a flat I’d previously been sharing with an ex-boyfriend) so it felt like my avoidance of him would be far too obvious and uncomfortable if I said no. When we pulled up to my flat I jumped out, and without warning he did too, saying we should have some more drinks together. I politely declined and said I was feeling really tired, but he told me to stop being so boring and insisted I invite him up. I did.
Now I want to pause here because by this point our society would usually say “she asked for it”. Aside from the fact that me even saying ‘No’ repeatedly in such a firm way was immense progress from the self-harming vibe I’d had towards men previously, even without that historical trauma it’s very hard to hold your ground when someone persistently crosses your boundaries. Importantly, while he wasn’t my direct boss, he was a senior member of the team I worked in and his ridiculous sense of entitlement was somewhat affirmed by my belief that I had to please the people I worked for.
Anyway, I invited him up thinking: we’ll have a drink and a smoke and then I’ll kick him out. When we finished our cigarettes he leant in to kiss me and I literally shoved him away. “Come on I know you fancy me”, he said, and went for another kiss. “Get off of me”, I said, loudly and feeling physically repulsed. He tried again, and I told him to get out of my flat. He persisted and grabbed me. I grabbed my phone and said I was calling the police. He stormed out.
But it didn’t end there. He carried on asking me for cigarette breaks. He carried on harassing me at work. Sadly the same story happened again. After work drinks he told me to get a taxi with him — I gave in and had the most repulsive sex in my life. I felt so sick seeing him in work that I took actual sick days and shortly after handed in my notice. I’ve always loved work and prior to this experience nothing would keep me away from it. My managers were confused and upset because they felt like I was doing a good job. I looked like an asshole because I quit less than a year after they’d hired me for no apparent reason. I told myself that I’d chosen to leave, and that what had happened with this guy was my own fault.
But again trauma became power and shaped my life in ways I could never have imagined. I returned to my previous employer where I felt safer, and where the senior men seemed to respect me more. And while I didn’t ever voice this last experience as a reason for what drove me, it had lit the fire in my belly to prove that it was possible to create spaces where women weren’t repeatedly violated. I began my deep work to create an equitable world of work and combat power dynamics,
In my work today I repeatedly hear of and see women being made to feel uncomfortable in the workplace, being repeatedly disrespected or having to pander to the whims of men. While 9 times out of 10 it is completely unrelated to sexual violence, at it’s core it is driven by the same culture. A culture that creates entitled men, that blames women, that continues to make it impossible (and sometimes dangerous) for us to own our bodies and speak our minds for fear of “rocking the boat”. But in spite of this I just keep speaking louder. Because I’ve got to keep amplifying the voice of the scared 17 year old that didn’t deserve to have her life torn apart by a man twice her age. I’ve got to keep going to ensure all women find the power to lead a life worth living.
