Reader Discretion Advised
Sensitve Content: rape My bloody fingerprints left stains on his bed sheet. My virginity and menses permanently stamped on a cotton trophy. I bet he still has that sheet. He probably pulls it out, lays on it, and masturbates remembering me. He was like that. My rapist was a sick son-of-a-bitch. I didn’t know he was my rapist until about 15 years had passed. I thought he was my boyfriend. I thought I was an adult who made a consensual, albeit foolish, decision. Woops, is what I thought. Then, in the few years leading up to age 37, I realized I had been wrong about him. He was not my boyfriend. He wasn’t even simply a jerk, or a bad choice I made. He was a rapist. Perpetrator. Abuser. He groomed me, bought me my first alcoholic beverages, took me to his house, asked my drunk-ass-self if I was okay with having sex with him, knowing I was an intentional 21-year-old virgin; he obtained my drunken consent, and had sex with me. I was not passed out. I was drunk for first time in my life. And he knew it. He not only knew it, he arranged for it. To be an adult, a 21-year old woman, and to admit that you were manipulated, groomed, and sexually violated by a predator, a man seven years your senior, is difficult. To admit you had no idea what the felt, experienced difference was between a beer and a tequila (a tequila sunrise + a kamikaze, to be exact), is humiliating. To admit that you were so broken and hungry for intimacy that you trusted a stranger, engenders shame. Perhaps this is why it took me 15 years to fully realize the rape and admit it. I felt embarrassed that I was so naïve as a college-educated 21-year-old woman. It was a classic scenario of guy-gets-girl-drunk-so-he-can-sleep-with-her, and I was, for a variety of reasons, unable and maybe even unwilling, to see that. So I felt embarrassed and ashamed, stupid. If you hadn’t been so naïve and put yourself in that situation, he wouldn’t have had sex with you. After all, he did ask you if it was okay, and you said yes. Many people would affirm that. My own inner voice affirmed that for years. But no longer. Now, I am ready to stop referring to him as an ex-boyfriend and start referring to him as a rapist. Consent under the influence of alcohol is not consent. I know that now. I also know that he, alone, is responsible for his actions. No amount of my own naiveté diminishes the predatory nature of his decisions. I am not responsible for what he did. He could have done any number of honorable, respectful things with me, in light of the knowledge he had about me—that I was and wanted to remain a virgin; that I had never consumed any alcohol in my entire life. Instead, he chose to take advantage of that information in a way that he knew would result in me lying in his bed, framed by my own bloody fingerprints, just like a crime scene. I am 37 years old. I have been happily married for nearly 15 years. I have given birth to four sons. I have a career. I have an advanced degree. And I have finally realized that I was raped 16 ½ years ago.
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Valerie GeerWriter. Women's activist. Theologian. Providing authentic reflections from a female perspective. Archives
March 2016
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