My Rape Story

Posted by Sarahbear on April 18, 2010

Sexual Assault Awareness

April is sexual assault awareness month and  a lot of different bloggers are speaking out about their experiences. Mine is a bit different, I guess, because it’s about statutory rape.

I was 14 years old when an older friend of mine (16) began ‘dating’ and having sex with a 28 year old man. She encouraged me to meet with a friend of her ‘boyfriend’ soon after that. He wasn’t interested in me, but her ‘boyfriend’s’ brother was. Soon, he was calling my grandmother’s house and convincing me to sneak out to see him or skip my after school activities to meet up with him.

Our first meeting, because I had never seen him, was sort of a blind date for me. I told him that my practice had been cancelled and he could pick me up after school. He could drop me off before practice was suppose to be over so that my grandma wouldn’t know. I wore the sexiest outfit I owned. A pair of skin tight brown pants with a light colored snug shirt, to showcase my curvier-than-my-age body. When the final bell rang I walked confidently out into the school parking lot and saw the tan truck he described to me over the phone. I was nervous, but I pretended I wasn’t and hopped up in the cab like I knew what I was doing.

This was, absolutely, the stupidest decision I have ever made. In. My. Life.

Here I was, 14 years old, in the truck of a 24 year old man that I didn’t know. I had no cell phone. No one knew where I was going. He could have easily took me off somewhere and murdered me and no one would have had a clue. He took me to a town about twenty minutes away and we parked in front of a mobile home in the middle of a field. We got out of the truck and he escorted me inside. The trailer was hot. There was no electricity. There was only a couch in the living room, where he gestured for me to have a seat beside him. He immediately began pawing at my crotch, undoing my pants and pulling my panties out as he peeked inside. He said ”I told you I liked it trimmed, I don’t like them bald.” He took my clothes off and took me to a bedroom with a bare mattress on the floor.

I didn’t say no. I didn’t ask him to stop. I just laid on that dirty mattress, praying I would make it home. I kept telling myself how stupid I was. Why the hell did I go with him? What was I thinking. I laid there while he finished (fortunately it was quick and he used a condom), praying that God would let me make it back home. Promising that I would never do anything that stupid again. That night, as I was taking a bath, I felt myself. My vagina felt like an open, gaping hole where he had penetrated me. It was only my third time having sex. I felt ashamed.

He called me every day after that. Eventually we began ‘dating’. I would sneak out of my window every night to go to his mother’s house to have sex with him. I don’t know why I continued to do it. He was ten years older than me. He had four children by three different women. He had another girl at my school pregnant. Hell, he seemed to have something going on with a few different girls at my school because I got hateful phone calls from them and they left threatening notes in my locker. He was black (which was something that my grandparents and parents would have flipped. their. shit. over). He sold cocaine, and even got arrested one night when he was suppose to come get me.

He was bad news all around. Yet after that initial sex I decided to maintain a ‘relationship’ with him for over a year. The night that really opened my eyes was very strange. He took me to his apartment and he was behaving more strangely than usual. Someone paged him while we were sitting on his couch. He told me it was his friends and he was going to pick them up. He said that I was going to have to have sex with all of them. He stripped my clothes off and tossed me a blanket and told me to wait on the couch. I was half an hours drive away from my house… so I did. He came back with his brother and told me to go to the bedroom. His brother fell asleep on the couch and he came into the room and made me have sex with him. After he finished he told me to go get his pager from off of the television, naked. I told him I wouldn’t because his brother was on the couch. He pulled a handgun from underneath his mattress and told me to go get it or he would shoot me. He must have changed his mind or something, because he decided he would rather have sex with me while he held the gun to my head. After word he still made me go get his pager. Naked. I kept begging him to just take me home.

Finally, around 5, he took me home. I had to get up for school at 7. I was so scared. I kept telling myself I would never go back if I made it home that night. I crawled through my window and locked it. I cried. He kept calling and asking me to come see him, but I refused. He would drive past my house and call me to tell me that he could see what was going on in the yard. He would sit outside my house and watch me go on dates with other boys. Following us around town. Stalking me. It didn’t stop. It still hasn’t stopped. He found my mother’s phone number and called her house while I was there after one of my kids was born. He drives past my grandmother’s house on holidays because he knows I will be there. He calls her house to tell me he sees me there and that I have a nice family. He sent letters to her house, leaving contact numbers. More recently, he got a facebook page and friended me. Immediately, as he did every time he’s called me, he begins asking me how my marriage is going and if I would ever see him again. He started getting vulgar, reminding me of things he remembers me doing sexually.

He insists that the only reason we aren’t together is because he is black.

I finally got up the courage to tell him exactly what I thought of him. I told him I think he is a sick pervert and that he had no business preying on high school girls when he was ten years older than they were. I told him he raped me. I told him that it’s disrespectful for him to try to talk to me about anything even remotely sexual, not just because I’m married, but because it’s none of his business. I told him we were not together because of a lot of reasons. His response was to pretend he understood nothing I said and to feel sorry for himself. To whine about how race should have no impact on love. He continues to send me friend requests and I continue to decline them.

Regardless of whether or not I consented to sex with him at any given time, he had no business having sex with a 14 year old girl. I wasn’t even old enough to legally give consent to anyone, let alone a man ten years older than me. It was rape. It was statutory rape. It was a disgusting abuse of power. I never told anyone, aside from a few close friends, because I was scared I would be blamed for my choices. I was scared to be found out by my grandparents and parents because of his race.

I wish I had told someone.