At first, I assumed it was due to the stress and anxiety, so I waited. I never pressed charges, because at 19 years old (and this was 30 years ago), I wasn't even sure if this was legally a crime, since I knew the men who raped me.īut just when I thought the horror couldn’t escalate any further, things got worse: My period never came. I believed that I would never be able to cleanse the filth off my body. Poisonous thoughts seeped into every crevice and I had nightmares of faceless strangers chasing me every night in my dreams. Now, I walked into darkness shackled to a completely different existence, one I could never have imagined.Īfter that night, my mind turned against me. I realize now that this was just the beginning of what it is like to be raped. It felt like everything stopped in that moment, mentally and physically. The pain began shooting through my body as he tore off my underwear. I saw the second face in the darkness - another friend I had known all my life was now on top of me. I wondered what I had done to make this happen, to make my best friend’s husband want to hurt me?

His hand clamped over my mouth had stopped the flow of words. My eyes were screaming at him: Why are you doing this to me? But my voice was silent.

Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He was a big guy, and I was frozen with fear and intimidation I could not move a muscle. Sound asleep, I awoke in the middle of the night to the force of a cold, calloused hand across my mouth. That night, I was the first to go to bed. When we got there, she told me I could have the best bedroom upstairs since everyone else was sleeping on the first floor. Feeling special, I unpacked my belongings in the secluded little room at the end of the hall. I rode to the camp with my best friend and her husband, who was in the Navy and home on leave. My story begins during an overnight at my best friend’s camp on a lake in Central New York. I received an education of the highest degree, and now it’s my turn to teach. Eric Turner said, “Some women might fake being raped in order to get free abortions.” I can’t stand by and watch these men who have no personal experience with sexual assault pretend to know so much about it. Pete DeGraf said, “Women should plan ahead for rape the way he keeps a spare tire.” A few weeks after that Indiana state Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., created a stir when he said, “If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.' But his casual, off-the-cuff ignorance is just the latest in a long line of insults. Lately, we’ve been hearing from men who don’t know much about the subject at all. I learned about rape’s savagery and its psychological trauma. At 19 years old, I became an unwilling expert on the topic of rape.

Girl gets stuck and raped