Reliving the night I was raped

 

By Alex Gladden

Nov. 26, 2018

 

*Warning: explicit language and sexual content

 

 

 

 

I led him back to the bedroom, and my friends watched. We leapt upon the bed and began kissing furiously. I took off my top and my bra. He tasted like Taco Bell, and I didn’t like the way his mustache rubbed against my mouth. He threw his praises at me.

“You’re so fucking hot.”

“God, I love your body.”

He began unbuttoning my shorts and shoving his hands in my underwear, stroking my vaginal area. I pushed his hand back and giggled my refusal. I was drunk and horny, but all I wanted to do was make out with him. He begged me to let him continue.

“I just want to make you feel good.”

On the bed, he repeatedly touched me, forcing me to physically remove his hand again and again. He eventually got mad at me and left. He told me he couldn’t stay in the room with me if I was going to be that way. I curled up on the bed alone and drunk. I don’t remember if I cried, but I remember feeling a gaping sadness. I left the house in the wee hours of the morning, too embarrassed to face my friends.

 

IT’S A MAN’S WORLD

I didn’t realize that I had been raped at 19 until a year and a half later. In Arkansas, rape is a first-degree sexual assault and a felony. The law states that people commit rape when they force their victims to engage in sexual intercourse or deviant sexual activity when the victims are incapable of consent, the victims are under 14 or the assailants are the victims’ relatives. Arkansas lawmakers determined that deviant sexual activity is any penetration of the mouth or anus of another person by a penis or any penetration of the labia majora or anus of another person by any body member or foreign instrument.

Because of this definition, I now know I was raped, and I didn’t come to this conclusion until researching Arkansas’ legal interpretation of what rape means. We can debate whether I was drunk enough to be considered incapable of giving consent, but because the man who raped me repeatedly touched my vaginal area after I physically removed his hand and after I repeatedly told him no, by Arkansas’ legal parameters, he raped me.

Hearing about a friend’s rape spurred me to question my own experience. A man raped her when she was blackout drunk and incapable of consent. I hadn’t yet made the connection to that night my sophomore year of college, but I think it sparked something in me. And I eventually realized that that night linked me to the 1 in 6 women who are victims of attempted or completed sexual assault in their lifetimes, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest Network, also known as RAINN.

Photo illustration by Devynne Diaz

 

 

At the University of Arkansas, campus officials organized the Campus Climate Survey, which polled 2,830 students, revealing that about 15 percent of those people have been assaulted since enrolling. I think that number, and most statistics relating to sexual assault, are frighteningly low.  Of my friends, 21 of them have been sexually assaulted. These people make up most of my closest friends, and I just can’t help but think that if most of my close friends have been assaulted, and if I alone can name 21 PEOPLE, who have been assaulted, then the probability is high that so many others have been assaulted than we have numbers to support.

Our 22 accounts don’t even acknowledge the assault and harassment that women go through on a daily basis. Yes, I was raped at a party about two and a half years ago, but I’ve also had my ass and tits repeatedly groped in public. Men have forcibly danced with me. Last fall, a man grabbed my face and violently kissed me at a club. On a road trip, a man with white hair made eye contact with my friends and I while he masturbated driving a red truck. Since puberty, I’ve listened as men have made crude jokes about my body and about sex in general. I’ve been harassed waiting tables, both by fellow waiters and customers. At my first job at a fast-food restaurant, a manager in his early 30s trained me alone and repeatedly made sexual comments about my breasts. I was 16.

In January, Stop Street Harassment, an organization dedicated to ending this cycle, reported that 81 percent of women and 43 percent of men have been harassed. Verbal sexual harassment is the most common at 77 percent of women and 34 percent of men. But an alarming 51 percent of women and 17 percent of men have also reported being groped, which is assault. So the idea, one that I’ve heard often repeated, that most men have not assaulted or harassed women makes me sick.

 

Infographic by Julia Nall

 

Three women among the 22 reported our assaults. To do so, they were forced to repeat accounts of their rapes over and over again. And even then, only one of my friends found justice. My friend group reflects the national numbers, which show that less than 1 percent of perpetrators will face prison time. Our reporting averages about match up with national stats, as RAINN reports that 69 percent of people who have been assaulted don’t report.

So why don’t we report? It’s something I’ve struggled with since I realized I was assaulted. I decided not to report because a friend who went through the system said it wasn’t worth it. She said it would only cause me more harm than good. I’ve always been under the impression my case would not result in the arrest of my assailant. It’s my word against his. We were alone. I was drunk. His friends saw me flirting with him beforehand. Really, my experience is so open to victim blaming it’s laughable. And in a society like ours, where Brett Kavanaugh can reign in a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, where our president eloquently advises men to “grab ‘em by the pussy,” I don’t believe that I would receive justice.

 

THE GOOD ONES

A few days after one of my friends was raped, the one that made me think, I was with Eli La Salle, one of the men who has always treated me and my body with respect. We sat eating at the Dickson Street food trucks. I made a tasteless joke about rape, the specifics of which I can’t exactly remember, but I insinuated that I’d been forced to give a blow job. Eli shut me down. He didn’t think the joke was funny. Really, I didn’t think it was funny either, but something in the joke rang true. I’d never had a penis forcibly shoved into my mouth. So why did it resonate with me as a familiar experience?  

Later that night, the lights were off. Eli and I lay in bed talking before drifting off to sleep. It was like it just popped into my head.

“Eli?”

I said his name long, “Ellliiiiiiii,” and with a question, the way I always do when thoughts get jumbled in my mind, when I can’t keep from spewing them out any longer, when I really don’t want to say them, these thoughts, but I can’t keep them tamped down.

He turned his head to me.

“Yeah?”

I said, remember that joke I made? The bad one about the blow job?

“Yeah.”

I asked him if he remembered that joke – the one about the blow job. But that’s never happened to me, I said.

I began telling him the story about that night, the first Friday of my sophomore year at the University of Arkansas, the first house party I ever attended. The one where I was so excited when that guy, who would later rape me, showed up. I’d thought he was so cute. I’d had such a crush on him all summer, ever since I’d met him. The one where I was even more excited when the friend who invited me rounded all of us up to go back to her boyfriend’s house, and she’d rounded him up too. The one where a man, who is four years older than me, raped me.

Eli was silent after I finished the story. I said it quickly. I stammered it. It was hard to get it all out of my mouth.

“Eli?” I said in the same long questioning way.

“Yeah,” Eli said.

What does that sound like to you? I still wasn’t sure. Before that exact moment, I’d never told anyone about the part of the night that included the rape. I laughed with my friends about the hookup, leaving out the one detail that would let them conclude that I was raped. I didn’t know why I left it out. I didn’t think about it. I just told myself it didn’t count. It made me feel slutty and gross. So I didn’t bring it up to anyone until that night with Eli.

Eli told me gently. He spoke the words out loud, the words that dangled behind my question. He said sexual assault. I asked him if he was sure.

“Are you sure I’m not just overreacting?”

It was a question I repeated over and over to Eli in countless later repetitions and to friend after friend. And they told me no. Something for which I am forever grateful. No, I am NOT overreacting. And their reassurances have been constant. Real questions that I’ve asked my friends have included: If I would have just let him fuck me, would I feel this way? Am I just stupid for not realizing earlier that he raped me? Would I be ruining HIS life by pressing charges? And they again and again told me no.  

Weeks after I realized I was raped, the nightmares began. Most of the time, my assailant wasn’t in them. Most of the time, my nightmare rapists were male acquaintances. And then I would gain consciousness as Eli shook me awake, stroking my hair, whispering in soothing voices, “Cutie pie, cutie pie, it’s just a dream.”

This made me one of the approximately 70 percent of sexual assault victims who experience moderate to severe distress after their attacks, according to RAINN.

Infographic by Julia Nall

 

I felt so stupid that I hadn’t even realized I had been raped. But Anne Shelley, the executive director for the NWA Center for Sexual Assault, helped me realize that I’m not alone in this experience. She told me about how trauma affects the brain, causing many women to repress their experiences. She shook her head and gently corrected me when I called myself dumb.

“Our brain doesn’t work the same way in trauma,” Anne said.

Anne offered me tissues when I cried and called me brave for writing this article. Before I left the office, she asked if they could help me in any way. She spoke of the center’s free counseling sessions. Anne helped me set up a session and hugged me goodbye.

At the session, I felt like I was given a place to share my feelings with someone who is specifically trained to help sexual assault victims. The NWA Center for Sexual Assault offers services to survivors at every step, from forensic rape exams performed by professionals who have received sexual assault training to individual counseling. It’s a good place. If you need help, you can go no matter when your assault happened, be it years or hours ago. The number for the center is 479-347-2304.

I still feel panicked anytime I see the man who raped me. When people post pictures with him, I avoid social media. When I hear he’ll be at a party, I refuse to go. But part of why I wanted to write this article was to make sure he knows what he did to me. So, I texted him and requested an interview. I wanted to know exactly what was going through his mind both when he raped me and in the aftermath, and I wanted to write about it. He responded back with a lengthy apology. And his apology was a far cry from what I expected him to do: ignore me, call me a liar, bash me to our mutual acquaintances.

 

INTERVIEWING MY ASSAILANT

We met on a warm, breezy May day. He rode his bike up to the picnic table where I waited. I put my hands under the table, so he wouldn’t notice how shaky they were. He recounted the rape back to me from his point of view, matching my memories of the night. Because I took my top and bra off, because I so enthusiastically made out with him, he kept touching me. In his mind, he said he thought I would eventually come around to pursuing further sexual activity.

“I was thinking ‘Maybe the next time I try this she’ll be cool with it,’” he said.

He told me that the next day he thought about what happened a lot. So he texted me to get lunch. When I seemed OK, he put it behind him. But our experience was something that he thought about in the midst of the #MeToo Movement. Every time another woman came forward, he said he thought about me. He spoke with friends, asking them what they thought his actions meant, receiving mixed answers. Some thought his actions were OK, and some didn’t.

When I texted him to arrange an interview, he said that, although it was a shock, he wasn’t completely surprised when he read my account of the night.

“I can’t say that that text came from out of the blue,” he said.

I asked him how it impacted him, and he said “Fuck, this thing that I did has affected this woman,” leaving the sentence to trail off, letting the silence speak for itself.

“I still don’t know how to be OK with myself,” he said.

Now I’ve been struggling with what his apology means to me. I want closure. I want to forgive him so that I can heal. I looked him in the eyes, sitting at that picnic table, and told him I forgave him. But forgiving him doesn’t mean that his actions are in any way acceptable. I still think he should be held responsible, and in an ideal world, that would mean he would face jail time. Unfortunately, we don’t live there. We live in a place where people don’t believe victims of sexual assault. Regardless, I want to hold him accountable in the small ways that I can. Through this article. Through telling my story. Through holding all the men responsible who have not treated my body with respect. Through refusing to accept that kind of treatment any more. And it’s difficult. It’s something I have to do all the time.

I do believe that every perpetrator should be prosecuted, including the man who raped me. And I struggled with a lot of guilt for not reporting. Am I contributing to the problem? At the NWA Sexual Assault Center, Anne said no. Assailants contribute to the problem, not victims. She heralded any choice I make in my time of healing. When he raped me, he took away my decision, and in choosing not to report, I’m taking my decision-making power back.

I believe this is true. But, I think I will always debate whether to report the man who raped me. And maybe one day I will choose to do so. Maybe I will be ready to face the numerous consequences I might have to confront in that decision: public backlash, the threat of an arrest under allegations I made a false report, mental health concerns. The hardships of reporting a rape really go on and on.

For now, I’m choosing to do a good things for myself. I want my story to be told. I want to make a difference. But I don’t want to be questioned by the police and prodded by lawyers. I don’t want to be doubted. I already doubt myself enough. What I do want is for people to talk about sexual assault. I want them to have difficult conversations – to call out this behavior when they see it. I would not wish this heartache, this nightmare, this theft on anyone, and I think that by having these uncomfortable conversations, by sharing our stories, we can make real change – change that means that people like me will no longer be impacted by sexual assault.

This rape is something that will always affect me. It’s not going away. There is no happy ending. It’s there in my nightmares, in my interactions with men, in the way I think. And it is not OK.

 

Peace and blessings,

 

Alex