Rape, Sexual Assault Survivor Stories

"...How I survived is not the story. But that I survived is. And how, so many years later, I somehow began to remember."

-Suzanne Stutman

Hey, I’m kinda unsure about sharing my story. It's kinda recent, what happened to me. I guess I’ll start form the beginning.

About a year ago, my family went on vacation. I was 14 years old. We rented a condo and pretty much did our own thing for the week or so that we were down there. Anyway, the condo was located right near a beach, so that’s where I spent most of my time. One afternoon, a guy approached me. It was my 24 year old cousin. "Coincidentally," he was visiting the same area. Let me tell you, my cousin is a total nut job. He has been arrested for sexual harassment before. One girl has a restraining order on him. But still he’s my cousin and I trusted him. He said that he wanted to take me out to a movie. I agreed and he told me that he’d pick me up around 11 that night.

I knew that my parents would be against me going anywhere with him, so that night I snuck out of the house. He picked me up in an old van and then drove me to a drive-in movie theater. We got there and started to enjoy the movie. I began to realize that something wasn’t right when he started making inappropriate comments on how I was dressed and the way I looked. Then he asked me to get into the back of the van. I said "no," but he wasn’t about to take that as an answer. He dragged me into the back and had sex with me. At first I struggled and screamed, but he threatened me and my family so I quickly hushed up. I lay there crying while he forced himself upon me. I waited in hope that someone would have heard my screams and come rescue me like in the movies, but unfortunately for me no one came.

When he was done, he calmly dressed himself and got back into the driver's seat, leaving me naked, scared and crying in the back. He started driving again. He started to say how it was my own fault, that I had provoked him, and that no one would even believe me anyway, and even if they did, they would think I was a slut. Then he dropped me off down the block from my condo. I was still in tears and I was in horrible pain, both emotionally and physically. I couldn’t bare to go home yet. I was so scared and ashamed. I walked down to the beach and sat and cried for hours until the sun came up. Then I returned to the condo and crept into bed.

When my mother came to wake me up, I faked sick and stayed in bed the whole day. I continued this until we returned home a few days later. We had only been home a few days when the doorbell rang and he showed up at our door. I was home alone at the time. He said he felt bad for how he had previously treated me and wanted to make sure I was okay. He brought me down to a private Dr. to get tested to see if I was pregnant or if I had gotten a disease from him. He’s HIV positive. Lucky for me I was neither pregnant or sick.

Well the months went by, I hadn’t seen nor heard from him. I had kept our secret and it was starting to eat me up. I didn’t show it much though. The only time my friends and family had suspected anything was wrong was when they saw the bruises that covered my body. After that the subject was never brought up.

Now its a year later, I have only told two people, my counselor and my best friend. I still don’t talk much about it and it makes me feel uncomfortable whenever the subject comes up. But I think that it was a good step for me to tell someone what happened. It was a great relief for me to finally be able to talk to someone about it.

-Anne

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