In the 80s, I rented a room in a flat with 3 other girls in a North London Council block. One evening, I passed a guy I knew slightly and didn’t fancy at all on the stairs. We started chatting and he asked me if I’d Iike a coffee at his flat. Because I had a lot of male friends at the time who were very decent I misjudged his intentions and said yes. As usual I was dressed modestly, in a summer dress.
As soon as we were in the flat, his manner changed suddenly and he pushed me intto his room and started taking my clothes off. I kept saying ‘no’ and he slapped me and told me to be quiet because his mother was in the next room (I could hear the television.. I stopped talking and then tried to crawl off the bed instead to the door. He pulled me back by my legs and did what he intended. I was stunned and shocked by how sudden this was and by his strength (he was an amateur boxer).
I don’t remember anything about how he was, getting dressed or getting away after that until the point where I was back in my flat. The other girls were home and saw immediately something was wrong. They aske me what had happened and I just said I’d been downstairs at X’s flat. (Thirty years later, I don’t remember his name.). It was summertime and they pointed out that my knees were very bruised but I just said I was OK again. I know they were concerned and didn’t believe me but nothing else was said.
For many years, I reproached myself for not being able to speak up and my mind kept trying to convince me I hadn’t been raped after all – it was just a terrible ‘misunderstanding’. Now that I understand this was an explainable reaction for someone who had been sexually abused as a young child in a public hospital in mainland Europe (“if you make a noise or tell anyone, they won’t believe you”), my reaction makes more sense but I still feel ashamed about it all.
Although I’ve mentioned to my long-term partner that I was raped, this is just one event from my very abused past and I’ve never described the details to anyone before or been able to articulate them this clearly. Even today, I wouldn’t go to the police as it would just be my word against his as I lost touch with the other girls from the flat and because I’m pretty sure that, despite the glaring evidence to the contrary, the guy somehow kidded homself that he hadn’t done anything wrong. (I don’t know how I know this – maybe it was just the way he continued to behave afterwards as though nothing had happened, at all, while I made a point of avoiding his attempts to speak to me.)
Catherine, I hope sharing my thoughts about what happened to me helps your understanding of your own situation.
