"When we deny the story, it defines us. When we own the story, we can write a brave new ending." -Brene Brown
Twelve years ago I was a 20 year old girl, a recent college drop out, working full time for a popular home improvement retailer. I was trying on alcoholism for size, seeing how it fit since it runs in my family. Thank god it didn't fit then and it's still too big for me now. I didn't know who I was or what direction I wanted to go in. The one thing I was sure of was my boyfriend at the time who has since become my husband. We had already been together for 4 years and broken up and gotten back together a handful of times. We were messy, we didn't always treat each other with kindness or respect and we often pulled other people into our mess. Something I both regret and feel thankful for. We learned a lot during those messy years and in a way I am glad we went through all of that before marriage and before kids, so that when we did follow that path, we were as ready as we could be. I'm still stalling. You'll just have to bear with me.
It was during one of my messy phases with my boyfriend that I allowed a co-worker into my life. He was 14 years older, twice divorced and a father of 4. You see those red flags, right? Yeah... I didn't. I befriended him. He was so nice to me, he once brought me Gatorade when I was working while fighting off a nasty cold. He gave me the attention I wasn't getting from my boyfriend at the time, or my parents. He took me to lunch when our lunch breaks lined up. It took a few months of friendship before he really seemed to start openly pursuing me. I resisted at first because I knew I loved my boyfriend and deep down I knew we were going to work things out and one day we would stop being so messy. Then one night after a rather large disagreement.... ok.... it was a massive fight.... after a massive fight with my boyfriend, I had a few drinks and went over to the guy's house.
I made a terrible mistake. A horrible mistake. I tried so hard to shake him after that, to end that relationship but I didn't have the life experience under my belt to do it. He was so much more mature than me and he had a lot more experience than me. He pressured me, he begged me, he did everything he could to talk me into ending it with my boyfriend but I always said no. I didn't want to hurt this man's feelings and I hadn't yet figured out how to build solid boundaries, which I still don't know how to do half the time (my therapist disagrees with that but I think we're still working on it), so I tried to "do the right thing". I tried to be nice and polite and maintain a friendship with him, thinking he would eventually grow tired of my immaturity and move on. He didn't.
My boyfriend was out of town that weekend and my car was acting crazy, blowing white smoke out from under the hood and being a real pain in the ass. When I complained about it at work, he offered to take a look at it. "Come over to my house after work, my tools are there and I can take a look at it and at least tell you what's wrong if I can't fix it. You can eat dinner with me to thank me." Seemed like a friendly thing to do, the kind of thing a good friend would do. No harm in that and I did need to figure this car thing out.
Later that night, I sat in his kitchen eating red beans and rice and drinking a rum and diet coke while I watched him through the window as he paced back and forth on either side of my car. He looked agitated. Like an animal with rabies pacing at the edge of the woods, staring at you through the window, just waiting for you to make contact so it can attack you and fill you with it's poison. When he finally came inside he rubbed his head until his hair stood straight up and then, without looking at me, he said "I don't know what's wrong, I can't fix it." I hadn't actually seen him do anything except lean over the engine a few times and look deeply at it like he was expecting the car to grow a voice and talk to him, telling him what's wrong with it and how to fix it. "Well, I guess I should probably go. I have to work tomorrow," I said, already feeling like I needed to get out of there. Something was off. He begged me to stay a little while longer, suggesting that we watch a movie and that I have another drink. He went to the refrigerator and poured another rum and diet coke for me, more rum than coke. I put it down on the coffee table and turned to grab my things. That's when he grabbed my keys and ran off to hide them. I laughed and asked for them back, trying to make light of the situation because joking and laughing is a defense mechanism for me. He wasn't joking though. He started questioning me about my boyfriend, about the intimate details of our complicated relationship. It was more than just questioning though, it felt like he was interrogating me, demanding answers. When I gave him answers that he didn't like he, he would call me a liar. With every question and each accusation, his voice grew angrier and more like a growl than a voice at all. At one point I threatened to call someone, anyone, if he didn't give me my keys back. He took my cell phone and hid it as well. While he ran to hide my phone, I ran to his home phone to call.... I don't remember who I planned on calling or if I even had a plan, I just knew I needed help. As I reached the phone, I heard his heavy feet racing down the hallway towards me. He reached around me and grabbed the phone out of my hand and smashed it. I turned and ran down the hallway from where he just came from. I knew there was a back door at the end of that hallway and if I could make it to the door then I could run and run and run as long and hard as I could until I was safe. He grabbed me right as I reached the door and pushed me towards his bedroom. I tried fighting back and shaking him off me. I kicked and screamed and then he smashed me up against his bedroom door and screamed as close to my face as he could get, so that with each word his spit hit my face. I hit him and punched him in the face as many times as I could before he pinned my arms down. That's when I gave up. I realized I wasn't getting out of that house unless he allowed me to leave.
This is where the timeline gets really fuzzy for me. The next thing I remember clearly is that he had taken my clothes from me and had pushed me down on his bed, a mattress on the floor, and told me not to move. He left the room and I heard him slam the front door as he left the house. I considered running out the backdoor again but now I didn't even have any clothes or shoes, it was the middle of winter here in the South and he lived in a single wide trailer in the middle of nowhere. I knew there were 2-4 houses nearby but I didn't know if anyone would be home or if they would even help me. Maybe they were friends of his and would gladly hand this naked girl back over to him. I wasn't fast enough. He came storming back down the hallway, rustling some plastic sheeting in his hands. You know the kind you put over your windows during the winter to keep the cold out? He threw the plastic down on the ground and told me to get down on the floor and lay on it because he didn't want my blood to get all over his house when he blew my brains out. The next thing I remember is laying there while he held a gun to my head and screamed at me. I don't even remember what he said. All I could feel was that gun. I thought about my great grandfather who passed away when I was 4 years old and I prayed. I begged and prayed for someone to save me, I silently shouted that "If angels are real then please, God, please let my grandpa be that angel and let him save me. Please let someone save me." I reached up for the gun and put my hand on his and I remember him asking me in a taunting voice if I was going to kill myself. Daring me to kill myself. I considered it. I thought if this is my only way out of here and it comes down to me or him pulling that trigger then I wanted it to be me. Then I imagined him getting away with all of this because I killed myself. Then I thought about my children. The children that I didn't yet have but that I knew I wanted so desperately to have in the future. It's incredible how black your mind goes when you stare into the refrigerator sometimes but when you're in a life or death situation, your brain seems to work on hyper speed. Somehow I managed to actually pull the gun away from my head just as it went off, shooting a bullet through his bedroom wall and into his dryer. The shell casing created a nasty gash in my hand and when he looked down and saw my blood creating a little puddle in the palm of my hand he suddenly changed. It was like a switch flipped and he held my hand in his and said nice things to me. He ran to the bathroom and grabbed a first aid kit to clean my wound. As he bandaged my hand, he laughed and shook his head and called me a "crazy girl." Then he told me to sleep and he held me. I didn't move but swore to myself I would stay awake until he fell asleep and then I would run. The next thing I know, it's morning and the sun is coming through the window above my head. He gets up and puts a VHS tape in his VCR and a porno movie starts playing. He comes and lays down on top of me and tells me how much he loves me and pets my head while he rocks back and forth on top of me. Staring straight into my face while tears roll down my cheeks and I lay there, not moving. As soon as he gets up another switch flips and he gives me my belongings back and tells me he'll see me at work. I ran to my car, noticing a lot of missed calls from my boyfriend.
By now you're probably thinking of all the things that you would have done if you had been me in this situation. You would have called 911. You would have driven straight to the police station or maybe a hospital. You would have called your mom.......... I called my best friend who lives on the other side of the country and I told her what happened while I sat in the drive thru at Dunkin Donuts, ordering a maple glazed donut, it was delicious. "Call the cops!!!!" she shouted at me through the phone. "Don't think about it, just do it!" I went to work instead. I told another friend about it at work, he demanded that I go file a police report. He said he was driving me to the police station after work and told me it wasn't a choice. At the police station, I stumbled on my words and tried to tell the female officer why I was there. Finally my male friend said, in a very matter of fact, no bullshit tone of voice, "He raped her." When she realized the severity of the situation she said I had to go home and call 911 and have a police officer come out to my house and file a police report. "I can't do that!!" I told both the officer and my friend, "my stepdad will kill me, I can't tell him about this." My friend took me to his own house, his wife sat with me while he called 911 and asked for an officer to come out and take my report. A young male officer arrived a little while later and sat on an uncomfortable chair across from me, his pen ready, unaware of the story he was about to hear. I again stumbled on my words so much that I don't know how he followed anything I said. When I got the point where I told him what had happened to me the night before and that morning, before the guy allowed me to leave, he put his pen down, leaned forward and asked me "Did he rape you?"
"NO!!!" I said. "He couldn't have. I've had sex with him before, willingly. So it can't be rape."
"But did you want him to this time? Did you tell him it was ok?"
"I didn't say anything. I just didn't move and I cried."
"Then he raped you."
He asked me if he could file a rape report and told me they would arrest him as soon as they could. I cried and told him I didn't know what to do. He put his head down and said "I can't do this unless you tell me it's ok. You have to say yes."
I told him I needed time to think about it.
A few weeks later I told some of my male friends who just happened to work with my stepdad. They work for the county that we live in and I asked them if they knew the guy. He had once told me a story about how he volunteered for the county doing the job that these guys are now paid to do. They said they heard a rumor about him once, that it was a really long time ago and that they didn't know him personally. They had heard that the county banned the guy from volunteering after he groped a girl's breasts while she was in the back of an ambulance alone with him, after he pulled her out of a wrecked car.
I told them what happened to me. I told them this story that was now my story, somehow my story. They told me to call the cops. I pulled my normal defense mechanism trick out of my bag and laughed it off. They called my stepdad. He demanded that I file the report and told me not to come home until I had a retraining order. My work told me I couldn't come back to work until I had a restraining order. Meanwhile, this guy.. the guy... went on with his life and was allowed to go to work everyday like nothing happened. I went to the court house and I remember it being a long process, a lot of paper work and going from one building to another until I found myself sitting at a desk across from a very overworked man who would be the one to approve or deny my request for a restraining order. "You realize this isn't a joke right? This is someone's life we're talking about here and this will affect everything he does.... We don't just give restraining orders out like candy." He said this after reading my paperwork. After reading my story. In a soft voice I said "I understand but I can't go back to work until I have this. I can't go home." He slapped the stamp down on my paperwork and handed it back to me. "Someone will call you when it's served."
APPROVED.
Before we even get into the aftermath, I want to stop and talk about my stepdad for a second. I don't want anyone to get the wrong impression about him or how he handled the situation. I think he was probably scared too. He was going through his own shit at the time. My mom wasn't in the picture much at this point so he had to handle this on his own. I can't imagine how difficult that probably was. Not to sound sexist but something like this really does need a mom's involvement. My stepdad is a wonderful man and has been there for me at times in my life when no one else was. So whatever you're thinking, if it's bad, then stop.
I took the restraining order to work, where I was told that it would take a few days to straighten everything out with HR before I could come back to work. A few weeks later, after not hearing anything from my managers and after making several phone calls to them, a letter came in the mail telling me that I was being let go from my position. The reason.... gossiping.
I found a new job. He found out where I worked and started calling me at work. I recorded the phone calls. He left giant poster boards taped to stakes in the ground outside my work that said he loved me. When we went to court to transfer the restraining order from a temporary restraining order to a permanent restraining order, we were left alone in the hallway while the court was on a recess. He approached me in the hallway and begged me not to go through with this, he said he wouldn't be able to get a job and his kids would starve because he wouldn't be able to pay his child support. He pleaded with me to run away with him, to marry him. Before returning to the courtroom, he shoved a diamond ring in my hand and then went to take his seat on the other side of the courtroom. Our hearing was pushed back because the judge ran out of time that day and wasn't able to hear our case. I went by his house and left the ring in his mailbox. I was on my way home one night and stopped by a gas station to get a drink. I was on the phone with my best friend on the West Coast at the time so I sat there for a few minutes while I talked to her. A car pulled up next to me and I turned to see HIM getting out of his car and going into the gas station. I called him after that. I called his house and told him he had to stop. The next morning 2 detectives from another county came by my work and asked to speak to me outside. the female detective told me that she knew I had been stalking him and asked for my phone number and cell phone provider. She told me she was going to pull my phone records and see if I had contacted him. I admitted to her that I had called him the night before and asked him to stop following me and stop calling me. She told me that she could have ME arrested for violating the restraining order. She said if he really was the one who was doing the stalking then I should have reported it and had him arrested. I started crying, sobbing really. The male detective never spoke to me and when I started crying, he stopped looking at me and stared at the ground. I could tell he was uncomfortable and did not want to be there. "I was just trying to do the right thing. For his kids. I didn't want him to lose his job," I said as they left.
My mother took me to dinner one night and out of desperation I played the tapes for her, the ones I had recorded every time he called me at work. In a rare motherly moment, probably one of the only times in my life where she acted like a real mom, she said "Oh honey..... you can't be nice to men like this. You have to be firm with them." Then she had her 3rd husband take me to the police station where the female detective worked. He sat next to me and helped me tell the female detective's boss what she had said to me. Her boss had no record of her visiting me and had no idea why she would have even gotten involved since the restraining order wasn't even through their county. We think she must have been a friend of the guy.
My new court date arrived and my stepdad, angry over the way the last court date had played out, especially the fact that they left me alone with the guy, called the victim assistance office and had a victim's advocate meet me at court. She was a very kind, grandmotherly lady who held my hand and explained every thing to me throughout the court case. The permanent restraining order was approved.
That didn't stop him though. He mailed a package to my stepdad at work. He kept calling me and one day actually left a 4 page letter on my car, 4 pages of rambling bullshit written on the front and back of each sheet of paper. I took the letter to the police station along with the tape recordings and gave them to a male detective. He issued a warrant for the guy's arrest.
About 5 months later, just as I was starting to get on with my life and not think about the situation every single day, a police officer who was a friend of mine called me at work and said, "You'll get another call, an official call from someone else, but I wanted to be the first one to tell you that we arrested the guy today. We got him." He explained that they would book him and most likely release him on bail and that he would have to go back to court in a few months.
The victim's advocate called me a few days later and explained what would be expected of me in regards to this trial. She said I wouldn't have to attend the hearing and depending on how the hearing went it may go to a trial and then I would have to attend and actually testify in court. I remember standing in the shower after this phone call and feeling so helpless, like my life was out of my control and I was terrified. Terrified of everything. I felt like I was having a mental breakdown. My anxiety and hypochondria were at an all time high. I couldn't stop running. I changed jobs twice, changed cars twice, and moved to a new house in a new city and a new county. I ended all friendships that had any connection to my old job and the guy. I hid.
The day of his hearing, my advocate called me to explain what was happening in court. She said the guy had been diagnosed with skin cancer and his health was deteriorating. She made it seem like he was on his death bed. She told me his attorney wanted to cut a deal, if we agreed to drop the charges then he promised to never contact me again. I agreed because I needed out. I needed my life back. I needed to breath again. I needed to feel like this mistake I made was no longer a burden on the people I loved. I needed to forget.
Here we are 12 years later, and he's still alive. I know that much. I still worry sometimes that I'll run into him while I'm out shopping, especially now that I am living back in the same county that all of this happened in. I'm terrified my kids will be with me and he will lay his eyes on them. I don't want him to look at them. I have nightmares about him, that he finds me and kidnaps me.
The reason I'm sharing this now is because I want you all to know that this stuff does happen in real life, to people you know, to people you care about. That those people, those victims if you want to call them that, often stay quiet. They don't tell the world about it because they're scared. Scared no one will believe them or take them seriously. Scared that they will be exposed or called a whore because they trusted a person with their bodies once. Scared of people looking at them differently, pitying them or feeling shame for them, when they feel enough shame already. The majority of you are hearing this for the very first time, you never knew this happened to me. Some of you are very close to me and had no idea that this is my story. One of my stories. This stuff happens every single day. Sometimes men who participate in what you think is innocent locker room talk actually mean what they say. Sometimes when they say they could walk right up and grab a woman's pussy, they mean it. It's not just a funny joke between the 2 of you and when you laugh sometimes they think that gives them permission, like you support their behavior. The man in the court house who had the power to either approve or deny my request for a restraining order, the one who told me they don't hand out restraining orders like candy, guys like that are real. Those words are real and those words are the reason why you are only now hearing about the women who were raped by Bill Cosby. It's not because their stories are untrue, it's because they were afraid and no one told them that it wasn't their fault. Victim shaming is real. Nothing really happened to the guy in my story. No jail, no record. I doubt he even remembers the incident much less thinks about it or feels any sort of guilt or shame over it. Much like Brock Turner, this guy's life went back to normal. I've looked the guy up on facebook, I needed to know if he was still alive, if I still needed to be aware of his presence in this world. He is and I think he works with mentally handicapped children now. Does that remind you of Jerry Sandusky?
The reason I'm sharing this is because I don't want my children to grow up in that world. The world where my daughter has to fight to get someone to listen to her if she's violated. A world that would rather shame her than help her. A world where we handle rapists with more care than they handled their victims. A world where it's ok for a man of power to "joke" about grabbing a woman's pussy because he's a celebrity, a world that would turn around and make that man president. I hear you when you say that it's only locker room talk. No. That's rape culture. That's sexual abuse. That's entitlement. He didn't say he wanted to take her on a date, that she's a gorgeous woman and leave it at that he said HE COULD GRAB HER BY THE PUSSY BECAUSE HE IS A STAR. I hear you when you say that this incident occurred 11 years ago. I'm sure he's changed. I mean... Jerry Sandusky has changed right? You would let him babysit wouldn't you? The incident I just told you about happened 12 years ago. I'm sure it's totally safe for the guy to be volunteering his time to help mentally disabled people, I'm sure he's doing that to atone for his sins against me and the girl he sexually assaulted in the back of an ambulance. He's not at all the kind of guy who would take advantage of his power and authority over people. Maybe he should run for president too.
I understand how twisted the political system is and I know some of you are having an internal struggle with this now because your values and hopes for the future of the country align with the beliefs of the Republican party. I know this entire presidential race is a disaster and I am just as disgusted as you are that these two turds are the best our country could come up with. Just put your political views aside and think about my story and the rest of the stories you've seen in the headlines about Brock Turner, Jerry Sandusky and Bill Cosby and just ask yourself if you can really trust people like that. If those people deserve more power. I can't tell you who to vote for and I won't be mad at you if you still vote for Trump.
Mostly, what I hope you take from all of this is that if you want to change the world, if you want things like this to stop happening then you have to start teaching your children that this behavior is unacceptable. You can't laugh at your friend in the locker room when he says he can walk up and grab that girl's pussy right now without asking or being invited. If you start changing your behavior and stop tolerating this kind of behavior then maybe we can all make a change and make the world just a little safer for our daughter and granddaughters.
Thanks for listening. Take what you can from this and do something good with it.
