Last week I wrote about the gas
station attendant who wouldn’t quit calling me “Sweetheart” despite repeated
requests that he not do so and the boss who thought he’d get me drunk and do
God knows what with me. I honestly wish I could say those were the only
assaults I’ve endured. They weren’t.
I do want
to warn you that I will be a bit graphic in this post. Now, having said that
I’ll get right to it.
The first
one was a male babysitter. He wanted to take a bath with me that night. I
thought he was cute and didn’t see anything wrong with it. Once we were in the
tub together, he did tell me not to tell my parents.
After the
bath, we went into my bedroom and laid on my bed naked. He wanted me to lick
his penis while he licked my vagina. I thought this was weird, but went along
with it. I quickly discovered that even freshly bathed, I didn’t care for the
taste of his penis. When I told him, he told me to try using hand lotion. That
really didn’t help. If anything, it made things worse. I don’t remember how
things ended, but at the time I didn’t think anything of what happened.
There was
one encounter with a stranger in the local park. For some reason, despite being
warned about strangers, I would talk with them. I met a man at a local park
while hanging out with my younger brother. We showed him around, including the
forested area towards the back.
While we
were in the forested area, the man pulled his penis out and held my hand on it
to stroke him. I remember being uncomfortable and not wanting to touch it, but
I didn’t know what to do. Back then we weren’t told it was okay to say “no” in
those kinds of situations. After a few minutes, he let go of my hand and put
his penis away. We left the area as quickly as possible.
Those two
weren’t the worst in my life though. The next two stories I’m about to tell are
the worst for me.
The next
incident involved a young man upon whom I had a crush. He was the nephew of a
friend of my mother’s who she asked to babysit me and my brothers one night.
I was years
old and he was 15. I’d had a crush on him for a years and he knew it. That night,
he started paying more attention to me. Pretty soon we were kissing when we
thought my brothers weren’t looking. I had a high necked shirt on, so he asked
me to change into something lower. I quickly did so.
After a
while we ended up on my parent’s bed laying side by side. At first we were just
kissing. To me it was fun, but no big deal. Pretty soon he was asking me to
have sex. I was surprised, but I said, “No.”
He kissed
me some more, then asked about sex again. I said, “No.”
He kept
asking and I kept saying, “No.” It didn’t matter to him. I told him I was
worried about getting pregnant, but he told me I was too young. It didn’t
matter to him how many times I said, “No.”
He kept
asking till I gave in. I don’t know what he got out of it, but it didn’t last
long and it was painful for me. Not only that, but I felt guilty for years
afterward because I’d “consented” to sex before marriage. It wasn’t until I was
an adult that I realized that I had nothing to feel guilty about. My “consent”
was given under pressure. That’s when I realized that I’d been taken advantage
of and raped.
Mother told
me years later that when she came home that night, she found a suspicious damp
spot on her bed. While she couldn’t prove anything, she never asked him to
babysit again.
The final
person was my mother’s second husband, Don. The worst part in his case was that
he deceived me into thinking it was just a secret game we played in my bedroom.
He came to
me with this idea for a game we would play. In this game, we’d each roll six
dice up to three times. On any one roll we could keep some of the dice and
reroll the rest or we could reroll all the dice. The person with the lowest
total score lost. The loser then had to take off a piece of clothing. We would keep
rolling till one person was naked. When one of us was naked, we’d do one last
roll. If the naked person lost, the winner got to do what he wanted with the
loser. I remember losing a lot.
When I
lost, Don would have me lay one my bed, then he’d use a vibrator on my vagina.
I’m not talking about the sex toys that are so common today. It was made by
Amway for the express purpose of relieving pain. It was about 4 inches wide, by two inches deep, I'm guessing. It had a tan case with chrome bumps that made me think of a double humped camel.
I’m guessing
he liked to see me writhe around on the bed in an effort to control my body,
but being unable to. On one occasion he made me hold it on myself.
I can’t say
for sure how long the game went on or how much longer it would have lasted. It
came to an abrupt halt one night when I was cleaning my room. I found the cord
for the vibrator in my room and went to put it away in another room. As I
walked through the living room, mother noticed me carrying it and asked why I
had it.
I
hesitantly told her about the “game.” She told me it was wrong, then I started
to cry. She assured me that I hadn’t done anything wrong, but rather it was Don
who was guilty. He knew that what we were doing was wrong.
I was
uncomfortable around him for a long time after that.
He and
mother divorced shortly after. Because he’d adopted me, he had visitation
rights, so every once in a while, I’d go see him. I thought of him as “dad” for
many years. I finally realized that he wasn’t my “dad” in any sense of the word
and I didn’t have to think of him that way. I know now that even if he’d been
my biological father, from the moment he abused me, he was no longer worthy of
the title, “Dad.”
The fact
that my step father used deception and made the abuse into a “game” in which I
was a willing participant is the biggest reason I’ve shared my “Me Too” story of
abuse. In most accounts of abuse I’ve read the perpetrator used force,
coercion, threats, drugs, or a combination thereof. I wanted the world to know
that sometimes abusers are deceitful.
If someone
comes to you with their story, they’re trusting you in a powerful way. Please
listen to them and offer as much support as you can. Encourage them to talk to
law enforcement if at all possible. Go with them if necessary. Most importantly
though, just be there for them. Sexual assault is hard enough to deal with without
others acting like it’s not important or that somehow the victim brought it on themselves.
One last
thought; sexual assault is not about sex. It is about power over the victim.
