Alcohol Convinced Me It Was My Fault, Until Now

‘ve never spoke out about this to anyone. I have been raped twice. During the summer of 2016, I went on holiday to my parents house in Spain with a few of my girlfriends. It was my first major holiday without my parents but I knew the place very well and it only featured one small bar/club. One night I had been out with the girls, but they wanted to go home before I did, and considering I had known some of our companions for years, I stayed out without them upon the agreement that a male I had met that night would walk me home. My next memory is waking up on the floor, naked from the waist down in an apartment that was not mine. I took a few minutes for me to properly understand my situation, then I immediately got dressed and proceeded to leave the apartment. When leaving I walked past two adults in the front garden, who identified themselves as the boys parents and stated ‘i’d been two drunk to get home so their son brought me here&# 039;. I assumed this had been the case and quickly hurried out, only to find that the boy would have had to walk past my own house to take me to his, and I asked myself the question ‘why did i wake up naked?’. As I have no memory of the end of my night I brushed it off, as I have done with situations I dont like most of my life and pushed it to the back of my mind. Later that day, I received a message from the boy simply saying ‘are you on the pill’. Confused I asked him why, to which he replied that he was ‘just making sure’. I was drunk, and I knew that, so I thought that maybe that was why I didn’t remember having sex. But whatever the case, this boy had taken advantage of me.

The second time I was raped was later that summer, in the same location however this time I was on holiday with my family and other families we knew. My friends are mainly all guys out there, and including my brother, we all went to the small club for a night out. I got talking to a male at the bar, someone I hadn’t encountered before and he bought me a drink. And another one. And another one. Before I knew it, I was coming to on the golf course, with this male on top of me and my skirt round my waist. I started to tell him to stop, to get off of me. But he just put a hand over my mouth and started to insert his fingers inside me. I struggled and tried to shout but he pressed harder on my face. After what felt like forever, but was probably a few minutes, I heard some voices shouting my name across the golf course. He heard it too, and thats when he stopped the attack and began to get up. I pulled my skirt down and shouted to my friends who instantly came running over. They asked why I had been gone so long, and the male told them we’d taken a walk on the golf course. I was still terrified, and not quite certain about what had happened, so I stayed quiet. When we got back to the club the male I had been with disappeared, and my two friends asked me what happened. I broke down crying and told them I think I had just been raped, but they both told me I was overreacting and it was probably nothing, so I left it.

It is only recently that I have realized these two events were rape. I was raped. My memories of the two nights are very vague, so the possibility that I was drugged on either occasion cannot be eliminated.

I am writing this down to save myself from a breakdown, however I have no intention of telling anyone in the real world just yet, I wouldn’t know how. But it’s helping to clarify the events in my mind and will hopefully give me some peace, so for that, thank you.

— Survivor, age 18