It Was Too Late

I had just turned 19 the first time it happened but that’s not the story that I want to talk about. The next day on Sunday night at 10 pm, after I checked my phone to see if my mom had texted me. I was raped by a friend that I had been sleeping with for a while. We weren’t dating but I had sex with him a few times because I was feeling like crap about myself and for a while. Sex helped keep that feeling away. It still confuses me because of everything that we did that day. Everything I did too.

That day I hung out with him like normal, except he drank a lot. I lied to my mom about where I was going, and I went to his place instead. It was in a bad part of town so I knew no one would recognize me. After leaving his place and going for a walk I noticed he had been drinking. I could smell it on his breath.

He grabbed some tennis rackets from home and a couple of tennis balls, then we walked to the corner store. I bought gum, and a bag of chips, and an energy drink. He bought a bunch of energy drinks too and we left. We walked to the park and played tennis for a while and I thought it was fun, then it started getting dark out so we headed back to his place.

It was normal I think, until he brought out the beer and the vodka. He had been drinking a lot more than I did and he was already near drunk. I hated the smell of it but I just shoved off the thought. I had maybe 5 sips of the beer he gave me and I put it down on the coffee table. We started kissing, and I noticed he was being more rough, and moving faster than normal. Then he covered my mouth and laughed. I just acted like I was okay because I thought, this is normal, we’ve had sex before so this is no different. Until he held me down and forced himself in me without any warning. That’s when I knew he wasn’t normal and he was being violent.

I had said yes to having sex with him. But at this point I was shaking my head no and pleading with him to stop but he didn’t. All he said was “you’re gonna make me c**” and he started breathing really heaving into my face and hurting my even more. I zoned out staring at the ceiling until he put all his weight on me and laid down on the futon and put me on top of him, still forceful. I was crying at that point. He held my hips so painfully, and he forced me to make him finish while I was on top of him, with his hand still over my mouth and his arm holding me down on him. I started hitting him and pushing my weight off him but nothing worked so I gave up. He took his hand off my mouth and I pleaded with him. “No, please stop, no, I don’t want to anymore. NO” Then he stopped, he shoved me off of him and he went to get another beer from the kitchen. I sat there and cried. I was shaking, I couldn’t feel anything except the pain, and I was in shock. I stopped crying as soon as he walked back into the room and just went numb.

What he did next still makes me angry, and confused to this day. He put out his arm, I flinched and he tried to wipe away my tear, or fix my hair, but I smacked his hand away and I could feel myself start to cry again. He got angry. He walked around the coffee table. I could see his anger on his face as he sat down with another beer and he asked “Want me to call you a cab?”

As if what he did, didn’t happen. As if I wasn’t crying and in unbearable pain. As if I had not just been raped and he had done nothing wrong. I said no and i got up quickly gathered my clothes and went to the bathroom, I threw up, I put my clothes on and I fixed my makeup. I made myself think that if I looked okay, even though I wasn’t I could go home and act like nothing happened. I grabbed my jacket and ran out of his place, which was a basement apartment, it was freezing so i ran as fast as i could not knowing where i was even going. I realized he didn’t come after me. He didn’t say anything else, and really, he let me go. I walked to the beer store close to where he lived, on the way there I called anyone to pick me up but no one answered so i called my best friend. I’ll never forget it, I calmed myself down even though my phone battery was dying, I called and her mom answered the phone. I asked “Is ____ home?” and she said yes and gave her the phone. I told her what happened, i started crying again and i walked to the beer store where they said they’d pick me up.

After everything had happened and it finally sunk in what had happened to me. I went to the hospital, I called my aunt (not my mom because I had already lied to her) and my best friends mom explained to her what had happened. I didn’t want to press charges. I didn’t want a rape kit done. I didn’t even want to be at the hospital, but I couldn’t leave. We drove to a new hospital and my aunt eventually told my mom and they came to the other hospital. What I didn’t know is she told everyone else, my dad and my sisters, and my cousin. The police took me in a room to talk to me, but I knew they didn’t believe me. Because of the way it happened and because I had sex with him before. They had a look on their face that told me I was lying. They took me to a doctor’s room and the doctor had me get undressed and made me sit in a chair with stirrups in them. She said there was no trauma, there was no evidence, and there were no bruises, that was all she said “Everything looks normal” with a smile, and a disgusting sarcastic voice.

No one believed me, I knew that already. A detective was assigned to my case, but she was the most horrible person that could have been handling my case. She didn’t believe me right from the start.
She told me the excuses that I heard on T.V about rape victims.

“You’d ruin his life.” “The trial would be long, and difficult” “You don’t want to put yourself through this.” She didn’t believe me and she told me so. I gave up. I gave up on everything that day. A month later, she came to my house after I hadn’t called her, I was thinking about the trial and wanted him to go to jail for what he had done, my mom did too, and my aunt told me she’d be behind me supporting me. What the detective did, made me lose all the little faith I had in the justice system, she asked me sign a paper that said If I hadn’t made a decision about whether to prosecute him now and press charges now, that I wouldn’t change my mind in the future. She made me sign that piece of paper, and she didn’t give me time to think through what I wanted to do. The thing is, I wanted to prosecute him, but all she was doing was defending him, and making sure I didn’t ruin HIS life, because he had already done that to me of course. No one believed me that time, and it’s happened more times after that, but im sure no one would believe me now either. I was assaulted the same day a year later, just a few months ago, and now I hate myself for not doing something in the first place. Because now, I feel horrible, because no one believes me, and now its too late for anyone to ever believe me. It’s too late to do anything now.

— Survivor, age 20