My Friend

I knew him. We were friends. He was a good friend. I enjoyed his company and he made me laugh. When we were in middle school I had a crush on him. He is 2 years older than me. I was a senior in high school. I had just broken up with my boyfriend. I was upset. My friend contacted me and offered to take me out in hopes of cheering me up. I decided to go out with him. We got ice cream. We walked around a park. We went back to his house. His mom and sister weren’t home. We went up to his room. We sat on his bed. We started talking about our past and how we both crushed on each other when we were younger. He asked me for a kiss. I wanted to kiss him, so I did. The kiss began to escalate and he tried to take off my shirt. I moved his hand away and said I wasn’t comfortable. He made me feel guilty. He said he spent time and money on me because he thought I wanted to have sex with him. That I was just leading him on. He said that if he knew all he was getting was a kiss then he never would have taken me out anyway… I knew this wasn’t right. But for some reason I couldn’t stop feeling guilty and like it really was my fault. He asked me to at least go down on him if I wouldn’t have sex. I decided that it was a better idea to do that then having him keep asking me for sex. So I did. I went down on him in hopes that if I did I could satisfy him enough where he wouldn’t ask for sex again. But he did. He said it was taking too long. He didn’t have time to wait because he was going out with friends. He told me it was my fault and now I have him “blue balled”. He told me the only way to fix this was to have sex with him. I felt guilty and I felt scared. I did not want to have sex with him. He tried to tell me why I was scared and why I didn’t want to have sex. He said I didn’t want to have sex because I was scared it would ruin our friendship and that I would be scared he would never talk to me again. He wasn’t right. I just didn’t want to have sex with him, in general. But he guilted me into it. He asked one last time for us to have sex and I said okay. I wanted to say no but I didn’t want him to be angry. I felt guilty and I was tired of him asking. I just wanted him to take me home. But he took down my pants and my underwear and got on top of me and he raped me. It is still so vivid even though it has been a year since it’s happened. I remember my eyes filling with tears as I watched this unwanted person on top of me and inside of me. I started to cry so I turned my head to the side so he wouldn’t see. It lasted about 5 min. I quickly dressed and rushed him to drop me off at home. He tried to contact me a few weeks later saying our relationship should not be awkward because we had sex. I can’t believe he thought for even a second that what he did to me was sex. I blocked him on all social media and didn’t tell anyone. I wasn&#03 9;t even sure what happened to me was really rape. But I know now. It was rape. It is called sexual coercion. Where someone guilts you into having sex with them. That happened to me. It isn’t often talked about because well frankly I don’t know. Maybe because rape is barely even talked about in general. But it’s real. And it happens. And you are not alone. So I shared my story.

— Survivor, age 18