Need help

I had just turned 17. November 1986. My brother had come home from college for Thanksgiving. My parents left us alone. We had a party. After everyone left, my bother’s childhood friend stayed. I was asleep in my parents room. Don crept down the hall. My brother called out to him..he said that he was “using the bathroom.” he went back to whatever room he was asleep in. I got up and locked my parents bedroom door. Sometime later, he picked the lock. I woke up to him using my hand to stroke his penis. He put his hand over my mouth and raped me repeatedly. I would have never have told a soul but I came up pregnant and my mother knew that I was. I told her I was a victim and she never said, “I don’t believe you.” but her actions proved just that. She told me not to tell anyone and the baby was aborted. Not before she called my then, 16 year old boyfriend, Eric’s parents and accused him of “getting me pregnant.” Eric was furious because he knew he never laid a finger on me. It traveled around my high school in a small Northern California town. It destroyed my life. Don, the rapist was thrown out of a prestigious college at the time (I am assuming also sexual assault.) So he was home, my older brother, my protector was away at school. Everywhere I went there he was. I told my mother and she did nothing. Finally, I took an entire bottle of pills to try to kill myself. It didn’t work. I remember my mother not letting me talk to the police at the hospital. She spoke for me. I was never taken 5150 and never received counseling for the rape. I spent the next 15 years trying to cover it up and burry it. I never told another soul. I fought back the only way I knew how. Graduating HS nearly illiterate, I managed to put myself through college and graduate in 2000 at the age of 30. Two weeks later I became an inner city teacher in San Bernardino California. In 2001 I met a police officer and married him, after a brief 18 month marriage in 1996 to a pro baseball player. My husband had a then 8 year old child. Being an instant mother and a wife of a well respected police officer made me forget even more. I never told Chris of my past. We went on to have to more beautiful children. A daughter in 2004 and a son in 2009. We had a beautiful life, but something was wrong with my sexuality. I was never quite right. In 2012 on Mother’s Day I again attempted to kill myself. This time my husband sought help for me. Again, the rape never surfaced. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My husband left me in 2014. By 2016 I was out of control. Dating right and left, trying to prove I was still pretty and desirable at 45. It happened again in Oct. 2016. He did not try and kill me it was a date rape and I blamed myself. Then last year, Dec. 10, 2017 I was drugged and raped by someone I knew. Beaten and strangled and left for dead. I was in LA. When I awoke I drove some 80 miles to my home. There I called 911. The police were dispatched to my home. They ranted and screamed at me because now “I was their problem and why didn’t I call LAPD?” I asked them to leave. The ambulance crew would not leave without me. They took me to a local hospital where I lay for 33 hours for help. It never arrived. I could hear the ER doctor screaming at them. The local police (where my ex works near by) refused to come. Finally, they decided to call my doctor and I was taken to my hospital (where I had my two children.) The police arrived at the hospital and took the report. I was transferred to a county hospital where the rape kit was finally preformed and I was able to get help. It took 8 hours to go the exam. It was horrific. I started my period during the exam, it made it worse. To Date LAPD has done nothing and it just turned a year. They don’t call me back..nothing. My exhusband taunts me on a court appointed website saying “no one believes you.” This is allowed and he is police officer. I have no voice. It’s ruining my life and he is piece by piece able to take my children from me…using what he knows about my past. During our custody battle it is well documented that he went to my mom and got her to say things about me that weren’t true, that she later recanted. This is all playing inside my head. I have been a teacher for 20 years, earning awards over the years. I have a master degree in education and starting on my PhD. I don’t know how much longer I can hide it. I am at the point where I am barley getting out of bed. No one believes me, even when I was covered in bruises from head to toe, with obvious hand prints across my neck. He punched me in the mouth so hard, I had bruises on the inside of my mouth. It’s insane. I watched the Netflix documentary and I wish with all my heart my mother would have stood behind me, but she didn’t. I feel that things would have turned out differently if I had a voice. I have a beautiful 14 year old daughter that lives M-F with her father and me on the weekends. Protecting her is main goal. It’s time to find my voice and speak out.

— Elizabeth, age 49