The urgency of this confession stems from viewing a note that my friend wrote on facebook. The title of it is:
Rape Defense 101: Thirteen Pointers to Protect Yourself
(So if you're sensitive to this subject, please stop reading. I don't think I get graphic, but you might disagree and I cannot stress how much I do not want anyone to feel uncomfortable reading any parts of my blog.)
All 13 points were all very good and mostly involved being aware of your surroundings and the idea that rape can happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone. What really struck me was this:
#12 - Understand what rape is. Rape is usually a pre-meditated act of violence. Most rape is planned in advance. Like other violent crimes, rape is usually a way for the rapist to unleash their anger or an attempt to control and humiliate somebody else. As such, rape (violent sexual humiliation/control) can also occur within a marriage, and most states have criminalized marital rape. Rape is ALSO any other form of non-consensual or coerced intercourse--whether or not the victim is resistant or continuing to protest and whether or not it is becomes a relationship pattern.It spurred in me a memory that I wish I didn't have.
And here comes the confession...
Flat out: I was witness to a rape (or possible rape) and this is a secret I've kept for years. It the first roommate I had. For my first month in college, and I didn't even get along with her that well. This is a difficult story for me to tell because part of it has been told so casually for so long....
We signed our roommate agreement, and two weeks later, she broke it. I had told her I didn't care who she had over when, as long as there were no guys in the room while I was sleeping. I just wasn't comfortable with it, especially after seeing the kind of guys she hung out with. She signed something saying she respected that and would not allow guys in the room while I was sleeping.
I'm a heavy sleeper and an avid dreamer, so when I saw the silhouette of a man leaving the room from my lofted bed, I assumed that's what it was: a dream. I had trusted my roommate, even though I hardly knew her; she wouldn't have gone back on her word.
When it happened again the next night, I became suspicious. I may be a heavy sleeper and an avid dreamer, but I don't have recurring dreams. Plus, I heard the man's voice bid her good night. I thought I recognized it, but wasn't sure.
The third consecutive night is burned into my memory. And I wish my newly 18 year-old self had as much veracity as my nearly 25 year-old self. (You'd think I would have after what happened when I was 14, and maybe I let those strained, if not lost, friendships instill a fear into me that allowed evil to continue.) Who knows how lives might have changed...
I woke up before he left the third night. Lying atop my bed, I heard my roommate and the man whose voice I then recognized murmuring to each other in the darkened room. I heard the springs on the bed moving and I knew what was about to happen, even though I couldn't see anything.
They thought I was asleep.
I heard her protest; he didn't have any protection.
What actually happened on that side of the room and what didn't happen on my side is what keeps me up at night, not my waking up to those noises.
I can still hear him saying a napkin would work and was mortified at the idea of using something from McDonald's as protection. I still am, actually. So was she.
He "compromised" and said he could pull out. I'm confident that she agreed to that, quite possibly as the result of coercion.
After whatever was done on their bed was done, he left the room to report for his 4 a.m. shift as a campus "security guard." (Glorified parking attendant.) I don't remember what I heard her doing as I laid frozen in my bed.
She left the room to go downstairs and have a cigarette. As soon as I was confident she had left the floor, I went down to the computer lab in an effort to process what I had just experienced.
I knew that I had to talk to my RA, but I didn't know what I should tell her. I knew she needed to know that the roommate agreement (and visitation hours) had been broken. But, having heard what I heard, I had the feeling that my roommate was at least as confused as I was about the life swirling around us (she asked me later to not say anything because she was trying to get together with his roommate). I didn't know whose feelings had been more violated: mine by her or hers by him.
It was the first time I can remember having to make a decision between being just and merciful.
Which is hard, by the way.
On the one hand, she had done something she had agreed not to do. It made me feel uncomfortable, as I had told her it would. Justice requires consequences for that. But, on the other hand, she had just been convinced to have sex she wasn't comfortable having. Which qualifies as rape. Mercy requires compassion for that.
I stayed in the computer lab until a reasonable waking hour. I may have skipped a class to wait for my RA to return from hers so she could mediate a conversation between me and my roommate. A conversation so scary for me that I can barely remember having it. All I remember is the two of us standing while our RA sat on her futon and I said, "I know you had a guy in the room last night; I heard you."
Which meant that she (correctly) assumed that I also heard the conversation she had with him. I couldn't look her in the eye as I accused her.
I'm fairly sure she apologized and I forgave her, accepting her promise that it wouldn't happen again.
Which it didn't, to my knowledge.
She moved out within the next 3 weeks.
As we were walking back down the hall to our room, she asked that I not tell anyone about what happened because, as I mentioned parenthetically prior, she had hopes of hooking up with his roommate. I agreed to that. I shouldn't have. Or I should have and gone back on my word. I knew better. I knew that sexual crimes needed to be reported. I had been told that for probably half of my life at that point. (A whopping 9 years.) I knew that there was no shame in having been a sexually assaulted or abused or however you want to phrase it. If watching Law & Order: SVU had taught me nothing else, it taught me that.
But I had seen lives ripped apart by the report of sexual abuse before. Real people, real lives, real reports, real abuse. That's really an entirely different story, though. So I made the agreement to keep silence in a relieved haste. And never did report it as I should have, hoping she would. I was hoping she would know I would be on her side should she choose to report it and press charges or whatever. I was hoping she would see that in me when I forgave her and didn't freak out, insisting I get a new roommate immediately.
I never asked her about it. I never talked to her about what had happened to her that night, and I never really encouraged her to talk to me or anyone else about it, either. I ignored the elephant in the room in the hopes that it would leave. And it did.
When she moved out, I, for some reason, retained this hope that she would value herself and report it. I knew she already had low self-esteem; the scars on her wrists proved that.
But I know she never did.
How do I know?
Because I read the crime statistics in the student handbook or catalog or wherever it is they published them. There was a gaping hole in the form of a zero under the "Rapes Reported" column for the 2003-2004 academic year.
Sometimes the only thing that makes me feel even marginally better is that I helped prevent him from striking again. He started dating my neighbor, a freshman, the next year. We told her the version of the story everyone knew about his escapades with my former roommate (who dropped out before the end of the year, even). She was smart enough to try and bid him adieu, but not forceful enough for him to believe she meant it. We had to get a rescue party (4-5 freshman guys from another floor) to get her out of the lounge with him.
Do I feel better for having posted this?
Not about what I didn't do, no. But the remorse I have for not doing right and reporting it, or at the very least talking to a professional counselor about it at the time, has etched me a determination to not let another person in my realm of acquaintances experience what she did. Once the guilt really started eating away at me, I vowed that NO ONE would do what he did to her in my presence again.
Any time I see a guy making a female uncomfortable with his sexual advances, I do what I can do drive him away from her, especially if she makes him aware of her discomfort. I'm not always successful, but I always try.
Maybe that's why the truest creepers never approach me: they know I won't put up with anything I'm uncomfortable with.
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