Warning: this post contains details that some readers may find disturbing.
I know this is just a blog. I don't know how many people will read this. I just know that I have to tell this story. For me.
I had a boyfriend in high school, one who - I believed at the time - was really good to me. He didn't seem to be disgusted with me for having Inflammatory Bowel Disease. When I would have incontinence, he would help me clean up. When I couldn't control gas, he would take the blame. When I had emergency surgery, he was not repulsed by my stoma or my ostomy bag.
However, for all of those admirable qualities, he was not a nice man.
Just because he was kind with some parts of life does not mean that he is a good person, in my eyes.
This person raped me. And after he raped me, he violated me further.
The event in question happened on a camping trip with several friends. We had been fighting horribly for weeks: explosive, toxic arguments. On this camping trip, I brought two tents. I did not want to sleep in the same tent as him since we had been fighting so much. He had often encouraged me to perform certain sexual activities that I wasn't entirely comfortable with, but was told by him that it was normal and common, so I agreed. Those acts were fully consensual at the time, but are now things that I regret. I didn't find out until my twenties that those acts were not considered part of a normal, healthy, relationship.
He was sleeping in one tent and I set up a pup tent for myself, but the wind was awful and my pup tent collapsed in the middle of the night. I then tried sleeping in my vehicle, but that was short-lived.
I opened his tent and told him that my tent had collapsed, but that if I slept in his tent, I didn't want anything to happen. I made him agree to it, verbally, that nothing sexual would happen.
I was woken up by him behind me. He asked if it was okay, and I said "no". Firmly. But he kept going. I cried the entire time. I wanted to yell, I wanted to scream, but I was too worried about waking up everyone else in the campground - of making a scene. After all, he was my boyfriend, so was it really what it felt like it was?
The next morning I confronted him. He is the one who first used the word "rape" to describe what he had done to me. He made his apologies, of course, so I tried to just move forward. Plus, it was me who went into his tent in the middle of the night. It was me who didn't yell or scream. It was me who didn't fight or kick or shove him. I laid there, crying, and saying "no", but I did not physically stop him. And he was my boyfriend... so he didn't really do anything wrong, right? At least that is what my 17-year-old brain reasoned. I was in that grey area of sexual assault, not realizing what it actually was. Old beliefs and old reasonings.
The relationship ended shortly thereafter. He told me he was too young to be dealing with my illness, that my illness was too much of an inconvenience for him.
Like many toxic relationships, we continued to be intimate on occasion, until he was intimate with someone else.
Then the rumour came out.
The second violation.
He went to all of his friends and all of MY friends and told them that I had raped him. Perhaps he thought I would tell everyone what really happened. Whatever the reason, no one questioned him.
Only one person ever asked me what happened. 8 months later one of his friends, who I had known before the relationship, asked me what really happened. He was the only person I told until my late twenties.
Further to that, when I had found out that he had been intimate with someone else, he told me that she had raped him. He said that she forced him to have sex before he was 'allowed' to leave her house. That she barred the door and forced him.
Unlike the people who were supposed to be my friends, I did not believe him. I also asked her what happened and her account was very different to say the least.
I wonder if she knows the claim he made about her.
Then came the third violation.
He had always intended on going to med school. Of course, to apply he had to write a heartfelt essay on why he wanted to pursue a medical career. He wrote about how the experience of dating me encouraged him to want to help other patients with IBD and chronic illness. The man who was inconvenienced by my illness used my story as a soft spot to get into medical school. My rapist, and a man who claimed that two women had raped him just to get out of his own accountability, was now using my experience to forge ahead with a medical career. To this day, his CV still includes that one of his main inspirations for the specialty he chose was a 'friend' he helped in high school who dealt with Ulcerative Colitis.
I sometimes wonder if any other people from that time still believe that I raped him. I also wonder if he ever feels guilty or ashamed of anything he did. I know that I'm ashamed of some of my own behaviours when I was younger, like I'm sure many of us do, but does he ever think about it? Does he ever think of apologizing? Does he ever wonder if it was a mistake to use my story to further his career? Does he wonder about any of it? Would he realize how much it has affected me over the years?
This was the first time that I was raped. It was not the first time that I had been sexually harassed/touched/assaulted, and it certainly wouldn't be the last time.
*If you or a loved one have experienced an incident and don't know who to speak with or how to approach the subject, this website has a list of Canadian resources*
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