Raped and Not Reporting It

So much of what Megan has said in this blog entry at Jezebel and some of the comments resonate with my own experience:

"…the thing is, it's great to say that we should do this or we should do that for the sake of women everywhere. But no one — and especially not other women and supposed feminists — has the right to tell me or any other victim of sexual assault that being victimized and being traumatized leaves us responsible for making the world a better place (as though that's what's accomplished by reporting a rape, actually). We all have a responsibility to try to prevent them, to create a world where they are much more of an exception than the rule, where drunk girls or slutty girls or drunken slutty girls don't have to explain their behavior to anyone — regardless of whether they have been assaulted, or after having been assaulted — and where victims don't have to explain to non-victims the choices they made. My pursuing the prosecution of the one made no more difference in the world than not prosecuting the other. But maybe my talking about them both, maybe helping to ease the stigma of it for other people and create a space where I don't have to be ashamed of being a victim (or of how I chose to deal with that) will."

I was 19. She was 24. She drugged and raped me repeatedly for 10 or so hours, then expected me to be her "boyfriend" for the rest of the weekend.

I didn't report it. How could I? I was unable to call it rape then, let alone remember much of it at all.

It took 18 years for the memories to come back to me. They are still coming back.

I won't go into details as I've already done that before, but suffice it to say that she was organized and seemed like she had done it before and the man she arrived with – a mutual friend – may have been an accomplice. She likely did it again. And – she was pregnant and used her fetus as a human shield to prevent me from stopping the rape when I finally awoke from the sedatives hours later.

I was 19 and a Marine stationed at at nearby base. She was 24, pregnant and a local. Who do the self-righteous commenters on Megan's thread think the police would have believed in my case?

Me? If so, they should probably stop smoking that crack…

So, am I to blame for her future victims? Am I to blame if she abused her child? Is it my fault that men aren't supposed be victims? Aren't supposed to admit that a woman can hurt them? That women aren't supposed to be predators? That I wouldn't in a million years be believed by local authorities in the early 1990s, let alone in 2008? My fault that I went into denial? That I repressed it?

Or is she to blame?

Sorry to disappoint the victim-blamers and the shamers who've trolled Megan's thread and the one at Dr. Helen's PJM story (where I told my story publicly months ago) with their bile, but rapists – and only rapists are to blame for their rapes.

And those who disagree are free to take all of my PTSD, years of sexual self abuse and doomed relationships and make them their own.

Then, come back and tell me how I'm to blame for coping the best way I knew how.

Related links:

My Sexual Assault Is Not Your Political Issue: http://jezebel.com/5022019/my-sexual-assault-is-not-your-political-issue

Raped and Not Reporting It:  https://jameslandrith.com/content/view/3248/79/

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