Submission from a female reader, aged 20, from the UK.

This post shows the devastating effects sexual assault can have on a person's mental health, but it also shows that recovery is absolutely possible. It's such a powerful message, and one that is important to remember if you're struggling.

The author's words are exactly as I received them.

...

I'm not ashamed of my story. 

My story is not a story of rape but sexual assault and violence.

I'm not scared to speak out about this or ashamed. 3 years ago no-one knew my story and still only a few do who helped me come to terms with what actually happened. I want people to know that you are not a victim, you are still a person. Nothing that has happened to you defines you.

When I was 13 I started going to a youth group, I used to travel once a week for an hour on my own. I had a friend at this group who used to stick with me, a few months later I met his friend who was a few years older than me, we all hung out a few times which started becoming a normal thing and we all got along. He asked me to go out with him, I said no as he was too old for me and he left it at that. The next time I saw him we were stood outside having a cigarette at our group and there was just us two. He started moving closer to me and was then right next to me. I was leaning against a wall and so was he at this point. He spun round and pushed himself onto me. So close I could feel every disgusting inch of him. Practically crushing me to the point where I couldn't say or do anything. I just thought to myself, oh it'll be some sort of joke. Then his hands were on me. It made me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn't speak or move and I was just frozen. The feeling I can't even describe. I was in shock with it. His hands were down my trousers, I was in tears at this point. Silently crying to myself, not knowing what I could do. Then my friend started to walk through the door around the corner and he let me go. I was still stood in shock and felt sick from it all. Every time I met up with my friend and he was there I used to always stay on the other side of the room and with someone. But whenever he did end up alone with me, he always tried to touch me and It was scary knowing he could get away with it.

This was when I went in a self destructive downhill spiral which I couldn't seem to get out of. Still not really coming to terms with what had actually happened and just pushing it out. 

A year or so later, I was drinking, and doing other things I shouldn't be doing at the age of 15. However for me that was really my way of coping with everything that I was going through. I was out in town one weekend with my friend we'll call her Sarah. She wanted to nip to her friends which was only 15 minutes away, so we started walking there, I was fairly tipsy but the walk sobered me up. We got to her friends house and I'd never met these people which was scary for me to deal with. My friend went upstairs to have sex with one of the guys which meant I was left alone with his friend. We started talking and he seemed genuinely nice, just chatting away. Next thing I remember was being crushed with his body on top of mine. I had blacked out with shock. Knowing it was happening again and I still wasn't able to fight back or say anything was soul destroying. His lips were on mine and I was trying to get away, I couldn't move under the pressure of him. My wrists were bruised, my top was over my head and I couldn't move. His hands felt disgusting on top of me and I couldn't move. I was crying, trying to shout. I couldn't do anything. I was hit. I hurt everywhere. I managed to get away when he let my wrists go and I struggled to get out from under him. He kept grabbing me and pulling me back. I managed to get out the house. I had no top on and looked a state. I had nothing left of myself anymore. 

I suddenly had no dignity and everything was gone. I felt no hope after what I had been through and thought that would always be me, I'd always be the victim and never be able to gain control of my life again.

I ended up in a really deep hole that I couldn't get out of and I was killing myself with what I was putting my body through. I went to the doctors after some pushing from a friend. It was the most daunting thing I'd done. But I got help, I had therapy to help me over come my depression and PTSD. 

I finally managed to come to terms with what happened and that I am not to blame for it.

...

When we experience sexual violence, we are never to blame and we should never feel ashamed. These Are Not Our Secrets.

All submissions to the blog can be found here. If you would like to share your story anonymously on this blog, email me: thesearenotmysecrets@gmail.com - I'd really appreciate it if you could include your age, gender, and nationality.

All of the posts and pages can be easily found via the blog's contents page. Have a look.

Submission from a female reader, aged mid-thirties, from the UK.

This story - about minimising sexual violence in one's life, ignoring its impact, and coping - sounded so familiar to me. It seems that so many people who experience sexual violence assume that their story isn't bad enough to be worth telling, that they didn't suffer enough to be worthy of others' understanding. 

Sometimes it's only when looking back, years later, that we can see the truth.

The author's words are exactly as I received them.

...

Once upon a silent time

Once upon a time – isn’t that how childhood stories go? I was 6 and my babysitter’s teenage son put his penis in my face. It may sound odd, but apart from telling my vastly over-worked mum I did not want to go back to that babysitter and did not like her son, I did not think to tell anyone for decades. I think I have told three people in my life, including my husband. It struck me that in my telling of my story I was quick to state it really was not a big thing, (no penetration etc.), that others suffered more than me, and it was not such a big deal in comparison.

I was wrong. It was part of an unseen web that has criss-crossed my life. My mother, who is beautiful, wise and giving, had not had the best of fortune in the men department. Father figures in my life included an abuser, a lovely man with schizophrenia who was paranoid and aggressive when he did not take his medicine, and a gentle, troubled man who later took his own life. My mother, with the untimely death of her own father, had not seen what to expect from a healthy relationship. It’s not about gender, but about experience. No one is ever responsible for being abused, but it can be hard to tell if your positive experiences have been limited. It is possible though.

My road was rocky for a while. I have been sexually misused by a partner and was later raped by someone who I had called family for years.  I realise in retrospect that I did not name it rape at the time because he told me it wasn’t. Then I saw the little girl in me, with the babysitter’s son’s penis in my face and all those years of putting it to the back of my mind, filed under ‘could have been worse’. The worst silence is the one we hold inside ourselves so not even we can hear our own stories.

The ‘friend’ hurt me during a hard time in my relationship where sexual intimacy had been long lacking. When he had asked me if I was happy I had said “Not yet, but I am working on it.” I had trusted this person who I had known since my late teens and shared many life experiences with. We were affectionate friends who had not seen one another in a while due to him living abroad. I don’t really know why I still trusted him because one 1^st of May, when I was 18 and he in his twenties, he had held a knife to my throat while off his head on a cocktail of drugs.  Somehow, my frightened child’s voice had hushed that memory and brought a million others to the fore, refiling that unsafe moment in my past (along with the penis in my 6 year old face) under ‘could have been worse.’

 A group reunion, many miles from home had bought many of us together in a familial way, reminiscent of the old days. There were hugs and teasing between us all. These were later reframed for me as flirting when I was told I had wanted it. He blamed me for not cumming because I was frigid. For several days I was so shocked, pained and confused I did not know whether to believe him. When I had said “no, I don’t want this” and he told me I did, should I have pushed him harder away? I was in shock, both during and after as to how or why this was happening. When you love someone as family you can’t quite believe it. That love and shock stopped me punching, scratching, screaming though I was inside. For a long while it delayed me understanding that it had happened.

A week after I got home I found myself taking an overdose, not  consciously trying to kill myself, but just to remove the pain at all costs. It shook me that I could do that. I had been through quite a lot in my life, but tend to be positive.  It was not only that pain but the issues in my life that had lead me to the fragile position which he had abused. He left me with a damaging but not lasting infection. For years he intermittently tried to make contact. His story was it “just had not worked out”. His explanation reminded me of that teenage boy saying to a 6 year old me, “You want to suck it”. 

‘Once upon a time’ is a phrase used for stories that transcend time and change our perceptions of the world and ourselves. Once upon a time something made me feel that abuse was to be expected.  I am now turning my own story into a story with me as my own hero. Beyond surviving, I choose to love and flourish. There is the magic in my story that I found by learning to hear my own voice. 

 ...

All submissions to the blog can be found here. If you would like to share your story anonymously on this blog, email me: thesearenotmysecrets@gmail.com -  I'd really appreciate it if you could include your age, gender, and nationality.

Regret and Resentment - on Sarah Vine and rape denial

Last week, Sarah Vine* wrote a column for the Daily Mail, which was theoretically about consent. In actual fact, it was a perfect example of rape denial; calling on the old Knickerless Slag trope, Vine created a twisted narrative, in which there is no rape, only lying women.

By talking about women making a "disastrous sexual choice", Vine is ignoring the fact that when a perpetrator rapes a victim, the victim has no choice. The perpetrator takes away the victim's choice, the victim's agency, the victim's personhood. The perpetrator turns the victim into an object to be acted upon.

Again, by referring to women making "stupid mistakes with men" Vine is putting the onus on the victim. But this is some next level victim blaming poison: Vine's argument rests on the premise that instead of rapists choosing to rape, women are choosing to have sex, and then "crying rape". 

This message is so dangerous. It tells victims, "You weren't raped, you're just a whore." It tells rapists, "Don't worry; she wanted it." It tells society, "Rape isn't a problem. Carry on ignoring it."**

Vine seems to be speaking from personal experience, when she describes waking up the morning after what she calls, "non-violent sexual encounters in dodgy circumstances". (The fixation on physical injury being a key indicator of rape! Fancy seeing you here!) Apparently, in her day, such women would have a shower and "a bit of a cry", before boxing the whole thing up, and knuckling down to a lifetime of blaming themselves. 

To me, there's a real whiff of something here: regret and resentment.

Let me explain.

My paternal grandmother, Nonna, is a 93 year old Italian wonderwoman, and I love her very much. After the second world war, Nonna came to the UK, speaking no English whatsoever.*** She met a handsome Pole (with fluent Italian, but no English), they got married, and my dad was born. Nonna has spent almost 70 years in the UK, and still speaks an utterly bonkers Itanglish, full of "badgins" (badgers), "puppets" (puppies), and instructions to "thrumanaway" (throw it away). 

Now, ten years ago, I was working in a primary school with a huge Somali intake; so many of the parents spoke no English. The parallel with my own family background really affected me; I decided to train to teach English to speakers of other languages (ESOL). I told Nonna of my plan, expecting her to be delighted. Her reaction surprised me: "Pah!"

Nonna's opinion was that ESOL was wasted on these "bladdy foreign", and the idea of government funding being used for such a purpose positively enraged her. Nonna herself had just muddled along, why couldn't these people do that? "When I come here, we get nothing!" And if nothing was good enough for Nonna, then it's good enough for everyone else.

Nonna regrets never properly learning English, and she resents others receiving help that she never had. Hence her anger.

So, back to our friend Sarah Vine.

I'm sure you've already joined the dots, but just in case: I believe, with absolute certainty, that Sarah Vine has been a victim of sexual violence. I believe that Sarah Vine woke up one morning, feeling confused, and ashamed, and disgusted. I believe that Sarah Vine could not bring herself to utter the word "rape", even in her own head. I believe that Sarah Vine coped with this the best way she knew how, by retelling the story for herself, recasting herself as the agent, a woman who chose sex, a person who got what she - at the time - wanted.

I believe that Sarah Vine has regretted this decision for years, maybe decades. But, after all this time, she doesn't know how to go back. I believe that Sarah Vine resents the sea change that we are starting to see in attitudes to sexual violence, towards victims of these crimes. Why couldn't it have been this way when she was raped? Why didn't she have the chance to recover, to heal?

Sarah Vine, I am so sorry that somebody took away your personhood. I am sorry that you are still angry. But please, rather than arming yourself with some kind of sexual violence Stockholm syndrome, and denying that any women are ever raped, instead admit to yourself that you  were raped. 

It's not easy, it's not quick, but it is worth it. 

And, Sarah Vine, these are not your secrets.

*Whose husband, incidentally, is former Secretary of State for Education, The Rt Hon Toad of Toad Hall. 
**If you haven't watched it already, Dr Nina Burrowes video "How are sex offenders able to get away with it?" is well worth eight and a half minutes of your time!

***In fact, because she came from a large, poor, tenant-farming family, Nonna never really learned to read in Italian. To this day, she cannot read her own post.