Journals of a sexual abuse survivor o4

For this entry I am going to fast forward a little bit. This is about a day + a month or two in my journey that dramatically changed my life forever- for the good and bad.

It was a July summer day, the summer after my sophomore year of high school- 2017. I had just gotten back from a weeklong ice-skating camp in Ohio at my dream school- lucky for me it’s now my current school. Anyway, my mom picked me up from the airport on I believe a Friday and took me home. My parents would not let me leave the house to go visit friends or to leave the house really at all. This was so strange because I had just been gone for a whole week and hadn’t seen my friends. That being said, that Sunday my mom told me we had to go pick some stuff up for my dad and that I had to come with. My mom and I proceeded to get in the car and drive away from the house. Next thing I know, we pulled up to the police station and my dad’s car was outside. ON A SUNDAY. The police station wasn’t even open to the public. The doors were literally locked. To be honest I really was a pretty good kid so imagine my confusion when I was brought to the police station by my parents.

We went inside and still; I couldn’t figure out why I was there. My high school resource officer came to the door to let us inside and I was beyond confused because I had never talked to this man in my entire life. He took us inside a conference room, and we all sat down. He asked me if I knew why I was there. Obviously, I did not have a single clue why I was there because remember, I had never told my parents about P nor did I ever explain to or let my friends understand the severity of my relationship with him. Then the officer proceeded with “D you know ‘P’?’ (he obviously said P’s full name but for the sake of this I am just going to keep it as ‘P’) Honestly, I was taken aback. I told him yes that I did know P. Although, my parents were still in the room at this point. He asked me basic questions like “how do you know him?”, “have you had sex?”, stuff like that. No one would probably believe me, but I told the officer that I just knew of him, that we’ve never hung out, never had any type of sexual intercourse, etc. I guarantee that I wanted nothing to do with this situation as much as P did.

After I lied through my teeth, that’s when the officer hit me with “I already know everything. He was arrested on drug charges and I’ve gone through his phone and found messages amongst the two of you and it raised red flags.” Boom. Yup. I was absolutely screwed at this point. I’ll be honest- I still tried to lie after this. God knows that was never going to work though. I tried to tell the officer we had only hooked up about 3 times and that it was never anything to worry about. He then asked my parents to leave the room and that’s when it hit me. I instantly broke down in tears, there, in the police station sitting with this police officer that I had never met before. I told him the story of when P raped me against my will (I will share that in the next post). This caused him to change his perspective of me a great deal. He sympathized with me and my situation. I don’t remember much of this day after that besides me crying my eyes out. All I know is that my parents hated me.

My parents hated me for days after this. I equally hated them so it was fine, but they had no idea what I had gone through or how scared I was. Still, I wasn’t allowed out of my house. They were acting irrationally because they didn’t understand. They didn’t know the full story. How could I expect them to? All they knew was the few messages between P and I that the officer had shown them. From their side- I had been lying to them about who I had been hanging out with and where I had been going for the last ten months. They did not know that I was coerced, manipulated and taken advantage of. I was scared and felt like no one was on my side and I still could not even see my friends. In relation to my parents- all that comes to mind from July is my parents and I screaming at each other and constant crying. I don’t know how they are going to feel reading this but it’s just the truth.

In July and August, I was frequently going to the police station. I was constantly meeting with and emailing with authority figures that were trying to help me. Yet I still wanted absolutely nothing to do with this whole situation. July was filled with just gathering information in order to charge P. My family and a few close friends were the only ones outside of the police that knew that P was about to be charged. I remember I got invited to a party one night in late July and I knew P was going to be there. I was reluctant to even attend, afraid of what he might say to me as I knew he was going to be arrested in a week or two. I was still trying to get all of this to just go away. I hated him for getting arrested on other charges which caused all of this.

Fast forward August 4th, 2017- the day P was arrested. I will never forget this day. I was literally scared for my life. I was sitting in Schlotsky’s (the sandwich restaurant) when I got a call from P’s best friend telling me that one of their friends was just called in and questioned about the relationship between P and I. He told me that if I’m called in to just lie about everything. He told me to deny that anything every happened between P and I. I just went along with it and ended the call. Immediately after that I called my school resource officer and told him that I was terrified and didn’t know what to do. He told me that they were going to arrest P shortly and everything would be okay. I was driving to my sisters work right after I left Schlotsky’s to hang out with her when I got a call from an unrecognized number- sure enough it was P. All he said was my name and I instantly hung up the phone when I recognized who it was. I went into my sisters work and told her what had happened, and she just hugged me for a few minutes. Oh, and did I mention my parents were out of town at this point- I was home alone, making things a little bit more worrisome for me. After P called me, I was absolutely bombarded with messaged from P’s friends and my ‘friends’- or people that were supposed to be my ‘friends’. They all were telling me I needed to deny everything and lie to the police. I was so scared.

After P was arrested, the next few days consisted of a whirlwind of overwhelming messages and attacks on me. Whether it was directly or indirectly, I felt like I was literally the talk of little old Bismarck. A few of the news companies actually did a story on the case too. It was posted to Facebook with P’s name mugshot and the counts he was arrested on, although my name was not mentioned due to being a minor. I could not go on social media without feeling like people hated me. It felt as if everyone was talking about me. The comments under the Facebook posted news article were the definition of why survivors don’t come forward. People that knew nothing about me or my situation were saying it was my fault and that I was lying about the whole thing. I don’t know if I mentioned this but P is black, so of course skin color became a thing. I was accused over and over again of being a racist. Which was and is unbelievably untrue. Anyone who knows me, knows that. I could not even go on snapchat without seeing P’s mugshot all over people snapchat stories. Many people that I barely knew even had the courage to send me the news article asking if it was about me. People 3-4 years older than me (from P’s high school class) that I had never even met began following me on Instagram. It was a NIGHTMARE.

My own so-called friends even accused me of lying. That summer my best friends and I had been consistently hanging out with this group of boys who I won’t mention, but one day one of them told my best friend that I was lying and that I was never raped, taken advantage or any of that. I was so angry when I found this out. I was on my way to where all the boys were hanging out at, I literally stormed down the stairs and called him out and screamed at him and the boys- that was the end of that fake friendship. Boys in my high school snapchat group chat were making black jokes. They even asked me if it was good. LOL how screwed up is that. I was continuously abused for 9 months of my lifetime and people had the audacity to treat me this way. There was also a video that circulated of P’s friends at a party ‘freestyle rapping’ threatening me saying they were going to come for me. When I say I HATED my life- I HATED my life.

Even with all of this going on I still wanted absolutely nothing to do with this situation. I tried to make it all go away so many times. This is when I found out that contrary to what is shown in movies, the victim can’t just make the charges go away no matter how hard they try. Trust me, I tried, so hard. There were so many days I just sat in my bed and cried. I cried because someone was in jail because of me. I literally convinced myself that It was 100% my fault that P was in prison. It took me a really, really long time and a great deal of therapy, but looking back at it a few months later I discovered that it absolutely was not my fault and still isn’t my fault. I just saw it as a man being in prison because of me. A man’s life was ruined because of me. It’s weird, but I cared about P a lot and still do. I often think about him and wonder many things:

Does he regret what he did?

Does he even recognize what he did to me?

Has he changed?

Why did he do what he did?

P.S. I only proofread half of this so I apologize for any mistakes