Rape - share your experiences?

i have not been raped and/or have not committed any acts of rape

that is my experience in the matter

I was 11.

My teacher at school had told us kids if any parents asked us where the school gala was being held then we must direct them.
I was waiting outside after care when a man in a car drove up and asked me to direct him somewhere having been told by my teacher that it was impolite to not help people i walked over to his car.
...
A few months back i called up my old school and asked to speak to the teacher who had said it was okay to speak to strangers. I told her in graphic detail what had happened to me. What she had caused.
I hope she never tells another child to speak to strangers.

That's horrible! I've never had anything happened to me but I'm quite paranoid anyhow. As a child, I remember being told never to go with a man anywhere, if I didn't know him well and for a long long time I was scared of men in general because I had been told these things.

I am grateful, because I know I probably would have been abused otherwise but I hate the reasons, that it was "necessary" for me to be atleast wary of men. It took me a long while to trust men again and still find it easier to trust women than men.

Why have you chosen now to tell anyone?

I have my reasons of never having the confidence to tell my family because quite frankly, this would destroy them.

Do you still think about it to this day? How often?

I would never think of telling the police what happened to me.

Partly because I don't remember most of it because I was so drunk.

I remember being down the beach and I know I didn't want to. And after that I don't remember anything. I walked back to town and I remember I was crying and I lost my phone so I couldn't call anyone.

I know who did but I will never tell anyone because I live in a small town and everyone knows everyone. I don't even hate the person. I hate myself.

I feel so stupid for it. I don't even remember parts of what happened after I said no, I must have passed out for a bit. I blame myself.

I told my mum a week later only because she knew something was wrong. We had a fight a few days later after it and she called me a slut and slapped me. I think it was just too much pressure on my mum because I swore her to secrecy. I'm not mad at her at all.

I'm a very happy person. I love my family. I love my boyfriend. But I hate a part of myself for this, and I can't get past it.

I am really sorry about what happened. What's your relationship with your mum like now? Has she accepted what happened?

Please keep anon, for obvious reasons.

I was raped by my brother. It started when I was 11. Every saturday my parents would go grocery shopping leaving me in the care of him (he's 4 years older than me), taking my younger sister with them. We were considered old enough to stay at home, out of the way. He would take me to my bed and rape me. He did this nearly every saturday until I was 15. Sometimes it wasn't just sex, but acts I can't even bear to commit to words. My family had a lot of turmoil going on for years, my dad had been clinically depressed for years, and committed to a mental hospital twice. When he wasn't in the hospital there would be huge arguments between him and my mother, often my dad would leave the house screaming he was off to commit suicide. So my family was hanging by a thread. My brother used this to manipulate me, saying that if I told anyone, it would destroy the family and we'd be taken into care. So, as far as I could see at the time, there was nothing I could do to stop it. When it did stop it coincided with him getting his first girlfriend (at 19). Istead of abusing my sexually from then on, he abused me mentally, saying that I was worthless, stupid and there was no point in hoping to go away to university as mum and dad couldn't afford to send me even if they wanted to.

I had never told anyone of what happened until November last year, when I finally told everything I could remember in drips and drabs over a few weeks, to my boyfriend of 5 years, who has helped me immensely, comforted me as I've sobbed endlessly and punched walls. What finally made me confront my past was my boyfriend questioning some awful things I was doing, which with councelling have made me realise that what I was doing was recreating my own abuse. Because I had never faced my past and bee running from it for nearly a decade, I continually recreated it (unconsciously of course), previous abusive boyfriends being one of the means. Simultaneously, and again unconciously, I set out to make myself unattractive. I cut myself (the scars of which I still have) and by the time I was 14, I weighed 18st, efforts at the time to repel my brother. I still carry nearly all that weight, but have now begun gradually to lose it (understanding this now, of course makes it all the more upsetting when I do get abuse from men hurled at me in the street because of my weight). The fact that I had gone away to university and been sucessfull academically meant nothing to me before, I still felt worthless, ugly and repulsive, but now I've finally been able to unburden myself, I've begun to move on.

I've always known I could never tell anyone in my family. My parents are now in their sixties and I don't think they could handle it, even if they believed me to begin with. Because of this, I have to play happy families with them, to an extent. It is no coincidence that out of my brother and sister, I am the one who moved furthest away. I go home as little as I can, which hurts because I miss my sister and mother, who is becoming frail and needs more help around the house. But when I do go home, my mother invites my brother over for a kind of family reunion, and I have to sit and make small talk with a man who raped me over 200 times over the course of nearly 5 years. He now has a wife and child and I have to pretend to be an interested aunt. If I fail to send birthday/christmas gifts, my parents ask me why I haven't, and tell me to send things to him/them. I don't know if anyone else but me really knows what it feels like to send gifts to your rapist.
As soon as my parents die, I will be able to sever all contact. But until then, I have to keep up an act for their sakes. In a couple of years, my boyfriend and me would like to get married. If we run off and have a little wedding, just us and friends, my parents will be crushed. If I invite my parents, my brother will have to attend to.

Worst of all for me though, is the simple fact that the bed I have at my parent's house is the same bed that all this happened in, and when I go home tto visit, I have to sleep in that same bed.

To all the girls here who have had terrible experiences, I urge you to tell someone, anyone you feel you could trust with your life, or failing that, a councellor, someone impartial. It took me 10 years to finally tell someone, and I genuiely feel that I began to live my life that day.

Please keep anon, for obvious reasons.