I Am a Sexual Assault Survivor

Imagine, being 15 years old, sitting on the floor of your bedroom closet, holding the only weapon that you can find – 5# ankle weights. Shaking with adrenaline and fear, hiding from the man that just sexually assaulted you. Hiding from your own stupidity, your own responsibility, your vulnerability, your mistakes. Believing the words – that you were a tease, that you led him on, that it was your fault.

The #metoo movement empowered millions of people to come forward with their stories of rape, molestation, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. Kendra felt like a fraud adding herself to the list of “victims” – speaking her truth. She hadn’t been raped. She felt unworthy of adding her name to the list of survivors who had been through so much worse. Then one day, the name of the man that had manipulated, stalked and assaulted her all those years ago, popped up in a friend’s thread on social media. Even though she had long ago blocked him, and hadn’t seen him in more than thirty years, she felt triggered, and she started to write her truth. As she did, her middle-aged self recalled her teen-aged self shaking on the floor of her closet and honored her truth by naming it.

I have something to say, but it’s sort of embarrassing. Rape and sexual assault have come out of the closet in recent years, but I still feel uncomfortable talking about that close call...that one that I knew would go bad at some point. I feel unworthy of speaking like a survivor when I was never actually raped, but then, I know how lucky I was, and I can say “sexual assault” and know that it happened whether or not there was actually sex. I’m older and smarter now.

I was sexually assaulted.

I sometimes have to take myself out of such situations in order to depersonalize them enough to examine them clearly, and give them a voice. I imagine if a friend or a niece came to me with this story - how would I react? What advice would I give? It helps me find perspective. I’m in my 40s now, and can look back and give my teen-self empathy, understanding, and love.

I was 15 and both invincible and fatalistic. The world had dealt me some blows - my mom was dying, but she said that she wanted us kids to enjoy life, so I did. I should have spent more time with her, but I went out for plays, I hung out with friends, and I went to parties. And there was this guy. He flirted with me, and showed me attention even though I was much younger. He was a senior and we met during a school musical that we were both part of. He chatted me up at a cast pool party after one of our performances. He got my attention by talking about diving. He could dive really well, plus he paid me compliments and admired my bathing suit.

Eventually, we sort of became friends. I had really been attracted to the flattery and the attention at first, but something always felt a little off. At the time, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. With hindsight, I think that I felt an undercurrent of mistrust and manipulation from him, but I didn’t yet have the experience to quantify my feelings of unease.

One day, he tearfully told me how his parents had kicked him out and he didn’t have anywhere to stay. He cried. I was moved. I barely knew him, but my parents had fostered kids before and agreed that he could come live with us. He was "Kendra’s friend," after all. He shared a room with my brother. He drove our car. He, my oldest brother, and I all worked together at a local farm that summer. He showed me how to drop the car into gear so it would spin out on the dirt roads. It was sort of cool and reckless, and he kept showing off, kept flirting, and there was often a sense of danger. Sometimes I felt like he knew a secret that I didn’t.

I’m describing feelings. These don’t hold up in court or in supreme court confirmation hearings. These are the nebulous memories of a young, inexperienced teenager. After more than 30 years, I only have glimpses of moments and few specifics. I remember feeling watched. He used to cross his arms and stare at me. Just stare with a little smirk on his face.

I remember the day that he confessed to being attracted to me. He told me in detail how he wanted me. I told him he was my foster brother and that it couldn’t happen. He tried to make a pass. It was awkward. He was aroused. I was a virgin and both flattered and terrified. I played it off as a joke. I told him to stop talking nonsense.

I began to feel unsafe. I avoided situations where we would be alone. I would walk for miles to avoid riding in a car with him. I didn’t trust him. He lied a lot. He lied to make himself look good. He lied about tiny, unimportant details, and he also told whoppers. I began to doubt that he had ever even been homeless.

One night I was heading up to bed - in my pajamas - a big t shirt and men’s boxer shorts - and stopped to say goodnight to my brothers. I heard the guy make a rude comment saying he was trying to sleep but “these assholes are keeping me awake.” I confronted him. Maybe I was just being a prissy lady of the manor. Maybe I was subconsciously creating a skirmish when my parents were at home, and I was reasonably safe. Maybe I was simply tired of the undercurrent of pissed-off tension, subtle threats, and meanness. I told him to watch who he was calling assholes (in this case, it was my six and seven-year-old brothers.) He seemed to go off. He jumped up, sitting up in his top bunk, threatening me, calling me a prick tease, a bitch, saying worse. Telling me how someone should shut my fucking mouth. I picked up a bar stool in my brother’s room and wielded it like a bat. I said “come on. You want to go?” He didn’t.

(Later, his story would be that he was sound asleep when I came in and started beating him over the head with the bar stool. Even a modest geometry student would be able to deduce that the angle of the ceiling over the bunk bed made this impossible, but he stuck to the falsehood. Because he needed to prove that he was justified. He insisted that he was entitled to do what he did, that he was the victim, not me.)

I left my brother’s room and headed toward my own bedroom. I got about three steps away when he charged me like a raging bull. He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back towards him, then roughly grabbed both of my breasts and threw me up against the closet door - slamming my head against the wood. My head rang and for a moment I was breathless, and he held me against the solid door by the chest and throat. I could hear my sick mother, a few feet away in her room, screaming for my dad. Then I reacted. I remember just lashing out. Pushing, kicking, trying to put distance between us - then I kicked him down the stairs. I remember that. I remember seeing the moment when he was off balance and stunned. He looked at me - shock, surprise, disappointment - and it was like that moment when Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber character realizes that he is going to fall from the Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard. A moment suspended in time, two people knowing exactly what was about to happen. Then I kicked him in the chin, his head snapped back, and he went tumbling down the stairs.

Seriously. That happened. I kicked his ass. My little brother had a clear view of that part from his bed and, to this day will talk about how I roundhouse kicked the guy down the stairs. I joke that I’m fairly sure it was a double-front kick, but it may have been a jump front. Either way, it empowering for a little while, anyway. While I ran to my bedroom and sat on the floor trembling and clutching a set of five-pound weights to my chest as weapons, my bear of a father met my assaulter at the bottom of the stairs, and I never had to see him again. I don’t remember if there was a discussion, but he was gone the next day. My parents said it was just too much with mom being sick. I don’t remember talking about it, really. I don’t remember who came in my room to see if I was okay. I was. I wasn’t. I am.

Kendra considered. Writing about the assault had been cathartic. She realized that to this day, she hated being held down in any way. If she got stuck under the sheets, she would panic a bit. It never occurred to her that this may have something to do with being assaulted as a teenager. Perhaps she had hated it before and that’s what caused her to react so violently when she was held down. She would never know which came first.

It’s hard to identify as a “victim” when you feel safe, strong, capable, and secure. Still, it’s important to speak your truth in order to exercise the demons. For Kendra, the monster didn’t haunt her dreams, but seeing his name on Facebook had caused a surge of panic and anger. He no longer had any power over her, but that didn’t mean that he was welcome. The statute of limitations was long past, three of the five witnesses are dead, and it’s ancient history. He is ancient history.

Finally, Kendra typed two last sentences:

I was a victim of sexual violence. I am a survivor, and I’m okay.