In 2015, approximately 300,000 rapes occurred in the United States. Of those 300,000 only 30 percent were likely to be reported. I am part of that 30 percent.
I got off of work and walked half a block to my favorite local bar. It was catty-corner from the shop I worked at, and I would occasionally head over to grab a drink, read, eat fries and maybe strike up a friendly conversation with a stranger. That night was no different. It was a perfectly warm summer day, and after working on my feet for nine hours, I was ready to relax. I wore my favorite black jeans, navy blue t-shirt, black zip-up hoodie, and Adidas Sambas.
The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) estimates that every 107 seconds someone is raped. To put it in perspective, your microwavable burrito takes about 120 seconds to heat up. That means that in roughly the same time as it takes for you to heat up a burrito, someone out there is experiencing one of the most terrifying moments of their life. Someone out there is being drugged, or held at gun point, or threatened with a weapon or beaten while someone else asserts the deeply ingrained code of manifest destiny on their body.
You know, manifest destiny, the idea that we can take whatever we want because we are entitled to it. It’s the idea that helped the early Americans violently seize land from the Native Americans. It’s the excuse that politicians use when they want to go to war (the whole "God’s-on-our-side" thing). And it’s the idea that seems to saturate the minds and mentalities of rapists everywhere.
I sat at the bar, pulled out a book by Herman Hesse and ordered an Old Fashioned. A man with Basquiat tattoos sat to the right of me, and to the right of him sat a nondescript man lamenting being in a relationship. A few seats down from him was an older man missing a tooth or two. I read for a while until I inevitably got dragged into a conversation with the three men. We were all loners at the bar which meant that we all got along pretty well. Over the course of two and a half hours, I ordered and drank three Old Fashioneds. It was pretty usual for a night out. I could get just buzzed enough, and still be able to walk back to the train station to get home. Around nine o’clock (just after I ordered my last drink) I got up to go to the bathroom, and put my coaster on top of my glass.
Women account for about 90 percent of all rape victims. And one out of every six women has been raped or sexually assaulted. The chances of me being the only person you know who has been raped are astronomical. Chances are there are several people in your life who have been raped or sexually assaulted, you just might not know it. As I mentioned earlier, only about 30 percent of rapes are reported. Flip that statistic: 70 percent of rapes go unreported every year. 70 percent of victims are living in silence with trauma weighing heavy on their daily existence.
I woke up on the ground at the Auraria West Lightrail station. An RTD (transportation) officer was holding the doors open, while another yelled at me to help wake me up and get me on the train. It was one of the last trains running in the early, early morning. I managed to crawl up the steps of the train, where the officer then helped me to an empty seat. I felt too drunk for only having three drinks, and horribly confused. How had I gotten to the station? When did I leave the bar? Why was my sweatshirt on inside out? Where was my small green lunch bag that had a few groceries and dog treats I had purchased before work? Where were my ID and debit card? Where was my phone? Why was I at the Auraria West station instead of Union Station, the one I always walked to after work?
A lady was kind enough to let me borrow her phone to call a cab home from the last station. I began sobering up on the way, and made it back by 2:30 AM. I woke my mother up so I could borrow money to pay for the cab, and then I stumbled down to my basement, pulled my clothes off and passed out in bed.
RAINN reports that victims of rape and sexual assault are three times more likely than non-victims to suffer from depression, six times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, 13 times more likely to abuse alcohol, 26 times more likely to abuse drugs and four times more likely to think about or attempt suicide. Numbers don’t mean much, although they should. Those numbers should be heartbreaking, but we’ve all heard similar things before. Numbers don’t mean anything until you have a face to stick them with. Even more so, numbers don’t mean anything until you or someone close to you becomes one.
I woke up feeling horribly hungover. I’ve had some bad hangovers in my life, but that was one of the worst. I stumbled to the bathroom, and after going I noticed that the toilet water and its contents were blood red. I wasn’t on my period, so obviously I was alarmed, but I was too nauseated to care at the moment. When I went to the bathroom a couple of hours later and noticed blood again, I started to get worried. That’s when I started to feel a sense of disgust at something. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. The questions began again. Why was I bleeding out of my anus? Why was I so hungover when I only had three drinks? What happened between nine at night and one in the morning?
I laid in bed all day, until my mother came down to ask if I wanted to go out to dinner with her and my grandma. She knew I was hungover.
“Mom? Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mom my asshole is bleeding and I can’t remember anything from last night…I…I, I think I was drugged.” I could barely say the words out loud; I wasn’t sure I believed myself.
My mother is a nurse, so she immediately dragged me out of bed and took me to Littleton Adventist Hospital where she worked. I then sat through a six-hour-long examination in which a sexual assault nurse helped me fill out massive amounts of paperwork while she took pictures and swabbed every part and hole on my body. My mom sat with me and held my hand while I leaned on all fours on a hospital bed with a camera and a long q-tip up my ass. I turned over my favorite clothes, gave my statement to the police, went home, and cried myself to sleep on the couch, my dog lying next to me.
Most victims will never report their rapes. Most victims don’t have mothers that would drag them out of bed and make them go to the hospital. Out of every one hundred rapists, only two will ever see the inside of a prison cell for their crime. 98 percent of rapists are still out there, and will never have to answer for forcibly sticking their penis (or another object) inside an unwilling, terrified, and exhausted woman. And chances are they will do it again.
I spent six months circling the drain after I was raped. I had to take three weeks off of work immediately after it happened, because of the anti-HIV medicine I had to take every day. This medicine completely wrecked my stomach to the point that I didn’t want to leave the house for fear of shitting my pants. I eventually stopped working altogether due to the intensity of my depression. I gained 30 pounds. I shaved my head in tears late one night. I developed cystic acne that infected my entire face. I had a panic attack in the middle of a grocery store. There were mornings when I couldn’t convince myself to leave my room, let alone get out of bed. I spent most nights crying myself to sleep while cradling a bottle gin, or whiskey, or wine. I either slept too much or slept too little. And I thought daily of suicide. It wasn’t that I wanted to kill myself necessarily, it was that I wanted to be able to turn off my consciousness. I wanted to power down, shut off, experience non-existence. Quite literally the only thing that kept me alive was my dog. I wouldn’t kill myself on his watch. I couldn’t do that to him. Such are the thoughts and actions of despair.
Right now there are women like me who are rocking back-and-forth in a corner, alone, pulling their hair out, and sobbing. There are mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, all thinking that they did something wrong, that they’re at fault, that they are responsible for being raped. And you know what? There are a lot of people out there perpetuating that mindset: politicians who pass laws that hurt victims, religions that tell women they deserve it, schools and churches that tell women they need to cover up so as not to tempt men, monsters everywhere who put the blame on the shoulders of the victims and call them liars.
Because I was drugged and can’t remember what happened that night, part of me will always be in denial about being raped. Part of me will always feel like a liar. Even though the nurse made an official statement saying I was raped, even though the detectives and forensic specialists found male semen and DNA on my clothes, even though I had an inch and a half long tear in my anus, even though my alleged attacker was arrested on January 31, 2016, even though I had to meet with the Denver district attorney on February 16th, 2016, part of me will always deny it.
This is not uncommon. Nothing about my story is exceptional. This is the narrative that millions of women in the United States live every day. This is a choice that millions of people have made to violate a fellow human and strip them of their agency. This is also something that will probably never stop. But if people like me keep speaking out, and if people like you continue to help educate and to say something if you see something, we can help save someone from wanting to die because of a choice that someone else made.
