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I have had several experiences in my life that at the time I didn't fully access the severity of. As I got older, I started to recognise my own boundaries better and started to protect myself. I always blamed myself for earlier experiences, believing I got myself into a mess and just had to endure it. Reflecting back, I realise that I was raped and am going through various motions of grief and trauma. Part of me thinks I got this far without addressing it, maybe I can keep progressing and leave it behind. Another part of me thinks, maybe a lot of the issues I have had over the years are related to these experiences. I don't really know. I have brought it up to therapists, but they skim over it and go back to the formula they have preset in their notes. Sadly I haven't got the money for a good therapist. I haven't really told my story much or at all in some cases, but I have wanted to in a safe space and anonymously. So herr I go. I will tell two of my stories. There are more, sadly, but this is all I can manage for now. My first experience I was 14. I was groomed by a man in his mid twenties. Before I even realised what was happening, he was taking me back to his apartment to have sex. I didn't have time to think about whether or not I wanted to be there or if I could say no. Suddenly I was there and I hated it. It was painful and I felt horrible. It happened again another time. I was also coerced into oral sex. All of these events happened so fast, I always thought maybe I had missed something or didn't realise that I had agreed to move in this direction. He told me he loved me and maybe he did. All I know is that when I moved away and got some space from the situation, I felt really bad about the whole thing. I had no one to talk to about it. I couldn't tell my parents for fear of judgment, failure or being blamed for bad decisions (being in the wrong place etc). My parents were strict, so I did a lot of sneaking around, which is probably what lead to me being vulnerable. I was in my late 30s when I finally accepted that it was wrong, I was groomed and he stole so much from me. A second experience had a similar structure. I was suddenly in a moment I didn't feel I could escape, wondered how I got myself there and just waited for it to be over. I had consented to having sex with a guy at uni. I didn't know him well, but we had a few interactions and he had flirted a lot with me from the off. Kept telling me how beautiful I was etc. I was charmed and we had sex. During the sex, he asked for anal and I said no. Well, he did it anyway. I said no and stop, but then resolved to waiting for it to be over, thinking I must have let him do it if it was happening. He continued to have sex with me throughout the night, despite me trying many times to untangle and sleep. That also felt like torture. I attempted to go for a shower and he followed me. I didn't understand why it was going on so long and prayed for him to be done. I didn't advocate for myself enough or really understand what was happening. After I had such bad injuries I couldn't walk, sit or move properly for a couple of weeks. I ended up in hospital with a kidney infection, a direct result of the encounter. I was in huge denial about the whole thing. Flatmates heard me screaming and asked me about it the next day. I laughed it off and said just a bit of rough anal. Another friend questioned my physical injuries and I did the same. He engages in regular anal sex with men and after asking a few questions, said it sounded like I had been raped. I laughed it off. He was concerned, but not close enough to pursue me more on the matter. It wasn't until I experienced flash backs 15 years later, I fully accepted what had happened. The flash backs were triggered by a consent workshop I had attended at a gathering, which opened my eyes. I have had more encounters, but these two are the ones that haunt me the most. I am a mother now and happily married. I am a strong woman and generally don't take shit from anyone. I don't think I jad the skills to really protect myself as a younger woman. I had always been educated to believe rape was by strangers in a dark alley. I hadn't prepared for assaults from friends. Nearly all my assaults have been by friends or acquaintances. I am so thankful for the me too movement. It is paving the way for better education and protection.

I don't know how in detail I can go here because I do not want to pursue legal action for anything. I truly do not know how bad everything was and how much is gaps in my memory, I only know that he hurt my dog in front of me and yelled at me and cursed at me and called me things at such a young age that I couldn't understand. I was a defiant child and I learned to be sexually exploratory at a very young age due to not understanding what was happening. I just knew I was forced to hug others without clothes on and that I was pinned down upon occasion for money incentives when I was really young and that I was touched by someone for something necessary and medial but that the wrong person did it to me and got carried away and made it about more than the medicine. I learned to be okay with it in my relationships as well and my first one was very weird, I was forced to act ways I did not want to and forced to go on dates or else the person would threaten to hurt themselves. I am in a healthy relationship now though. I don't really know how to describe what has happened to me because I don't think I have been raped per se but I feel like I have been taken advantage of my whole life.

I was about 5/6 the first time it happened. I had no idea what was going on I just knew I felt weird.. deep in my stomach.. that gut wrenching feeling I would get before my parents would line us up for swats. It started with him being a little touchy and "accidently" walking in on me while I was showering/ changing then he got more and more handsy until finally he trapped me in the basement one day. He managed to pin me on the ground and lifted up my dress; before I knew it he had ripped my underwear and was touching me. It felt like an eternity had passed as I laid there motionless and crying, but a few minutes later he kissed my cheek, told me he was going to think about this later and that this was our little secret game as he helped me up; he was turned on with the biggest smile on his face. A few days later I was doing the laundry in the basement, bent over to pick up the clothes and drop them in the washer. He took this as a good opportunity to play "our secret game"; before I could do anything, I was pinned against the washer, he ripped my shorts and underwear down and next thing I knew he was fully inside me this time. I screamed out in pain as he jammed into me repeatedly so he covered my mouth.. I was so scared and confused. I felt the blood dripping down my legs and I was in so much pain I felt like I was going to be sick. Finally, after a few minutes it was over, and he let me go. I bent down to pull my shorts and underwear back up when I saw the blood on my legs. So many thoughts ran through my head, and I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn't bring myself to make a sound. He used one of the towels I was about to wash to clean the blood off of himself then tossed it at me for my legs. He raised his hand to wipe the tears from my cheek and I flinched. "What's wrong? You don't like our little game?" I was so sore for a few days; hardly able to sit or walk. I struggled to get the blood stains out of my clothes. It felt like I was dreaming.. that I was going to wake up from this bullcrap nightmare at any moment, but I never did. The soreness I felt after he was done with me went away with time, but I still couldn't wrap my head around the fact this was happening. Is this normal? Do other brother's and sister's do this? This continued for years; he would trap me in any places he could, and it felt like it took longer and longer each time. I decided at the age of 9/10 I had had enough and tried to tell my mother what my brother was doing to me. As bad of a mother as she was I thought she would still protect me when it came down to it, but I was soooo very wrong.. after all he was her favorite. The words she said to me will be forever engraved in my brain, "You can either let this ruin his life or you can move on. This doesn't seem like an issue you should let ruin your brother’s life." From that moment on I felt like it was my fault he was doing this so I kept my mouth shut in fear that no one else would believe me or that people would blame me if they did. He used this to his advantage and would play the game any chance he could even blackmailing me "I won't tell mom if you let me.." or he would take things from me like my homework and withhold them until I "played" and even then he would make me do extra things before he'd give it back. He pinned me down to the dining room table, hand gripping a chunk of my hair tight enough he pulled some out, covered my mouth so I couldn't scream for help and went so hard he bruised my hips.. I couldn't sit/ bend my body for a few days after that. Everywhere in that house was full of reminders that my body wasn't mine. It wasn't just forcing me to have sex either, he would force me to give him blow jobs/ hand jobs and randomly pin me against things and grope me just to prove he could any time he wanted. If my parents weren't home and we were watching something that had a sex scene in it (or if it wasn't on already he would put something on) he would openly touch himself to it in front of me.. it truly was a game for him. I would sit on the shower floor for hours with the water as hot as it would go, scrubbing my skin raw, but I never felt clean enough. No matter what I did or how hard I tried I couldn't wash him off of me.. I became so numb to it because it was happening at least weekly, but sometimes daily that I thought that was all I was good for was my body and what people could do to it. After a while I had opened up to my first girlfriend about it my freshman year of high school and started to feel like maybe I wasn't at fault. I never told anyone the full extent of what he had done and been doing to me because I felt dirty and ashamed for letting it happen to me. Talking about it, even just a little bit gave me some comfort though; no one could truly understand how I felt because they hadn't gone through it themselves, but them just listening and making me feel heard was comforting. Somehow it got out at school and CPS was called again (they had previously been called for physical abuse I endured from my parents; mostly my mother and they didn’t even bother to investigate when she gave me a black eye) along with my mother to the school. I thought it was weird, but made my way down.. when I rounded the corner, I could hear her voice, and I froze in my tracks. There's that feeling again.. Sure enough, when I walked through the front office doors I could see a group of people in the conference room; my principle, my counselor, the school phycologist I had been seeing for "sessions" like a therapist (although I never told her about this because she told my mother EVERYTHING) two CPS workers and my mother. As my gaze met with my mother’s I began to feel like my stomach was going to fall out of my butt at any moment and she just stared at me with those soulless eyes she always looked at me with. Of course, she remembered we were at the school, plastered on a big smile on and greeted me like I was her precious baby who she missed so much. "Do you know why we've called you down here?" I just sat there silently with tears rolling down my cheeks while the adults talked like I wasn't there. When it finally came out "what exactly did you say your brother has been doing to you?" all I could do was look at my mother, crying and saying, "I didn't say anything I promise!" I never said the rumors weren't true or that he never did anything I only ever said "I didn't say anything" and yet no one noticed they just saw a child crying hysterically, listened to my mother and blew it off that I was being dramatic and looking for attention. Somehow my father never found out about any of this and there was no further investigation, no examinations and no reports.. this was the SECOND time CPS failed me. He continued to do this to me until I got kicked out at 18 (or as my mother likes to say that I ran away) because instead of going back when she told me I could I stayed out. The first time I chose to have sex at the age of 16 I not only did it with someone I didn't love, but I had to get high to do it. When I got home, I sat on the floor of the shower, with it as hot as it would go and just sobbed while the water ran over my back. I thought it would be different if I wanted to do it, that I would like it, and it would make me feel better, but I hated it and mentally I couldn’t take it. I was self-harming in more ways than one and made several attempts on my life.. but any time I was with someone, or someone flirted with me I threw my body at them because I thought that's all I was good for and all anyone truly wanted. I was high most of the time, especially when I had sex, and I really didn’t care what happened to me anymore. Then I met my husband when I was 18.. the wonderful man that he is; we’ve been together 15 years, married for going on two and he’s healing something he didn’t break and makes me feel safe. There's a fire that burns within me that is fueled by so much anger.. I will forever be changed by what my brother did to me and for the lack of protection from someone who should have protected me, but chose to protect my abuser instead. I’ve spent years battling my own mind trying to stay here in spite of them; I still struggle with my self- harming in pretty much all the ways I used to along with other attempts on my life and constantly wanting to end it/ feeling like my boys deserve better than me. This is the first time I've ever fully told anyone about what he did.. not even my husband knows the full story because I didn't want to burden him with the weight of my pain. This pain has been weighing on my soul all my life and I just can't take it anymore; I'm drowning in it. I've blamed myself for so long and I feel so alone.. I feel like I'm damaged goods, like I'm broken. So, I've come here as a 30 something year old, with the encouragement and support of my therapist and my amazing husband to tell my story.. grammatical/ spelling errors and all. I wish to break the generational trauma for my son, so he never has to heal from his childhood and to heal from what’s left me broken; My boys deserve the best version of me. Even though it will probably never be seen by anyone but me, this is me taking back my power from him.. weather it ruins his life or not because he deserves to lay in the bed he made. I may never get justice for his actions and I'm not even really sure what that would look like for me, but I'm a survivor none the less. Thankfully I'm learning day by day that what he did to me wasn't my fault it was his (partly my mother’s for letting it continue) and that I deserved so much better. I didn't deserve any of this. I deserved a mother that believed me, loved me and protected me when I needed it. I deserve to heal, be loved and feel happiness. Most of all I deserved to be able to keep my innocence..

Hello, It's been awhile. In November 2019 I worked in a political office and there was harassment daily. Before I knew it I was attacked and forced to do things I was not willing to do. I never did seek justice ⚖️. I didn't want to be in harms way. After that I went through counseling therapy and I thought I would never work again. 6 months later I needed employment and it happened again. That was posted on the internet. It work in a corporation and I work in hospitality and I walk in shame daily. Not knowing who has seen me. I've been called a Crack head etc. by my coworkers. I've been called numerous name calling daily. I continue to walk with my head up and keep confidence. Sometimes people don't understand what it's like. I've never used drugs nor drink. I was vulnerable and extremely in fear of power. And so alone no support system because I feel other's would never understand. My triggers are hit daily and I just want love empathy support without shame or judgment.

I was SA'd multiple times by my now ex boyfriend. He was 18 M and I 19 F. He also made some comment about how "no one will believe you because I'm the one who's younger/closer to the age of consent". I will be pursuing legal action once I go back to the state of where the crime happened. I will be traveling back for Thanksgiving. Trying to figure out if it technically counted as insertion as it was through clothes but that was obviously the intent. He also lied about being over his porn addiction which had allegedly been solved 2 years ago. He manipulated me into not telling my and his parents about said addition because he said that he hadn't told his parents. Later, he said that he'd told a mutual teacher (who is misogynistic and legitimately horrible). He'd force himself on me- he had about 50 pounds on me and about 6 in (15-16cm) on me. So the only way to remove him was to cobra wrap him with my legs and twist him off. I knew that this was my only way of escape because it was the only muscle region in which I was stronger than him (my max lift on adductors is 205 lbs/93 kgs). Just realised what it was- I broke up with him this past April and only realised the past few weeks. And now I'm having flashbacks and other PTSD seeming problems. And he thinks we're still friends even though I told him that I'd block him. He has no idea what he did or the damage he instilled. There's also some religious trauma because he said that I needed to "pray my anxiety away" when it's physically just a lack of serotonin. So I can't even go to a church because I'm so bitter. I know I can solve this for myself, but I don't want any other girl to get trapped by him. I felt asexual a little before all of this happened and now that feeling is stronger- am I still validated in that?