When Friends Rape Friends
Ugly title isn’t it?
Of all the crimes people commit against each other this is one I’ve run into far too often in my life.
It started in High School. Stories. I heard of one friend who had a bunch of guy friends. She had known them for years, as I recall, tomboyed with them, and as they got older drank with them. The details have left me as I’ve aged but the kernel is that after drinking and passing out they gang raped her.
I could barely type that sentence.
Another friend, a year after high school, I was back in town and we had run into each other in one of those amusing coincidences and as we went to the only boutique coffee cafe in town at the time (this was Utah) we ran into another group of my friends. I walked into the well lit room, hugged him hello, said hi to the others, chatted for a second but my girlfriend had disappeared. Maybe she had gone to get something in the car? More chat and she hasn’t stepped back in so I say goodby and went to check on her.
She was huddled in the car (we didn’t lock doors then, Utah) in tears. She tells me the story of waking up after a frat party had died down, on the frat couch and the boy I had just hugged was raping her. I did nothing, of course, but hug her and drive the fuck out of there.
I personally have been close to rape. I had been drinking. 16, he was 24. Virgin and young as some point during our tipsy, naked times I changed my mind. I said “no,” I said, “I want to stop.” I tried to leave and he pushed me back down. He prodded at me, attempting to enter a virgin who no longer wanted this, and at that point I stopped struggling, laid flat and said in the deadest voice I had, “Fine Rape me then.” The “r” word penetrated his brain, a couple of more thrusts, it was over. And if he had not stopped I would have been seriously injured. He told me not to go anywhere, went into the bath room and JACKED OFF INTO THE TOILET because his orgasm was STILL more important than my experience of abuse and I dressed and ran.
Never would I have told anyone but my friends about this. The shame of having been drinking, of being in that position. The knowledge of how people would react. It’s only been 20 years later that I started telling the story of the attempt.
I actually had a guy friend, years ago, admit to raping. He was not happy, or pleased about it. Alcohol had been involved, almost always is it seems. We didn’t get a chance for a long talk but he did mention making amends with the girl, etc. And that gave/gives me hope, that the world was changing.
Now it’s come up again. My friend has raped another friend. I have no doubt in my mind it’s happened. I’ve held her sobbing far too many times to believe it’s a lie. I have never seen her act mean-spiritedly towards anyone and frankly, women do not often lie about this stuff. It’s too real. Too much a part of our experience.
The most disturbing thing about all of it, this recent rape, as the group of friends find out or hear whispers or I tell them (because this time I will NOT do nothing) is the reactions to the news.
Every guy I personally told (not many a couple of close friends I felt has reason to know) asked if she had gone to the police. Not a bad question but illuminating how far from understanding the reality of law, rape and victim blaming is for most men. These are men I consider to be good guys too. I can’t think of any women I know who’ve been raped and gone to the police. Not one.
Other reactions are; huge concern over if the accusation is false or not, a stepping back, not wanting to be involved, yelling about slander, and fierce protective reactions over the guy as the rumors trickled in. As opposed to, do we have a rapist here? Is it one time? Is he getting help? Is she? How do we deal with this? Why am I hearing this about my friend?
It just felt that the general response is that a FALSE ACCUSATION is a worse crime than RAPE. That it’s appalling you could say that about someone but not really appalled that it may have happened. Both points of view are based on heresay. Is the potential ruin of a man’s reputation worse than the potential ruin of a woman’s psyche?
People want to know why the victim isn’t proclaiming it. Why she doesn’t lead the charge in a community justice situation? It shows such a lack of understanding at how silent the threat of further punishment makes you. Because you know as a victim how squashed your voice will be and the more ugly threats, like of slander and libel, will come up. How you will be construed as a monster for even saying it, but he will not get the same monster status for forcing your body apart and letting you know you don’t matter at all by using you as a tissue for his release.
I have used the word Rape a lot in this writing because I want to make it easier to hear and say. It happens. It happens a LOT. It is not something I have an answer to fix but I do know, have seen in my lifetime, things get better when dragged into the light of day.
I do know it is partly based in the idea that sexual scoring and domination makes a man. That the bigger, hard, hotter, faster, rougher sex you have makes you more Alpha, more MAN, it proves it! Right? It’s based on more too, and I will undoubtedly explore those in another post but I don’t know enough now to do so.
And for the record. I have no doubt in my mind that my guy friend did not want to be this guy, the rapist. I don’t know why the situation went that way for him at the time but I like to think he hates himself for it. And in his own way pushed at the community so it would have to come out.
But maybe that’s so I don’t feel that all the years I had invested in caring about him were just me being a naive idiot, one more time.