Why We Don't Tell

#MeToo
Why We Don’t Tell

--AJ McAninch

As I watch Dr. Christine Blasey Ford bravely tell her story while others try to mock her, more women gather strength to support and protect one another. And my own story rises to my consciousness again as it has far more often in my older years where I had suppressed the memories for decades. I’ve tried to sort through this, write about this, failed. But now I feel a responsibility to ‘tell’ because we’ve been silent for so long, and others have decided not to remain there—especially when telling means everything to other women and to this movement and to the future for women, especially in this case.

So, my story:

I was sexually assaulted when I was 14 by a 17-year-old boy. There was a witness, but he laughed. Both are dead now, but no one would have believed me because I was ‘nobody’ and because of who the boy was. I was not raised with an emotional support system or any confidence at all, so I wouldn’t have told anyway, because I would have assumed it was my fault.

I was sexually assaulted again when I was 15 by a family member. I froze, I think I went into shock, I told no one. To this day, no one then knows it happened much less who it was. He, too, is dead. But I don’t think anyone would believe me, or they would absolutely deny, or would say, “but he’s not here to defend himself.” I still can’t bear to think about it, and writing this is excruciating because it was the ultimate betrayal that affected all the rest of my life. I didn’t even accept that it had happened to me, repressing it for decades.

From both attacks, I spent my teen years hidden, alone; I never had a date until my senior year; I lived in my room, reading novels and listening to radio. I was an isolated, fearful girl. I was a good student, though, so people who knew me then would probably think I was just fine with my grades and small activities in school, and would not believe any of my story. So, I covered with fake laughter until I could get away from the high school campus and flee into my shield-room. I look back on the girl today and feel so sorry for her, so neglectful of what she needed from me to get well, and never had.

But the horror wasn’t over. Since I had lived virtually alone throughout my teen years and was inexperienced and naïve, I knew nothing. And I was raped my sophomore year in college at a party with wine and drugs, which I didn’t know were being dropped in the drinks. My lonely self was just happy to be invited and did not know I was targeted. And he was paying attention. He was popular, handsome, smart, a big deal on campus. I couldn’t believe I was so lucky that night. 

I wasn’t. He took me upstairs to a dark room and onto a bed. I was a virgin. I told him I was and begged him to stop. He laughed and said he was “pretty big,” so it might hurt, but “if you think I’m going to stop now, you’re crazy.” He held me down, and he was right: he hurt me. Afterwards, he said, “Don’t speak to me on campus: I’m not friends with girls I screw.” And I knew what I was now to the predator.

I bled for days. When I told her what he’d done, my roommate said if I reported him, it would ruin his reputation, and that she would say it was a lie. I bled. I should have seen a doctor; I didn’t. I should have told someone; I didn’t. I bled and hurt and blamed myself. My grades went down, and I hid in a part-time job away from campus for a year.

The assaults and attacks affected who I eventually became, but I was never who I was meant to be: she was lost. On the surface, I may seem to be a successful woman now, and I am to some extent, but I would not talk about the attacks and instead repressed what happened to me; I am only just now in my later years facing the memories and images. I now know there are millions of us. But we are telling our stories because we finally have the support system in one another that many of us lacked from others in our lives. Now we can finally tell, and help one another.

Today, I know who he is—this predator who rapes, who preys on us, who depends on our silence; I know who he is, what he did to me, does to us, to my sisters, and I will not be silent. So to you men (and women) who deny the truth we tell you, who have done that to us for millennia while we bleed, while we are assaulted and raped and hurt and ignored: they did it. We’re not going to stop telling; we’re not going to shut up; we’re here, and we’re going to rise up, take our places, and fight back. They did it; and we’re going to tell. You will listen, fight back with us, or be replaced—very likely by us.