[zaqan]

A letter to … the girl who accused me of rape when I was 15

Quote:

I was 15 and you were 13. Exactly one year and four months apart. But they will say two years because apparently, in months, we are supposed to round up. I had never met you before, even though we went to the same school. After the usual Friday night routine of underage binge drinking and smoking to look cool, we ended up staying over at a mutual friend’s house. His not-so-traditional parents made it an ideal hangout.

We were talking casually when I first noticed you flirting. I wasn’t exactly a looker back then, and definitely not the kind of guy who girls at our school usually flirted with, so I guess I was flattered. I made some kind of attempt to mirror your advances and we kissed.

“Bed” turned out to be you, your friend and me sleeping on three mattresses in a dining room. We held hands when the lights were out and you guided my hand to your breasts.

We gave up our virginity in eight minutes of clumsiness and confusion. You took my belt off and I battled with your bra. We were as silent as we could have been so as not to wake your friend who lay just two metres away, asleep.

I think we were both relieved when it finished. We didn’t use a condom, I guess because I never expected to have sex any time soon and if you did have one with you it wasn’t offered.

It was entirely mute apart from the simple, but essential, “Do you want to … ?” and “Yes.”

We parted with closed-mouth kisses and I returned to my mattress to sleep.

I woke up being shaken by my friend’s father and two policemen. They were telling me to get dressed and come with them. I didn’t have a clue what was going on.

One of the officers instructed the other to “bag” my T-shirt so my friend’s dad gave me his to put on; all the while I was being escorted through the house rubbing my eyes and asking what was happening.

Through the living room door, I saw more police comforting you. My friend was shouting something in my defence but it wasn’t until I was being arrested at the side of the police car for rape that I realised what was happening.

The arresting officer held my arm in detention until I finished heaving my stomach on to the street before pushing me into the back of the police car and driving me to the station.

I was processed and taken to a single cell where the door was closed and my head exploded. I didn’t make a single sound and declined the blanket and the solicitor, as if they might let me out for good behaviour. They took my shoelaces so I didn’t hang myself.

I woke up in tears to the realisation that I was still in a nightmare that couldn’t possibly be true. My foster dad had been called and he came and cried with me, demanded a solicitor and sat through a police interview so in-depth and humiliating that I still refuse to let myself remember it.

I had samples of my nails, saliva and pubic hair taken.

For three months, my bail was renewed monthly while the case was investigated. All this time, I wasn’t allowed to arrive at school until every other pupil was in class, for their safety. I spent every day in isolation, having work from each lesson sent to me via reception staff. If I went to the toilet, I’d be accompanied inside and prevented from talking to any other pupil in the school who I’d spent the last three years trying to make friends with.

My foster placement nearly collapsed because social workers were not sure if I could be trusted to live in the same house as my foster sister. I became completely introverted.

The charges were dropped in January, after the worst Christmas of my life. I was told that charges against you and me for underage sex had been considered but weren’t pursued. They did not give me any options to take action against you.

I never saw you after that night. In the six years since, I have done all I can to block out the horror of not just that night but of every month spent on bail. While the police seemed to hold true to innocent until proven guilty, my friends and their families certainly didn’t. Even when I returned to a you-free school, I never quite recovered. My relationships since have been damaged and I still struggle to trust my partners. I tell practically no one now about what happened, for fear of being perceived as a rapist and because I guess they’d say stories like mine make it harder for real victims of rape to be believed.

I moved away from home and keep minimal ties with my old life, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget what you did. I don’t know why you told your friend that I had raped you – maybe because you didn’t want to admit you’d had sex so casually or maybe because you were scared.

But I will never be able to forgive you for what you did to me.

You damaged my perception of women entirely and the only relationship I have since been able to sustain is with a man I can trust.

Rape is an abhorrent crime and every victim should be able to report it. But false accusations of rape are abhorrent too, and the victims too easily forgotten. Not only do false allegations damage the life of the victim but they also contribute to the trivialisation of the seriousness of genuine sexual violence.

Anonymous

Give her the chair.

[komatiite]

Quote:

You damaged my perception of women entirely and the only relationship I have since been able to sustain is with a man I can trust.

Am I reading this correctly?

Because of the irrational actions of a clearly overwhelmed 13 year old girl, this guy has turned into a queer?

I mean I feel bad for the guy for the foster parent situation and the classroom shit, but he decided to become a homo due to this? What a fucking drama queen!

[JoyStick]

   

[Duke Castile]

You know, this kid went through something thats very difficult to imagine.

Brushing aside just how awful that must have been and jumping to the conclusion that he's a "queer" and a "drama queen" after telling everyone just how horrible these false accusations are is pretty shitty.

[The Father]

(11-30-2014 12:50 AM)komatiite Wrote:  

Quote:

You damaged my perception of women entirely and the only relationship I have since been able to sustain is with a man I can trust.

Am I reading this correctly?

Because of the irrational actions of a clearly overwhelmed 13 year old girl, this guy has turned into a queer?

I mean I feel bad for the guy for the foster parent situation and the classroom shit, but he decided to become a homo due to this? What a fucking drama queen!

He doesn't say he has sex with men, just that the only tight bonds, the only people he can trust, are men. LOTS of men feel this way - they don't get too close to women (just close enough to fuck them) but do form lifelong friendships with men. No homo.

[TheWastelander]

I can't really tell what he means by it since he mentions having a damaged perception of women (which would make them harder to have a sexual relationship with), then mentions the only relationship he can sustain since then is with a man he trusts. Man, singular. Not a friend, friends, or men.

Regardless, what a horrible story.

[komatiite]

Yeah Fisto maybe I was a little too quick to condemn the guy, and could have misinterpreted what he meant in the first place.

But- 13 year old girls in the midst of puberty can be needlessly complex, something that I could never understand at a psychological level. I can't really condemn the little girl either. Who knows what was going on in her head. She is too young to be truly liable for this.

If anything, this is an indictment on the legal system. A situation like this should not have been spun out of control to the extent that it was by the police.

[TheWastelander]

(11-30-2014 02:07 AM)komatiite Wrote:  

But- 13 year old girls in the midst of puberty can be needlessly complex, something that I could never understand at a psychological level. I can't really condemn the little girl either. Who knows what was going on in her head. She is too young to be truly liable for this.

Even when I was five years old I knew it was wrong to lie. At 10 I was more than aware that it was wrong to lie about something to get someone in trouble with adults, let alone the police.

[Rawmeo]

Well, that's good of you to have gotten over it, but you didn't seek financial compensation for that? Like, suing her (or her parents because she's underage, I don't know the law there).

False rape charges are a serious threat to many guys and I hope Serena Bowes will get a lengthy sentence for that, to serve as an example to all girls who have buyer's remorse.

[Sp5]

(11-30-2014 02:10 AM)TheWastelander Wrote:  

(11-30-2014 02:07 AM)komatiite Wrote:  

But- 13 year old girls in the midst of puberty can be needlessly complex, something that I could never understand at a psychological level. I can't really condemn the little girl either. Who knows what was going on in her head. She is too young to be truly liable for this.

Even when I was five years old I knew it was wrong to lie. At 10 I was more than aware that it was wrong to lie about something to get someone in trouble with adults, let alone the police.

You're a man. Lying is something clearer to you. Females rationalize what they are say and believe it.

[iamdegaussed]

Honestly sounds to me like the effects of the false accusation could be just as bad as the effects of a sexual assault.

Why they're taken so lightly by certain sectors is anyone's guess.

[duedue]

As usual, men bearing the consequences of women's careless actions and emotional instability and the state meddling with people's personal affairs: "My foster placement nearly collapsed because social workers were not sure if I could be trusted to live in the same house as my foster sister."

[Shitlord]

If I ever get falsely accused of rape, I will make it my life's work to destroy the bitch, hopefully driving her to suicide after many years of making her suffer.

[Parlay44]

Uhh where was her father in all this Why would he let her sleep at a 'questionable' family's house on a mattress on the floor

[The Lizard of Oz]

I don't buy this story. It feels literary and fictionalized.

Quote:

We gave up our virginity in eight minutes of clumsiness and confusion. You took my belt off and I battled with your bra. We were as silent as we could have been so as not to wake your friend who lay just two metres away, asleep.

Who writes like that? "Eight minutes" is an affected and overspecified detail, and "clumsiness and confusion" stinks of literariness.

Quote:

I think we were both relieved when it finished.

This is the sort of thing that a writer trying to imagine a situation would say. It's a cliche.

There is an air of unreality about this whole narrative. It reads to me like a literary fantasy, maybe even written by a female.

Don't get me wrong -- there are many stories like it that are all too dreadfully true, and we are in the midst of an evil and corrupt false rape accusation epidemic. I just don't buy this particular anonymous "letter".

[Hades]

(11-30-2014 12:19 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

I don't buy this story. It feels literary and fictionalized.

Quote:

We gave up our virginity in eight minutes of clumsiness and confusion. You took my belt off and I battled with your bra. We were as silent as we could have been so as not to wake your friend who lay just two metres away, asleep.

Who writes like that? "Eight minutes" is an affected and overspecified detail, and "clumsiness and confusion" stinks of literariness.

Quote:

I think we were both relieved when it finished.

This is the sort of thing that a writer trying to imagine a situation would say. It's a cliche.

There is an air of unreality about this whole narrative. It reads to me like a literary fantasy, maybe even written by a female.

Don't get me wrong -- there are many stories like it that are all too dreadfully true, and we are in the midst of an evil and corrupt false rape accusation epidemic. I just don't buy this particular anonymous "letter".

The wham line at the end that implied he went gay set off my bullshit alarm too.

[Comte De St. Germain]

Honestly it doesn't matter if it's a lie or not. Remember with Ania Sarkeesian when they peddled the "fact" that she was getting death threats which were clearly faked? She got so much media attention it was crazy. If something like this goes viral we might be able to make an impact in the right direction.

[aSimpNamedBrokeback]

Quote:

It was entirely mute apart from the simple, but essential, “Do you want to … ?” and “Yes.”

This line also seems out of place. As if the writer knows without this line the whole story is he said she said.

[kosko]

Fucking up your first sexual experience while young can have its effects. Read to many stories in people having lingering issues from the first time having something go wrong.

A friend of mine I grew up with is a asexual starfish mess because her first time she got knocked up at 15/16 and has never enjoyed sex since. Any dude that has boned her has told me she is the most weird lay ever. She just lays there, doesn't moan or do shit, they would call her "blow up doll" lol. I never told her what the dudes would say about her, but I could always tell sex bugged her. She was never the same after her first time.

[The Father]

(11-30-2014 02:07 AM)komatiite Wrote:  

Yeah Fisto maybe I was a little too quick to condemn the guy, and could have misinterpreted what he meant in the first place.

But- 13 year old girls in the midst of puberty can be needlessly complex, something that I could never understand at a psychological level. I can't really condemn the little girl either. Who knows what was going on in her head. She is too young to be truly liable for this.

If anything, this is an indictment on the legal system. A situation like this should not have been spun out of control to the extent that it was by the police.

EXACTLY! Women are, by nature, child-like. That's why, for thousands of years, their testimony in court was suspect. Many countries still recognize this, and don't accord equal weight to a woman's testimony relative to a man's. But in the west in the 21st century, we've gone bonkers, and give MORE weight to a female's testimony - even if that female is 13 years old!! It's like that Twilight Zone episode where the kid (Bill Mumy) has special powers, so all the adults have to tip toe around him. Society turned on it's head! We are living in that twilight zone episode right now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuAzvb38PyI

[R Smoov]

It's like you gotta move out of state soon after you give them the dick nowadays.