#MeToo Story Number 6 - By Anon

I have been molested, harassed, assaulted stalked and raped.  

My earliest memory is of being molested on a changing table at 18 mos old. My mother came into the room, the lights were off, and a foster brother told her he was checking my diaper. She left the room. Thirty some years later during a very difficult conversation she told me that she suspected that he was molesting me in that moment. This foster child continued to molest me while he continued to live with us for several more years. Eventually he was moved to a new home and the reason given was theft. He was invited back to our home regularly for holidays and even vacationed with us several times over the years for weeks at a time.  

As a teenager and into my early 20’s I was stalked, threatened and assaulted by the son of a friend of the family. He would drive 200 miles to wait at my car in the university lot, park himself across the street from my house, show up at my vacation home. He threatened me, my father and attempted to kill himself multiple times. My father lay all blame on me. I must have led him on. Somehow that made all of his actions acceptable.  

Eventually I heard that he had been hospitalized. Then I heard that he was married. My parents went to his wedding. Upon returning home my father joked, “I guess you were right. His wife looks just like you…”

In my 20’s, any number of times, I have been groped, grabbed, sworn at and/or threatened while out with friends or walking a main street. Men I had thought I had known well enough to trust often made assumptions and pushed themselves on me, stopping just short of assault and angry.  

At a good friend’s house party I was met by a member of her crowd with a smile and a, “Hi, I’m Tim and this is my penis.” as he exposed himself and shoved his penis towards me. He later asked me to his sister’s house to walk her dog. I declined. Another man I met at a different house party followed me home from the party, to the point where after making many evasive turns he was still behind me after I pulled in to the local police department’s lot, getting out of the car and declaring that he ‘really liked me’ and ‘only wanted to talk’ until I walked inside the police office when he left quickly. In the first case I was told to lighten up. In the second, chastised for overreacting. John was a super nice guy and I could have gotten him into trouble. I should have known that he was harmless. I was a snob because he was overweight. 

Again in my 20’s I was raped at a dude ranch on vacation in Upstate New York. I was away with my girlfriends, riding horses during the day, drinking and dancing at the bar in the evenings and of course flirting with the cowboys, all around. I had too much to drink. My friends left me at the bar with the cowboys and eventually I came to in the bunkhouse with him on top of me. I struggled and said no, attempting to get him to stop and get away. I felt lucky when he stopped attempting to force sex on me and instead forced his penis into my mouth.  

The next morning was a blur of teasing comments about the time I got back to the room and how jealous the girls were that this cowboy chose me. I was a virgin. I was embarrassed and shamed. I was called a stuck up bitch when I couldn’t look at him the next day. I never let on that he had forced me.  

It wasn’t until 20 years later, just after the election of Trump, when I was telling my husband about this incident, that I acknowledged and recognized it for what it was. Rape. Despite the fact that I would have immediately known it as such, had any other person told me this story at any time….  

Over and over and over again I was not protected by people I should have been able to count on for protection. My parents, over and over again. Friends, again and again.  

Me too. Me too. Me too… Over and over. Again and again.