#MeToo Story Number 19 - By Anon

I finally feel after eight months I can share my story and hopefully I can help other survivors in a similar situation as mine. I was a country girl, raised in the woods and almost always on horseback. I wanted to be a large animal veterinarian for as long as I can remember and I would do anything for my horses. I was a typical horse girl and for seven years I hid what was happening to me on a daily basis. 

I was only twelve years old when I started getting raped. I had been stalked by the same boy since we moved into that neighborhood three years prior. My family thought he was being cute, a little crush on the girl next door and as I grew up and the stalking became more and more violent I learned that if I attempted to tell anyone what was happening I would be ignored or they would laugh it off. “He’s just being sweet!” “Well he is going to grow up to be a gentleman, you should snag him now or you will regret it later!” “What a gentleman! He brought you flowers.” “Stop being mean to him.” Those were things I was told often daily by my family, his family and other adults. Eventually I stopped trying to tell anyone, I didn’t see a point in telling adults because I had been ignored so many times or had been told, “This is what happens to women, get used to it.” I was taught to allow his advances and I did because I had no other way out of it. Soon this behavior grew and grew, becoming worse and worse until finally he did rape me.

He raped me in the dirt in front of the horse pen where my horse was on my parent’s property. I don’t know how long it lasted but I remember being scared and confused, I was only twelve and my mother had never told me anything about sex. He had been rough and I was in some real pain but I kept very quiet about it. I went inside, showered and went about my daily life. This was my life for the next seven years. I was raped once or sometimes even more each day. He grew more violent as we got older and I was often covered in bruises, cuts and I know he even broke several of my ribs. He took videos of my assaults, pictures and he would use those against me. To make matters worse his family was very close with my family so he was often over at our house, to my parents he was the son they never had.

A year ago this all changed, I met someone who has become the mom I never had. This woman took me under her wing and decided on her own she wanted to help me. I have never had anyone before who I felt I could trust and wanted to help. We documented the assaults, the bruises and finally I agreed to get a rape kit done. We were able to get the kit done anonymously so that if I ever want to go and press charges I can. Again it did escalate after this, he kept getting more and more violent and my now adoptive mother asked me to move in with her until we could move to another state. He was now not able to assault me anymore but he did do his best to harass me online. He spread around videos of me, pictures and would send disgusting messages to me with fake accounts.

Now six months after moving from that small town in a small closed minded state I have moved to a state I love, I’m learning how to train detection dogs, living with my adoptive mother who I love dearly and trust her completely and with my adoptive father who I love and trust so much as well. I will never say I’m fully recovered but I will say that I am in a place now that I feel safe, I feel supported and I’m happy for the first time in a long time. It will be a year in January that I will have been freed completely from him and I do struggle with the aftermath. I still have nightmares, I don’t trust many men (even though my adoptive dad has shown me that not all men are bad), I get PTSD episodes but I have a supportive family who would never let anything bad happen to me. I’m getting to grow up and I’m trying to get back all the years he has stolen from me, I’m facing new challenges everyday and I’m slowly becoming a normal happy woman.