#MeToo - My experiences with Sexual Assault

This is a picture of what I looked like the first time I was raped. Three boys in my neighborhood repeatedly from when I was 5 til I was 8 would bring me into the woods, force me to strip and let them do things to me. I told my mom a few times but she didn't believe me. She said I couldn't know what I was talking about, I was too young to know what sex was. I was confused and embarrassed so I stopped bringing it up. It didn't stop happening though until the oldest boys' family moved away.

When I was in 6th and 7th grade, living in a different town, I was followed repeatedly by two boys. They made me feel unsafe saying lurid comments and doing creepy things like leaving clay penises they made on my porch. So I didn't go out in my neighborhood. My mom believed me then, she called the cops on them once.

At the age of 15 I was raped twice. The first one I reported. However because I knew the person who assaulted me (it was a friends cousin) even though I was 15 and he was 18 making it statutory rape they told me it was only 'unlawful sexual contact.' They said that at most he would get one night in jail and then have it on his record forever. So the police refused to pursue the case.

In ways I felt as violated by the legal dismissal of my trauma as I did from being raped. It was so hard then to try to tell strangers what had happened, only to have them basically say it didn't matter. That what happened to me wasn't as bad as a pock on the perpetrators' record would be for him. This coming from the people who were supposed to keep us safe, and whose job it was to serve justice to those that hurt others and broke the law.

After that I didn't report the second rape, which happened one night when I got drunk at a friends house with a broken door. I blacked out drunk and passed out in the living room, everyone else there went to bed as well. I awoke to one of the neighbors (who had not been drinking with us that evening) from across the street finishing in me, he had come in through the unlockable door. I didn't drink for years after that, and still take it slower than most folks when I do now.

Thankfully I have not been assaulted since, but these memories do not just go away. They sit in the background of my mind and occasionally surface reminding me that I might not be safe. Now I do my best to not let those experiences inhibit me. I will never be free of them though. I can only hope that sharing this story along with the other brave women who have lived to tell their tales will start to open up the type of discussions that might make a boy or man think twice before choosing to use force in order to have his way with a woman or girl without consent.

#MeToo #NoMeansNo #AlwaysSeekConsent #ListenToYourDaughters #RapeIsRape #TeachYourSons 
#TimeForChange #ConsentIsSexy #PutAHaltToSexualAssault

© A. Bougie (10/17/2017)