The Voices Consumed Me

The phone call I dreaded rang through my body like a fire alarm, and there I stood, motionless, unable to comprehend how this was happening—and why now.

I couldn't believe that my happy, perfect life had crumbled so quickly. I couldn't believe that one minute I was selling real estate and the next I was sitting in the police station talking about a court case. I couldn't believe that I was going to be the one on the stand watching everything fall down around me, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I had no idea how I had managed in this situation with the police or how the court case had even been initiated. It was as if someone had taken over my life and made me a very unwilling participant. This policewoman, Joan, wanted to know all about the rape, why it had happened and when. She constantly asked me questions, and I had no idea how to answer them. I mean, God, nothing had ever happened, no one had ever been charged, it had never been reported to the police, and it had happened eighteen years before. Why bring it up now?

As I sat in the police station talking about the rape and how it had occurred, I realised that if this ever went to court, it was not going to be a pleasant experience. I worried about what my friends and family would think of me, whether they would still support me and want to know me.

Sexual assault—rape—is an insidious thing; it is unbelievably soul destroying. It was never meant to happen, but it did, and from that moment on, it changed the way I lived and the way I interacted with people. Rape makes you second-guess yourself every minute of every day until you've learnt to deal with the vile intrusion into your life and your body.

Yes, I was raped, and yes, a family friend—someone I trusted very much and held a lot of respect for, raped me. Never in my life had I felt so dirty and so disgusting. Never in my life had I desperately wanted to die and disappear forever. Mind you, I was only twelve when it happened!

Joan explained to me over the phone that they had found me through a contact that thought I might have been raped just like someone close to the contact had been. From the evidence the police had, they were 97 per cent sure that my rapist and hers were the same man.

For some reason, I was the lucky one. I had received the call to step in and save others from being raped as I had been. I was the one who could make a difference to everyone by baring my heart and soul, regardless of what it cost me. I was the one who had to show this man that what he was doing was wrong, that it was so degrading to women and children that it couldn't go on any more. I was the only one who could stop this man.

It was a big responsibility, and my husband was none too happy about it either—and understandably so. Like me, he didn't want our life to change, and he didn't want my name dragged through the mud.

I knew at that at the very least I had to hear what Joan had to say. I had to hear more stories, and I had to know that this man wasn't still hurting people. That may sound wrong, but if I was going to be the one to stop my rapist from raping again, then I needed to hear others' horrible stories to jolt me out of my comfortable, nicely ordinary life and shock me into helping.

At least, I had to know what I was refusing if I did refuse to help. I had to know whether I didn't want this and whether others could help instead of me. I had to hear that I wasn't the only one who could stop this. I didn't want this role, I hadn't asked for it, so why oh why was it thrust upon me now? Why was I the one to take the reins and blast through the thickness on my white horse? No, I didn't want this. I wanted my ordinary life. I wanted my safety and security, and I certainly didn't want that threatened. What if I lost my job or my friends or my family or even my husband? No, I couldn't stand that kind of pain.

When I had agreed to meet Joan over the phone, I had told her that all I could do was talk and fill her in on my story. I didn't want to take this any further, not ever. When I finally met her, I thought, Wow, you have a childlike innocence about you, yet with the wisdom of an eighty-year-old. In that moment, I knew I could confide everything to her and help her as much as I could.

Apparently my rapist had raped a couple of kids, possibly more over the past two years. I don't remember the exact details of what he did to these two children, and quite frankly, I don't want to know, but I knew that it was my duty to do something. I couldn't let my rapist keep on raping innocent kids just because I was too afraid to take him to court. I decided that this man—this monster, as I termed him—had to be stopped, but I didn't feel that I was the one who could stop him.

Mum and Dad had accompanied me to the station, and they knew as well as I did that this was not what I needed, but they said that no matter what I chose, they would always emotionally support me. My husband, too, he had agreed to support me and be there for me if I needed him, although he wanted anything but this. I was grateful that I had the right people on my side; now I just needed to let them all know that I wasn't as strong as they thought I was and that there was no way I could take my rapist to court.

When I was once again on my own, I screamed at the top of my voice, "Why me? I can't do this!" This isn't fair, I thought. I have gone through so much. Why do I now have to go through this as well? I hated my life and I hated the world. At that moment, if someone had shot me or run me over, I would have been eternally grateful. I did not want such pressure, and I certainly didn't want my life to change. Even more than that, I didn't want to live that night again and again and again in such a public way. I had managed to block out most of the pain quite some time before.

When I returned home, for the longest time, I sat and cried, unable to move and unable to think. My head hurt, my mind was blurred, and I had no idea what I was meant to do next.

I think at some point I managed to fall into bed and sleep and dream. I felt as if my world had been ripped apart once again, and all I wanted was to be swallowed up by a big black hole. I figured that if it happened in movies it could happen in real life too. If only.

So that you can better understand why I was so reluctant to speak out against my attacker, I'll take you back a little to give you a clearer picture of what my life was like before and after the rape.

Before an older adult male family friend raped me, he was a mentor and so much more than just a friend. I trusted him with all my secrets, and I confided in him more than in anybody else.

He was the one person in my life who treated me like an adult and not a child. Sure my parents were great, but at the end of the day, I was still their little girl. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with this friend playing outdoors, kicking the footy, and generally having a lot of fun. So, when he raped me, I was devastated. I figured I must have done something pretty bad, as I figured that if he could hurt me that much, he must have really hated me and not loved me as he kept on telling me.

I didn't know it at the time, but my rapist spent many years getting ready to rape me, and he had nicely prepared these two boys and all his prior victims as well.

This friend separated himself from other adults by letting me know he understood how I felt and getting me to believe that he was just like me. He taught me to fight like one of the boys, he took me under his wing, and he showed me a roadmap of life, all to condition me, to perfectly prime me to be raped when the time was right.

If only I knew then what I know now. The more you're primed to trust your attacker and groomed to accept his or her way of thinking, the more compliant you'll be as a victim. The more you think they're like you and that they get you, the more you'll do what they ask of you and the less you'll question what they do to you.

As a result of being conditioned over days, weeks, months, or even years, you can start to believe that an attacker has your best interests at heart no matter what they do to you because you'll have shared things with the attacker and vice versa, leading you to believe even the rape or the sexual assault must be okay, even if it feels so wrong.

That night I was raped, my world came crashing down. I had been betrayed by the person I trusted the most next to Mum and Dad. I had been betrayed by someone I considered a very real friend. I had been betrayed by my mentor and my guide. I had been groomed for this moment, and I am pretty sure it all went nicely according to his plan. Not according to mine.

After the rape, I stopped trusting people. I stopped believing the nice things that people said about me and wanting to do anything anyone ever asked me to do. I was so hell-bent on not being controlled like that again that I became a destructive and resentful force. I hated being told what to do. I hated myself, and I hated the fact that I had allowed myself to be raped. I hated the fact that I was the one he had chosen and that I had to endure so much pain and torment when my girlfriends had to cope only with periods and hormones. I hated that my life was so ugly and so different. Sure, I had a lot of love and a lot of support, but I only saw the ugliness, the bitterness, and the hate inside me.

I built my life around that rape and the meaning I chose to give it. It dictated my reaction to everything and everyone.

You know, I look back on that event now having reassessed it so many times, that I've realised a funny thing: as I followed my rapist up the stairs, I knew in my heart that something didn't feel right. Something somewhere somehow felt uncomfortable, but I didn't know what it was. I couldn't put my finger on it, and I figured, "Hey, I am with a trusted family friend; I am safe. I am just being silly—as if anything is going to happen." I dismissed what I thought to be true because I believed then that I was just being childish. If only I had listened to that little voice inside my head, maybe I would never have been raped.

When I got the call 16 years after I was raped that my once close friend had apparently raped again, I just didn't want to know about it. I didn't want to be dragged back down into that hole of darkness, and I certainly didn't want to be reminded of the past that I had worked so damn hard to forget.

I had finally dealt with the disgust of being raped and understood that it wasn't my fault. I had finally dealt with the horror of the vile abuse of my body, and I had finally dealt with the thought that I was a rape victim. I had finally moved on to live a great life, and I wasn't ready to step out of that to have everything dragged up again, even though I knew that I could change lives.

I had promised Joan that I would at least think about pressing charges against my rapist. I knew I couldn't make a decision like this without consulting my husband and my mum and dad. If I was going to accept this challenge, I first had to get everyone on board and then give it an enormous amount of personal consideration.

After a lot of talk and consideration, I felt that I just couldn't relive the nightmare of the rape over and over again. I couldn't have my past dragged through the court. I couldn't have my family listen to the explicit detail of what he did to me, and I couldn't have my husband listen to all that the lawyers said about me. I needed to think of myself and those closest to me first for once.

I have to be honest—for a while, I did turn my back on the children my rapist had raped. I turned my back on Joan and looked to my future with my husband without a court case in sight. I turned my back on chaos and uncertainty and instead said hello to my safe and secure life as I knew it right then, right there. I continued life as normal, I went back to my everyday job and I went back to my everyday life, and once again I tried in vain to block out the vile memory of the rape.

When I rang Joan 5 days later and told her that I had considered her suggestion for a long time but that I just couldn't do it, she said just one thing to me, and it made me completely rethink my decision: "Melinda, if you take him to court and he goes to prison, he'll never be able to rape again, and you will have done that. You will have saved others from going through what you went through." I heard only that message in the coming months, and it finally plunged me into my new life and kept me going.

Now that I had spoken to Joan I realised that things had changed. Now I had awareness where I had been ignorant: I had often assumed that he'd rape again, yet I never really knew for sure, and when I didn't know, I didn't have to do anything. Now that I knew, everything had changed. It was like someone had shone a light on a dark secret that I had been hiding all these years. This awareness alone changed my life, whether I liked it or not.

When I closed my eyes, the nightmares of the night of the rape greeted me with more vibrancy than they ever had. I could hear the screams of hundreds of different children, all of whom I assumed this family friend had also raped. I felt that if I didn't stop this man, then hundreds or thousands of children could be raped, and their pain and their blood would all be on my hands. Every night as I lay down to sleep, I heard the cries of these children begging me for help. How could I turn my back on them, unless I, too, was a monster just like my rapist. In my dreams, it was like I was standing there actually watching my rapist rape child after child after child, but I was powerless to do a thing. In one dream, I was tied to a chair and made to watch people being killed and abused. I woke up drenched in sweat and frozen in fear.

In my waking hours, I thought of him attacking his next victims, and I felt tormented by him all over again. I could no longer live like this. If I was to be the one to make the difference and send this once close family friend to court, then I knew I had to have my wits about me, be strong, and be the best damn witness I could ever possibly be. My rapist had raped me, but I wasn't going to allow him to rape any more.

It's funny how work and life can wear you out and make you desperate for change, but when that change happens, you think, Okay, that wasn't the change I was looking for. That was how I felt when confronted by this decision. I didn't want my old life to change. I didn't want to know about the other rapes. I just wanted things to go back the way they had been. I didn't want all this new awareness and new insight; I just wanted to keep living my happy life, oblivious to the world around me.

I craved my old life and craved for things to be back to normal, my husband and I talking about our day and laughing and relaxing at the end of it. I craved that moment of peace when I could just be in his arms and know that everything would be all right. I craved those nights when our hardest decisions were what to have for dinner, who to socialise with, and how much money to pay on the mortgage.

For 3 weeks after I had met with Joan I continued to ask, "Why me?" but I already knew the answer—because I was strong enough to do this and to get through it, and I was old enough now to have moved past the rape and to be able to make a difference for others. Without a doubt, I could make the biggest difference for all his other victims, so I knew that, unfortunately, it had to be me.

The ideas that kept coming up as I decided was what if he kept on raping these children or did even worse to them, and what if he came for me when he found out I had instigated the investigation into him? This played in my mind every day. I had no rest. I was consumed by how many people he had raped and how often. Each time I thought about him raping someone else, I felt sicker and sicker. I couldn't bear the thought that if my rapist raped more children, it would happen because I had been too gutless to stand up and do something.

The mother of the boys Joan had told me about also rang me to tell of me of their nightmares, their restlessness, and their changed behaviour. She asked me how she didn't know sooner, and I told her that when something like this happens, victims become very good at hiding it to protect their families. We block out what we don't want to face. I could be really good at pretending I was just fine, and while I couldn't always hidden my pain, I certainly tried my best to hide my true hatred of myself.

When our family friend raped me, he told me that if I ever told anyone, he would hurt me and kill my family, and I believed he would have given these children the same message. Children want to do anything they can to protect their families, even if that means covering up a rape and pretending that all is okay.