I kept my mouth publicly shut about this for as long as I could.
No, not out of respect for the dead.
Because I was experiencing so many fucking feelings that I could not sort through the or eloquently state them.
I am not celebrating his death, don’t get it twisted. But I also refuse to celebrate his life.
I also wanted to collect some facts, and I have.
It wasn’t easy.
I have the personality type that dictates if I am in a movie theater, I am in the movie. Same goes for reading police reports of another woman’s rape.
Catapults me back to my own.
It’s been 19 years since mine. 17 since hers. I remember hearing about hers and my heart hurting for this girl I would never meet but I suddenly felt connected to like any survivor of a similar tragedy would. I wanted to tell her she wasn’t alone, and I want to tell her now.
Our cells regenerate every 7 years, you are no longer the person he hurt, except I feel like that is cold comfort, because it never goes away. Every time another girl goes public, or another man gets away with it, that wound opens again. Or worse, every time she had to see him making thinly veiled big dick jokes on endorsements he was getting paid for while he was allowed to continue on with his career like nothing happened.
Or when he dies and the internet splits in 2, sports god or rapist.
I cannot begin to imagine the pain she must be currently enduring watching her rapist be canonized, inducted into the hall of fame as if her blood was never found on his underwear. As if he never issued a half assed admission of guilt months after dragging her through the mud. Insult to injury. And the hits keep on coming.
“How do you know he heard you say no”
“Every time I did, he tightened his hold around me.”
Same. Except I got punched. So I eventually stopped fighting and waited for a chance to run.
And now a journalist has been suspended for republishing an article that didn’t glorify him.
I can’t be suspended. This is my website. Hand me the baton.
I would guess that she was trying to show support for the 75%+ of women who have been assaulted. There is a 3 out of 4 chance that the journalist herself has been assaulted. I stand by her regardless. She did the right thing.
There is talk of inducting him into the hall of fame.
So…
I ask the question.
What about the 19 year old girl he choked and tore open after she said no?
Do you think she deserves to see her rapist canonized? Idolized?
I have sympathy for his wife as a mother who lost a child in the crash.
I do not have sympathy for a woman who supported a rapist because he bought her a 4 million dollar ring and a lambo.
She’s going to be living comfortably for life on the money he made AFTER he raped a girl.
So no.
He got a get out of jail free card in life
He doesn’t get one in death.
She made a decision to remain married to a celebrity and a rapist. How do you think the girl he raped feels right about now?
I love how everyone is so worried about him and his family.
What about her?
She’s gotta relive this all over again along with the rest of us who’ve been raped.
Yes
Drag his name through the mud.
Yes
Make this his legacy
Rapists should be pariahs whether they are famous or not.
And therein lies the problem.
Rapists aren’t just creepy dudes hiding in bushes. They are husbands and male friends, colleagues and frat boys, ex boyfriends, movie producers, porn stars and Olympic hopeful swimmers and any man who penetrates a woman without her consent. Even if consent was initially given and revoked when things got scary. Like I believe happened to her.
I have
heard all sorts of arguments, the lamest being ‘KB doesn’t fit the profile of a
rapist’.
Neither did mine. He was a recent ex. We had had 18 months’ worth of consensual
sex, he was charming and charismatic and supportive and loving. Then he was
violent and abusive, and I eventually left him. I bailed him out of jail for Christmas
because I believed he was sorry for the prior abuse. But when he broke into my
house drunk on New Year’s Eve and I said no repeatedly, and he fucked me
anyways as I continued to say no. He raped me. He became a rapist.
Well she had sex before and or after with someone else.
So?
I love sex, I do not love being raped.
This argument is invalid and disgusting.
Just because a woman is sexually active doesn’t mean she wants to be sexually active with you.
I had a different ex-boyfriend come over to look after me the night after I was raped. We had sex. I needed it to feel like I wasn’t damaged or dirty because of what I had been through. My body, my choice. No one gets to judge anyone for how they choose to survive and heal.
And also, I love rough sex, with my partner whom I trust implicitly. I have used a safe word more than once and had my wishes and boundaries respected.
No one deserves to be raped. Period, end of discussion.
Rape and domestic violence is so rampant in the wide world
of sports. Y’all put these dudes on pedestals and worship them because they do
the good things with balls or the muscles.
The cult of celebrity is no different.
They think they’re untouchable.
I’m real sick of rape culture and I’m not going to mourn some lord of sports
who got away with destroying a woman.
He raped her by his own well spun admission.
Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I
recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I
did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even
her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not
consent to this encounter.
Not great. But better than mine. “Tell Sarah that if I ever see her again, I will kill her.” My rapist, 9 years after the rape. After he was found guilty.
If I could have avoided a 3-week trial, being raked over the coals and having my life torn apart during 13 hours on the stand, I would have. It didn’t help anyways. Mine got mostly time served and held 3 other women hostage and assaulted them, same as me, after me. There were rumors that he had done this before, but I didn’t listen.
Still not my fault, and still not hers either.
i’ve always been schoolyard-pick nerd. the first words spoken to me in highschool were “Can you not sit there? You’re ruining our image.”
did nothing for my self-esteem.
but, neither did all the manhandling i experienced from men. at first, i put down my HUGE aversion to sex to my great-grandfather, who couldn’t keep his lips to himself. i thought maybe he did more to me than i care to remember, and so it was him that put me off wanting to give my body to anyone in such an intimate way. maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. guess i’ll never know. maybe i’m wrong to assume he did, but, at the same time, he couldn’t keep himself to himself, so maybe sticking his tongue in my mouth every time we visited and he insisted on a kiss and i protested and was forced – told i was being rude – WASN’T all he did.
then i remembered that when i was eight, two boys aged fourteen/fifteen-ish called Mahu and Phillip got me on top of the fort in front of a bunch of other kids and made me take my pants off and show them things. am starting to think that if the bell hadn’t gone and the teacher hadn’t come along when she did, i might have been assaulted that day. as it was, Phillip was in the process of taking HIS pants off.
at fifteen, i was groped and kissed by a man in his thirties while at my friends house. their mother came downstairs, so he let me go. another time i think i was lucky with someone elses timing.
for all that, though, i can’t help but think it was my fault, that i brought it on myself, that i encouraged them. i can have sympathy and rage for any other woman who says she has been molested or assaulted or even wolf-whistled at, but i can’t find any of those feelings for myself. think i’m fucked up.
i didn’t give my body to someone until i was thirty-four. he had his hands in my pants within five minutes of meeting, and had me bent over the bed within five minutes of that. he made me feel like nothing more than a sex doll. he said “You didn’t say no.” when i protested later about how shitty it made me feel. and all i can think is “Hes right, I didn’t.”
my first time, and thats what i got, after everything else i got at the hands of men and boys who SHOULD have known better.
first time i’ve told of the rest of it, because all the great-grandfather thing and the first-time i did sleep with someone thing got was me having it thrown back in my face, and ME blamed.
I am hoping we are in the death throes of men thinking they can do whatever they want with women.
My inboxes are full of stories like yours, like mine, like hers and hers and hers.
Its a cold comfort to say you are not alone. These incidents should be rare, but they are not.
My last coerced shitty sex experience came after i started this blog. I think I was 40, throwback to high school where it felt safer to give in than fight.
A different assault on a different date and I blamed myself.
I think about the monkeys a lot. I can’t remember specifics, but this one group had all the aggressive males die off en masse, the following generarions were raised by the females and without the influence of the old school males they grew up to be quite harmonious. Any visiting male was expected to conform to the peacefulness or leave.
We can only hope.
I am sorry for what you have been through.