The Night Swim(53)

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Guilty or Not Guilty


Season 3, Episode 7: Victim

I’ve never been raped. Until recently, if you’d asked me, I would have told you that I’ve never been a victim of a sexual assault. In my mind, that involved being dragged into an alley and forcibly raped by a stranger.

Things are changing. We’re starting to admit that rape and sexual assault can happen in a multitude of ways. We’re starting to acknowledge that it permeates our lives as women. I guess you could say that society was in denial for, well, really, forever.

If you asked me today, and you said, “Rachel, have you ever been a victim of a sexual assault?” I would have to say yes.

Yes, I have been a victim of a sexual assault. Well, probably several really. Funny how we were conditioned to accept these situations as unpleasant instead of outrageous.

Most of the “several” were the types of things many women encounter. We considered them to be nuisances, part and parcel of being women in a misogynist world. I’m talking about things like groping. Guys squeezing a girl’s butt at a college football game. Or a nightclub. One time, when I was in high school, I was sitting on a crowded train and a man with a mustache rubbed his crotch against my arm. Kind of accidentally on purpose. I didn’t know whether it was an accident or not until I saw him move forward and do the same thing to another girl farther down the car.

Another time, at a party in college, a guy pushed past me. Rubbed against my breasts. It was all so innocent until his friends burst out laughing. Hilarious.

I’m sure that every one of my female listeners knows exactly what I’m talking about. There were no scars from those incidents, except that ever since I’m really careful about my personal space. I hate being in crowds.

So, yes. I’ve been groped. But that’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me. When I was seventeen, my parents divorced and I moved to a new city with my mom. It was kind of traumatic. You know, new town, new high school, new friends.

I was chosen for the track team. I was a pretty good distance runner in those days. A few days after I made the track team, the team’s champion sprinter asked me on a date. He had it all in spades. The guy looked like a movie star. All the girls swooned over him. I was flattered and thrilled.

Of course, I accepted. I counted the days in my diary until the date. I did that stupid schoolgirl thing of scribbling out our intertwined initials in my notebook.

We went to a movie for this date that I’d been so excited about. It was a forgettable rom-com, the type of film that’s supposed to leave you floating on air. In fact, if I’m going to be really cynical about it, it’s the type of movie that a guy chooses to soften up a girl before trying to move from, I don’t know, first base to third base. In the space of an hour.

After the movie we went out for ice creams and then he drove me home. I had a curfew. Instead of turning into my street, he “forgot” to take the turn.

He drove into this parking lot that faced a park with a pretty view of the skyline. Your classic make-out location. What can I say, this guy truly lacked imagination. He kissed me. It was a beautiful kiss. Everything a girl could have wanted.

But instead of stopping at that one kiss, he kissed me again. This time deeper. More aggressive. He forced his tongue into my mouth. Put his hands on my breasts. I’d never done any of that before. I was trying to push his hands off me so he’d know he was going too fast when the whole weight of his body was suddenly right on top of me. He was crushing me and pawing me.

I had to fight him off. While I wriggled away, I accidentally turned on the windshield wipers. The wipers distracted him enough that I was able to get out of the car. He apologized profusely through the open window. I was in tears. He looked terrified. He promised he’d take me home. I refused to get back in the car. This went on for a while. Me crying. Him promising he wouldn’t lay a finger on me. Begging me to get back in the car. By then he was scared and worried about my mom finding out what he’d tried to pull.

Eventually, I agreed to sit in the back. That’s how I arrived home from the big date with the hottest guy in school—sitting in the back seat of his car. Him in front, driving me like a chauffeur.

Until recently, I never thought of it as a sexual assault. I chalked it up to a clumsy teenage date gone wrong. Now I know that, if things with that boy had gone further out of control, I might have been a rape victim. I might have been a K. And the more that I learn about what a rape victim goes through when her accuser is prosecuted, the more I admire the courage of these survivors. Because, believe me, they are put through the wringer.

I haven’t personally met K. She was in court to hear Mitch Alkins, the prosecutor, open his case. Her parents and a social worker supported her. She seemed fragile. Broken.

As you already know, I can’t tell you her name as I won’t reveal the name of a sexual assault victim on this podcast. What I can tell you is that she is—or rather was—a happy, well-adjusted sixteen-year-old girl before last October. She had friends, worked hard at school, and sure, she partied as well. Why does a girl have to apologize for having fun?

The more that I learn what being a victim in a rape case entails, the more I understand how much courage K has shown in choosing to take this torturous journey.

For one thing, she had to endure a rape kit. I went to the local hospital to find out what happens when a rape kit is done. It’s a process that can take hours. The victim is treated like a human crime scene. Except the evidence that needs to be collected is on, or in, the victim. It’s embarrassing, invasive, and humiliating. Some experts say it perpetuates the sense of trauma, the helplessness that rape victims feel. Some victims say that a rape kit examination can be as traumatic as the rape itself.