‘Five years ago I was raped… not by a stranger, but by my long-term boyfriend’

In the aftermath of the Belfast rape trial verdict, one of our Her users felt compelled to write a short piece based on her experiences.

After her harrowing ordeal, she later received medical help and is - as she says - in "a wonderful place" in her life right now. However, she also hopes that her tale can be of some support to other women. "They should know they’re not alone," she told us. She has asked to remain anonymous; this is her story in her own words...

Today, Wednesday March 28, 2018, I got home from work like any other day and decided to have a quick scroll through Twitter. Of course I had heard the result of the rape trial in Belfast, but I wasn’t prepared for both the outpour of grief and the waves of abuse I saw online in the aftermath. It broke me. I find myself on the kitchen floor, having just had a panic attack. Five years ago this month, I was raped. It wasn’t by some stranger down a dark alleyway, it was by my boyfriend of three years. It had started consensually but he started to hurt me so I asked him to stop. He didn’t. I cried and tried to push him off me. He held me down. I froze with fear.

"Is this actually happening to me? This cannot be real?"

But it was. Bruised and bleeding, I asked him to leave. Now satisfied, he said it was my own fault for not wanting to let him finish.

"Don’t be such a tease, it’s not fair on me."

Sure how could it really be rape, he was my boyfriend. I stayed with him because I felt like I owed him. When I said I didn’t want to have sex during the following weeks and months, he allowed it because he "loved me enough to let me away with it".

Most boyfriends wouldn’t put up with that, I was told. How lucky am I, I thought.

It spiralled from there. I no longer saw my friends, I barely left the house other than for work and to see him. I spent hundreds and hundreds of euro buying him presents and holidays to try make up for the fact I was still sometimes too afraid to have sex. He acted like he was the best boyfriend in the world for not getting angry about it.

I became depressed and at my lowest, considered suicide.

Eventually an old friend contacted me to catch up. My boyfriend waited outside the pub when it was time for me to leave and came in searching for me when I didn’t leave at the agreed time. My friend witnessed this and made considerable effort to spend as much time with me as possible over the next few months. She built up my confidence so that I eventually saw that man for the coward he was. I left him just over three years after he raped me. So here I am on the kitchen floor. I am reminded of those feelings I had: that no one would believe me. That it couldn’t possibly have really happened to me because someone else said so.

I could almost feel the weight of him on top of me again.

Every article I read and every Tweet I see tearing that girl to shreds is like a punch to the stomach. We don’t know exactly what happened that night, we never will. Yes, the accused were found not guilty by a jury. I respect legal procedure and if that is the verdict they have come to, then we need to accept that. But my goodness, this is still a young woman who stood up for herself and who was much braver than I was. The abuse aimed at rape victims on Twitter, the wording and detail used during this case, and the way in which cases of sexual assault are dealt in general with by our justice system all sit uncomfortably with me. I was not brave enough to stand up and call out my rapist, but even if I had, would it have been me on trial instead of him? So many women and men are victims of sexual abuse but are too scared to report it. And maybe, who can blame them?

Because we need to create an open dialogue on consent, we need to support victims so that more of these crimes are reported, and we need to conduct trials in a way which respects the dignity of all parties.