âSexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.â
It happened when I was sixteen. I am twenty now.
I did not define what happened as sexual assault until two nights ago, after I had a panic attack, four years after the fact. It was the first time I ever cried over the event, and the first time I ever realized that it had damaged me.
When you, my talented, handsome coach, began texting me, I felt incredibly special. You were so good at the sport we played, and everybody praised you for your abilities. And here I was â your young student, who had never received this kind of attention before. I was accustomed to high school boys, but you were a man, 23 years old, and experienced in comparison to myself. You told me that I was beautiful, that I was talented as well, and that you liked me more than your other students. When you asked me to come over to your house one night, I felt like an adult, knowing that you were different than the boys I was used to.
When you kissed me, it felt magical â a grown man wanted me, even though he could have had anybody else. When you asked me to come back to your bedroom, I said no, knowing what it might suggest, and knowing that I was not ready to lose my virginity that night, but hoping that if things progressed over the next few months, it would happen. When you led me to the sofa, I figured that it was a safe compromise, so I took charge, kissing you like a mature woman would. Before you, I had only seen one penis (and even at that, I kept my eyes closed for the entire two minutes that it was out), so I had no idea how to deal with one. But I wasnât a girl â I was a woman, and a woman should know how to pleasure a man, right? So when you took off my shirt and bra, I reached for your zipper and tried my best to be the woman I thought you wanted me to be. I gave you a hand-job for a few minutes, but you told me to stop because I wasnât doing it right. I was relieved â I had no ideas what I was doing, and was happy just to kiss you.
I guess you had other plans though, because when you rolled me over onto my back, pulled my skirt off, and tried to put your penis inside of me, I was surprised.
âI donât think we should have sex tonight.â
You continued to try and force yourself into me as I squirmed underneath you. I put my hand over the opening of my vagina, covering it.
âI donât want to have sex with you.â
You tried to pry my hand off of my vagina, and tried one more time to put your penis inside of me, before pausing to look me in the eye.
âBut I love you. Â I want you to be my girlfriend.â
I sat up, seizing the opportunity to remove myself from underneath your body.
âI donât think we should do that.â
âIf we go back to my bedroom, Iâll use a condom.â
âLetâs just stay out here, I think Iâm gonna go soon.â
I may have been naĂŻve in the events leading up to this, but I knew that love did not constitute what you had just tried to do, and hearing those words, when I knew they meant nothing, did not make me want to have sex with you. However, I was afraid that if I tried to leave, you would continue to try and put your penis inside of me, and that maybe you would succeed. So when you grabbed my head, and pushed it down towards your penis, I figured that I could satisfy your need without having sex with you, and obliged, hoping that it might be enough. When you told me you loved me after that, it felt like a slap in the face. I began ignoring all of your text messages, and stopped showing up to practice.
I do recognize that I enabled this situation, and that I should never have put myself in the position that I did; I take responsibility for enabling you and for engaging in any sort of sexual activity with you. I will never stop blaming myself for these things; this is why I never told anybody or tried to get you in trouble, or recognized that what you did to me was wrong. It is also what made me choose to include the definition above, because without it as a reference, I would continue to question whether or not your actions actually constituted sexual assault, and Iâve already done that for far too long.
I refuse to take responsibility for your actions any longer. I never considered this to be sexual assault, and shouldered the weight of my mistakes, as well as yours, for four years, until I began reliving the experience during sex and had a panic attack, causing me to realize how scarred you have left me. I discontinued a lifelong passion when I stopped participating in a sport, for fear of having to face you, my coach, every day. I lied to everybody around me about why I stopped, and left almost a decade of practice behind. Sex should never be a traumatic or painful experience, and my experience with you was. However, I refuse to allow you to haunt me, and will not live under the shadow of what you did any longer.
This has not been written with the intention of punishing you, or sharing your identity; I have no intention of opening old wounds when mine have begun to heal, or of causing you any pain. However, I hope to share this with other people, who have doubted the validity of their experience, who have lived with shame and self-doubt for far too long.