Survivor Stories

Nicole's Story

I don't even know where to start...or what to say..

Um...well here goes.. As a young child I was very spunky and wild and artistic. Always showing my father pictures I had drawn for him, always singing and reading and dancing. I appeared to be quite happy and I was fooled into believe my father was happy as well. As I got older I was forcedto spend more time with my father because my mother changed her hours at work from 3pm-11pm. Meaning that my mom took me to school and I pretty much didn't see her until around 11:30pm if I was awake. Anyhow...my father became GOD and everything began and ended at his word. He would yell at me for everything I did wrong and everything I didn't do...he insulted me, beat me repeatedly for reasons I still am not aware of...sometimes he would beat my brother as well, but usually it was just me. Somewhere in the middle of all that I became a depressed, lonely and withdrawn little girl. I tried to open up to my mother. I told her that "daddy hit me", but she never believed me...she never took a damn thing I said seriously. I tried so hard to reach out to her, but I got nothing. More and more I kept to myself...trying to avoid my father and avoid the beatings. As I got older not only did the beatings increase,but now they involved my mother.

Left with no one but myself to talk to..I gradually started going insane. Taking out my frustration, my anger, my pain and my sadness out on myself. I started obsessing over my body and my face. Developing mild to major cases of bulemia and anorexia, not to mention indulging in different acts of self mutilation. Almost everynight my father accused me of lying or doing something wrong. I remember once that he accused me of changing the settings on his computer and I told him I didn't...he yelled at me and told me that I'd be sorry if I said another word. I told him I didn't do it and he punched me right in the face...I hit the floor and immediately started sobbing. I hated myself for letting him hurt me, for crying. I felt so pathetic and weak...I wanted to die. That night I took about 10 bayer aspirin and ended up in the hospital. When I came home he told me in these exact words " I don't care about whatever stupid teenage problems your going through" At the age of 15-16 I started reaching out to people, trying my best to find someone I could talk to. I turned to the internet (chat rooms,personals, and emails) It was throught this where I met a man(Tim) who would take my virginity without my consent( I'm still not sure if it was rape), use me and throw me away. During my relationship with Tim I went to a party where I was raped and beaten by a man named patrick. For a year and a half I knew pretty much nothing..all I knew was that I was raped...I broke up with Tim and 3mos after the rape my new bf Gene tried to rape me. It killed me. I had no one to turn to, no one to trust...I hated myself..There is soo much more to this story and so much going on now. All I know is that I am 18, I am seeing someone who I think is good for me and now I am suffering from serious anxiety, PTSD, depression and sexual problems. I don't know what to do..who to trust? I'm so scared. All I know is that every single person I ever trusted has hurt me..

I just don't know what to do, what to tell my boyfriend. I'm becoming more distant from him and Iknow it hurts him...it hurts me too. I'm so in love with Jim and it hurts so bad. How do I know whether or not this relationship won't turn to shit like all the others. How can I stop the panic attacks, the nightmares... -Nicole

Rosabelle's Story

Thank you for providing an avenue for sharing and thus recovering my self esteem. My story has several parts to it and I will begin when I was thirteen years old.

My mother, myself and my four siblings had left my father (whom I loved very much) and moved to a new town. My mother prepared for the move in secret, packing clothes in green garbage bags for a week before we left. On the morning we left, my father asked each child in turn who he or she wanted to live with. When it was my turn I said I didn't know and he became angry so I said my mother like the others had said. After breakfast, my mother packed the car and that was it. I saw some of my friends on the street but couldn't bear to wave good bye as we drove away. None of them knew what was happening.

In the new town, I started grade 8 in a new school. It was an inner city school and my class mates were a lot tougher here than at my old school. They spoke in slang and thought I came from Britain because of my 'proper' speech. I had to pass the pool hall on my way and was scared to death of the biker gang like people that hung around there. In that year my grades slid from mostly A's and a couple of B's the first term to C's and D's by the end of the year.

During the summer I hung around with other kids at the church across the street from the small town house complex we lived in at the time. Some of the kids were nice (one boy in particular) and I have a fond memory of riding mini-bikes in the fields of the farm one of the boys lived on up the road. One night a new boy started hanging around with us. I'll call him Don. He was from a neighbouring town and had to hitch hike to and from his home. He started playing rough with me and I just kept hitting him back while laughing. The other kids thought I must have liked it and the boy whom I really did like said 'some girlfriend'. Don kept getting rougher and rougher and suddenly all the other kids disappeared leaving me and Don alone in the church yard.

I kept struggling but somehow we ended up on the ground and he was holding my wrists together while he tried to get my pants off. Once I managed to free one hand to try to get his other hand away but that just meant that he tried harder to pin my arms down. Eventually I felt I couldn't struggle anymore and I gave in, dissasociating from the situation as he went about his business with a smile on his face. After it was over I went home and never said anything to anyone. It didn't end there however. He kept coming around and we were considered girlfriend and boyfriend. When I started high school in the fall, he would be waiting for me as I left home in the morning or at the school as I left for the day. He stole money from me to buy drugs, kicked a popsicle from my hand and pushed me down a hill. One night he pulled my hair and forced me to my knees making me perfom felatio on him. 'You have to do it sometime' he would say. While driving around in a friend's car he had his hand down my pants almost the entire evening and he put a coat over my head while I again had to perform felatio on him, this time in my own basement recreation room with other people in the room.

My mother called his mother to try to get him away from me and my girl friends at school were horrified. One said she wanted to spit in his face. He had written 'for a good time call Sheila' on bathroom walls so other boys at school would lear at me and say they wanted some too. Eventually, I had enough courage to convince him to stay away from me. One night he came to the door of my home, threatened to commit suicide and showed me the small scratches on his wrist he made with a broken pop bottle. I told him to go ahead and do it, and I slammed to door in his face. I thought it was over but it wasn't.

Another boy, Jay, started becoming friendly with me and I remember him saying to someone in the group I hung around with 'I'm going to ask Don how he did that because I can't even get near her cans'. Another night at the arena where we went roller skating I saw Don and Jay talking to each other and then Don came and sat down beside me. Further away I could see Jay looking at us with an angry look. I told Don to get away from me which he did.

After that, I began drinking heavily, doing drugs and shop lifting. I stole a bottle of sherry from my mother's cabinet and one day before school a friend and I drank the whole bottle. I had what I thought was a great time in folk dancing class and then vomitted all over my type writer in typing class. I was taken to the nurse's office where someone asked me what kind of drugs I had taken. Not thinking that alcohol was a drug I said none. As a result I was wisked off to the hospital and given a lumbar puncture (similar to a spinal tap) because the doctor's thought I might have encephalitis. I stayed in hospital for one week with a massive headache so severe I couldn't sit up. When I returned to school there was a rumour going around that I was pregnant which was completely untrue. By the end of that school year I had been absent 52 days and by Thanksgiving of the next year had been suspended from school seven times. After the seventh time I never went back. I asked my father if I could live with him in the town I had come from and my mother agreed. My father was eventually awarded custody of me, no doubt because of my slide from being a solid A-B student to being a juvenile delinquent.

Even though I was now a year behind my age cohorts, my grades improved and I was happier because I was now back with the friends I had grown up with. The first year back I boarded with a friend of my father's named Anne because he had accepted a visiting professorship at a university in another country. Living there was OK except that I felt taken advantage of when she went out in the evening leaving me to baby sit her two children. I loved the children but the more I agreed to baby sit, the longer she stayed out (without paying me extra of course) until one night she didn't come home until breakfast. The children were also developing emotional problems. The four year old boy was anal retentive and refused to have a bowel movement which meant he usually soiled the bed. The two year old girl refused to go to sleep and would get up repeatedly especially if I had a friend over. When she started to call me mommy, Anne smartened up and didn't ask me to baby sit anymore.

The next year my father returned and we moved into a little attic apartment in an old Swiss style home built into the side of a hill. I was thrilled to be there and kept a clean kitchen, trying out my new cooking skills for my dad. He loved my turkey soup. By this time however, he had developed friendships in the city where he had been a visiting professor and regularly went there on weekends. Being a teenager I didn't really mind and had my girlfriends over when he was away. Sometimes he went out during the week also.

On one such night in autumn of my final high school year, I took advantage of the opportunity to be alone and practice my dancing. To this day I am a very athletic person and at that time I took karate lessons but also liked to pretend I was a ballerina. It was dark outside and I used the large kitchen windows as mirrors because we didn't have any and the house was so far up I thought no one could see in or if they could they wouldn't be able to tell what I was doing or what I was wearing, which wasn't very much on that particular night. I danced for awhile but then got tired and went to bed leaving the door unlocked for my dad.

He did come back in my room but didn't touch me. Instead, he came right up to where my head was and I could hear something dripping onto my pillow. If I turned over I would have my face in it. Then he went around to the end of the bed and very slowly started pulling the covers out from under the mattress. Each time he started to pull, I moved as if I was going to wake up and he would stop. Eventually, he stopped all together and went around the other rooms of the apartment opening cupboards and drawers. I could here cars driving by outside and prayed that the next one would be my father's.

Finally, my father's car drove up and I could hear him coming inside.When he came to my room to check on me I whispered to him to come closer and I told him there was someone in here. He immediately got out his pen knife which he used to clean his pipe and looked through all the rooms and crawl spaces behind the walls. Not finding anything, he telephoned the police. As he was speaking to an officer I went into the hall way to go to the kitchen and the man was standing in the hall way. I screamed 'Dad, dad, there he is!!!'. My father threw the phone down and ran after him, catching him at the bottom of the stair case. That is when I saw that he had been armed with a knife. A long thin curved knife with a bone handle, the kind used to filet fish. He had dropped it on the stair case and it was just lying there, glaring up at me.

My father held the man until the police arrived which was very quickly, I would guess about 30 seconds later. They hand cuffed him, read him his rights and took him away. A photographer came and took pictures of the scene of the crime (my bed), as well as a few dollar bills, foreign coins, cigarettes and trinkets he had stolen. A detective came, told me I had handled the situation well and we heaved a sigh of relieve. My dad told me he was not very strong and that I probably could have taken him on if I had to. We later found out the intruder was a juvenile who had broken into a few other places and we never heard anything more. My dad put a new lock on the door and we thought it was over. Boy was I wrong.

My dad showed concern for me but I assured him I was alight and he continued to go away on weekends. I started to go for long walks and my weight started to drop. One night I made some brownies, ate the whole panful and put my fingers down my throat, forcing myself to throw up. That was the beginning of an eight year ordeal with bulimia nervosa. If I wasn't exercising or throwing up I was a zombie. Most of my close friends had gone away to university or college and because I was a year behind them I was left without strong peer support. I didn't want my mother to know about the intruder because I thought it was my fault for dancing with the curtains open and I knew I had to go to university myself the next year and didn't have time to break down so I buried it deep inside, continued to lose weight and secretly vomit.

That winter I moved back with my mother, giving my dad the excuse that all my friends were gone and went to night school to complete high school. Then it was off to Banff, Alberta to waitress for the summer as many teenagers did at that time. While there my weight reached it's lowest at about ninety pounds and I stopped menstruating. One night at a party, I drank so much that I blacked out and later couldn't remember anything or recognize people I had met. My dad wrote me and told me he was moving out of the country permanently. Nonetheless I perservered and saved enough money for my first year university.

In the fall of 1977 I moved into a co-ed residence at the university I chose to attend. The bulimia continued and soon I had located enough bath rooms in remote locations where I could vomit without anyone noticing. Sometimes I would fast for two or three days before eating and vomiting again, and sometimes I used laxatives for purging instead of throwing up. At one point I was voimiting up to three times a day.

In the residence, I was one year older than most of the girls on my floor and already had experience being away from home so was considered relatively wise. One day a girl came into my room, picked up a philosophy paper I had written and saw that I had received a grade of 97% so they also thought I was smart. Little did she know that the instructor had mistakenly given everyone in the class one grade higher than they should have received because he was new and used to a different grading system. Nonetheless, I eventually received high grades in most of my subjects and graduated with distinction, which is higher than honours. In reality I probably deserved only honours because I plagiarized once, said I handed in a report when I hadn't once, and fudged data in an experiment once). On the other hand I might have done even better if I wasn't bulimic.

In the boys section of the residence there was a boy named John whom I especially liked. He was tall with black hair and eyes the colour of opals. He also had a great voice and I knew he was the guy for me when he called to me once from across the cafeteria. It was deep and booming yet soft and gently directive as it caught my ear. He was a farmer whose father owned a farm machinery business so was doing a two year diploma in agriculture before returning to the farm to take over the business. He also knew his way around because had started the year before and had a part time job as a disk jockey for the university radio station. We didn't start seeing each other right away but I didn't mind.

When Karen came back, she was furious and burst past my room, slamming the door to the lounge open on her way to Dave's room. When John came back Dave yelled down the hall "she doesn't have much but what she's got is pretty good" and John's response to me was "why did you do that?". All I could think of saying was "Karen and Dave broke up" and the situation was more or less forgotten except for once when Dave tried to play footsie with me under the table at dinner. John and Dave remained friends, and Dave and Karen got married the following year. John and I did start dating, attended Dave and Karen's wedding, and remained together for two years. At that point I was near graduation and realized that we had different goals. I wanted to go on to graduate school and he wanted someone to return to the farm with him and help him in his business.

We broke up and I started seeing someone named Jim who was in my program and was going on to graduate school. He also ate mounds of food and I credit him with saving my life because I had to eat being around him all the time. My mother had given me a scale so I could keep my weight above one hundred pounds and my weight did begin to return to normal, although the bulimia continued. I followed Jim to graduate school and was able to hide my disorder from him mainly because he consumed large amounts of alcohol and used almost every kind of illicit drug one can imagine, short of ones that had to be injected. He wouldn't have noticed anything unusual about me because he was too busy with his own addictions.

After about four years, I couldn't bear the lifestyle anymore, had rented my own apartment and bought my first pair of jogging shoes, hoping to return to my previous active way of living. By this time the bulimia was also starting to become obvious. I had a gaping wound on the knuckle of my index finger and bruises on the back of my hand from sticking my fingers down my throat. Of course Jim didn't notice but one of his friends asked me what the marks were and I knew I had to get help so I approached one of the campus doctors saying "I have a problem with eating". She referred me to a counsellor and I had four sessions with her. She asked me to think of the events that surrounded the onset of the problem and when I figured out it started shortly after the incident with the intruder at my father's apartment, the bulimia stopped. I ate arrow root cookies and drank milk shakes made with orange juice and raw eggs for about a week and then I was back on to solid food. I gathered my courage and one day while eating Sunday brunch at one of our favourite spots I finally told Jim I had a problem. His response was "So?".

That was it for me. I couldn't see staying with someone who had so many addictions that he didn't think bulimia was that much of a problem so I left and haven't had a relationship last more than six weeks since then. That was 1984 and it is now 2003, almost twenty years. However, A few years after I left Jim I began to have dreams about John whom I hadn't thought about for a long time. I mentioned the dreams to friends who advised me to phone him so eventually I did, although it wasn't until 1989.

I knew where he lived and that he probably wouldn't have gone anywhere and I was right. His mother was very surprised and shrieked when I said who I was. I don't really know how John felt but he kept saying "nine years later!" when I spoke to him. He wasn't adverse to my phone call however, and we met for dinner in the large city where I was working at the time. I was thrilled to see him and wanted to go to a nice place but he preferred casual so we went to a familiar roadhouse. I noticed with empathically that his large working hands had become covered in scars from nicks and scratches he received while repairing farm equipment and I asked him if he was married or engaged. He said no and later tried to play footsie with me under the table just as Dave had done many years before. Something just didn't seem right so when he dropped me off at the house where I was living I just said good bye without giving him a kiss or hug, or shaking his hand.

Sometime later, I called him again and when I asked him if he wanted to get together again he told me he was married. In the summer of 1991 I dropped into to give him and his wife a wedding gift and by this time they had twins. After that I sent them Christmas cards occassionally and they sent me a picture of their family which had grown to three girls by 1995. I kept having dreams about him and then in 2002 while writing a greeting to them in that year's card I became very anxious and wondered if I should be sending them anything at all. I sent them a card anyway and shortly afterward began having dreams again but this time they were really intense. I decided I should write him and tell him of my eating disorder because I don't think he ever knew and then thought of phoning instead so I looked up their phone number on the internet.

While doing so I stumbled upon the web page that John's wife had designed for his business and was so impressed I browsed around much of it. I noticed that John had taken over the business in 1988 and that their anniversary was in April. My mind started working so I hunted around for the picture they sent me and determined that the twins were born in 1990. Things were starting to add up now. Knowing his family, John's father probably gave him the business as a wedding gift in 1988 but when I had dinner with him in 1989 he said he wasn't married or engaged. He lied to me thinking he might get lucky! I had suspected that before but now I had evidence.

Well, phoning was now out of the question but I still thought I should communicate so I wrote a letter to John only and in it told him of my disorder and the reason for it. I also mentioned the incident with Dave. He had brought it up in conversation during my visit with them in 1991 and it made me anxious so I told him I didn't deserve the blame for it on account of my eating disorder. I apologized to him, said I was happy about his marriage and sent the letter off.

Something still wasn't right so I started thinking back to the events of the day it occurred, and eventually realized that the only explanation for what happened was that he and Dave had had a bet about me. It answered several questions that remained unanswered. It answered why Dave had come to my room in the first place which he never did before, it answered why he left so abruptly when my room mate came in, it answered why John never expressed concern for me or asked me what happened afterwards, and it answered why he and Dave remain friends to this day.

I sent a second letter to John and his wife Joan via Joan's e-mail address telling him that I now knew what happened and kept thinking until I began to see that Dave had pretty much attacked me and that I probably would have kicked him out of my room had my room mate not come in. I sent a third letter to Joan only describing the dreams I had of John as flash backs, describing the events of that day in detail and telling her that if my name came up in conversation, I preferred to be remembered as the girl Dave attacked rather than the trollop John was trying to make me out to be. The incident probably made the bulimia worse and if it didn't, it certainly did nothing to relieve it.

By the way, when I visited John and Joan in 1991, Joan said that as she was dusting a book one day my picture fell out of it. During the time we were dating from 1978-1980, one of John's friend had an issue of Playboy, the centerfold of which someone told me I resembled, and I could see him looking at me. Shortly before we broke up I pulled the scab from a pimple on my cheek and it left a small scar like a chicken pock mark. John was horrified by this change in my appearance and I caught him looking for it during our 1991 visit. I have since seen many people with similar or worse scars and I now realize that I was simply a visual image to him from which could not tolerate any deviation. I, on the other hand am pretty sure I could never have done what his wife has done for him even though I see now that they have done well.

I am feeling much stronger now at being able to turn a situation around and come through it with my self esteem intact. The other day I saw some graffitti which read "For a good time call Deanne" and gave her phone number. One day I will find it again, and write beneath it "The man who wrote this raped Deanne

-Rosabelle

Little Girl Broken's Story

I'm 30 years old, am married and we have a 14 month old daughter. About two months ago I was raped by a stranger. I was flattered by this stranger who I thought was handsome, and was intrigued because he was talking to little old me. I was brought up to be polite, so I was and continued to carry on a conversation with him. He was good at what he did, and I'm sure I was not his first victim....or his last. By the time I realized that something was very wrong, he grabbed the back of my neck and shoved my face into his chest. I struggled with all my might and pushed him away. I spit in his face, I kicked him, I swung at him, I told him to take my purse, my money, my car, just leave me alone. The more I struggled, the more he hurt me. His hand squeezed the back of my neck, and when I spit on him, he grabbed me by the back of my hair. He turned my head so hard, i was certain my neck would be broken. I thought I was going to die, and that he would dump my body somewhere, and no one would know what happened to me. I kept thinking that I would never see my family or my daughter again. He dragged me away from my car, and banged me into another car. I felt a pain in my right leg and hip. I couldn't see where he was dragging me because by this time he had his hand over my mouth and nose, and my eyes..........I remember his hands were so big. I couldn't breathe well, and thought i would suffocate. I tried to bite his hand. He told me that if I bit him, it would be the last thing I ever did. I was like a rag doll and he just jerked me around. It happened so fast. He unzipped my jeans and jerked them down around my ankles. Then I felt my spirit and my soul leave my body. The therapist called it "dissociation." I watched what was happening to me, outside of my body. I gave up to him. The more I struggled the worse it hurt, so I just gave up. He didn't use a condom. When it was over, he dropped me on the ground and ran off. I sat there for a while, afraid if i made noise or cried out, he would kill me. I saw blood on the inside of my thigh. I know I made it home that night, but I don't remember driving home. They said I must have gone into shock. I didn't tell anyone, not even my husband until 3 1/2 weeks after it happened. I was sure the only way I could make it was to pretend that it never happened. I was so ashamed, so embarrassed. I became manic. I started buying clothes and shoes, doing things I never thought I would do. I started partying...talking to men......I just wanted to have fun and drown out the pain. Since that happened, I have also had some childhood memories of molestation surface that I didn't know were there. I'm in so much emotional pain, that some days I think about suicide. My daughter keeps me going. Today was a better day for me. I don't know how tomorrow will be. I have nightmares, emotional mood swings, and so much anger. I know that there are other women who suffered even more than I did, but i still feel so alone. Loneliness and emptiness consume me sometimes. I just keep talking to my friends and my family. That's all I can do right now.

-Little Girl Broken

Anonymous

Rape My True Story

In 1989 something happened to me, that would change my life for good.

I was living in a town called Pembroke Dock in Wales. My home there was a very old mobile home that I shared with my 3 year old son, after we where left there after a relationship ended.Life here, was great, everyone one on the site, were so friendly. I began to feel at home here,until one night when the whole of my world was turned upside down in just a few minute.I had just come home after babysitting for a couple on the site. They had gone out with some other friends for a drink and all come home worst for wear. I said that I needed to take my son home and put him to bed, and thanked them for letting me babysit.It was about 12.10am, by the time I got back to my mobile. I put my son straight to bed and stuck the kettle on to make myself a drink, when there was a knock on the door.When I opened the door, my friends partner was standing there, asking if he could come in for a coffee. I said I would make him a coffee, but when he had finsihed it, I told him to go back to his partner. While he was drinking his coffee, he was mubbling about how things were not working out with him and his partner. I told him that part of his life was non of my business, I said it best for him to go home and talk it out with her. To that, he finished his drink and got up to walk out, I got up and followed him to the dorr so I could lock it when he went.Next thing I remember was being grabbed by the wrists and pushed to the floor. Trying to scream out, my throat siezed up and no sound came out. I was so scared of what was going to happen. Putting up a fight with him, he over powered me......it was too late.Leaving me scared for my life, he got up and walked away from where I was laying. The only words he said to me on leaving "you tell anyone about what happened here, I'll kill your son".Slamming the door after he left, I went running into the bathroom and threw up. I felt so sick and dirty. Putiing the plug in the bath, I jumped in and turned on the tapes. Scrubbing at my skin with a nail brush, it tried to get rid of any trace of what happened. After making my skin bleed, I got dressed and went a layed on my bed and cried myself to sleep. The following morning, waking up with puffy eyes, I looked out the window, to see if my attacker was out there. There was no one around, so I went out and got the milk in. On turning round to come in, he was there....staring at me from his bedroom, I turned and ran inside. With the whole of my body shaking, I turned and looked at my son and cried. I could not go on living inside my body, no matter how many times I washed...I still felt dirty. The only thing I could think of to end this feeling, was to kill myself.I went to the cupboard where I kept all my tablets and pulled all the bottles out and emptied them on the drainer of the kitchen sink. I with a pen in my hand, I began to right a note to my family and close friends, saying Im So Sorry.I grabbed a handful of tablet and began taking them until there was non left. Later after taking the last one, I then went and layed on the sofa, waiting for all the tablets to slowly take hold..........and slowly they did. In and out of sleep. I forgot about the world around me, till All I could see was a blur. My son in the meantime had got hold of one of my lipsticks and had covered his arm in it, he then came running up and hugged me. Being very sleepy, I looked at him and seeing his arm, I thought he had burnt it. With that I sat up and tried to fight what the drugs were doing to me. I went into the kitchen and began to drink salty water to make me sick, which it did. It was then I decided, my family need me.

With what happened to me, I never told anyone about it till a few days later, Only to have it all thrown in my face. The person I told was a friend I thought would help me. Her first words, were " you will get done for slander for saying that, ***** wouldnt do a thing like that.....he loves ***** too much". After that I thought I would not say anything to anyone else.. I suffered the pain and hurt I was feeling, on my own.I wanted to tell my parents, but thought that they would say it was my own fault and I asked for it. I just thought I would just try and get on my life and try and forget about it all. It wasnt till last year I told my family after a heart to heart chat. My mothers face will haunt me. She stood in my kitchen and weeped.

-Anonymous