Trigger warning: graphic sexual violence, grooming.
On the 24th November 2006 08:06am, I was raped for the first time.
My Mum and Dad had left for work and I was getting ready for school, standing in front of my mirror, straightening my hair. The doorbell went and I skipped down the stairs to let James* in. He joined me in my room, sat on my bed and watched me carry on getting ready.
“So have you thought more about what I was asking?”
He had been pressuring me to have sex with him since my 14th birthday. I had successfully put him off so far with the promise that I’d consider it when I turned 14. Now, 3 months after my 14th birthday, he was done waiting.
“I don’t think I want to today. I’m a bit late getting ready. Maybe tomorrow.”
He grabbed me and pulled me hard towards him. My hair straighteners fell out of my hand and caught my arm as they fell. The burn distracted me momentarily and he pulled me to the floor and rolled me over.
I cried and pushed against his arms and his face. I was small with no upper body strength and he was 18, training to join the forces. I didn’t stand a chance.
He pushed up my grey school skirt and pulled down my knickers. I cried and screamed. He hit me full force across the face. He pinned down my struggling arms and looked directly into my eyes.
“The more you cry, the worse it will be.”
Afterwards, he drove me to school. I walked through the school gates, with a cookie in hand – lovingly pre-wrapped by James in cling film. I had met my friend, Sadie*, outside the school entrance and told her that I needed to go to the toilet before school started. When I found a toilet, I was able to establish that the warm liquid I could feel was in fact blood, and assumingly connected to the intense pain I felt.
Today was Awards Day, where academic awards were handed out to all year groups at the school, and I anticipated sitting for hours in a crowded sports hall. I asked Sadie if she had a sanitary towel. Panicked for my own health, I asked her, “Are you supposed to bleed when you first have sex?” Sadie responded to this question with excitement and eager questions.
Sadie sat next to me for the day. We were lucky to be best friends with similar initials, so we always got to sit together. She would glance across to me whenever an award was announced and would ask excited questions under the chorus of clapping. “What did it feel like?” “When are you doing it again?”
I fidgeted, crossing and uncrossing my legs, biting my lips, rubbing my hands, and when the pain spiked, I would dig my nails into my palms.
5 hours.
There he was. About 100 yards from school, so as not to be seen. In his maroon Nissan Almera with the paint peeling off the bonnet. I opened the passenger door and was greeted by a packet of Smarties cookies on the passenger seat,
I was protected that night. Saved by the blood that still flowed into my now heavily sodden sanitary towel. He pulled the car over into a lay by on a single track country lane. He heavily patted his lap and I lifted myself over the handbrake and gear stick to perch on his knee, worried about blood leaking from my knickers.
He opened his laptop and hit play. We watched the movie Full Metal Jacket in relative silence before he drove me home. He stopped the car on the road just around the corner, where I got out and walked the rest of the way.
*In order to maintain their anonymity some names and identifying details have been changed.