I was 16 at the time. A Trinity boy, who was a close friend, sexually assaulted me in my sleep. I found out after he confessed this to me the next day. I didn’t know how to handle the trauma at that young age, so I kept it buried for 5 years and didn’t speak a word of the assault (excluding the close friend who had sexually assaulted me) until I was well into university. During those 5 years I felt averse to engaging in anything sexual. This had me being called a frigid prude, by both my girl friends and guy friends at the time, which felt so incredibly unfair and unwarranted.
What’s worse is that after this incident, when I was a university, I was sexually assaulted and raped by my then boyfriend (a graduate of a public school I won’t name) on 2 different occasions where I was under the influence. At this point, I was unsurprised by this behaviour – expected it even, so I stayed in the relationship. In hindsight, this was completely illogical. However, I myself at the time didn’t even understand the gravity of sexual assault until I felt the implications much later on, namely through my deteriorating mental health. I even had this distorted idea that since I had gone through a similar experience before, I would be able to more easily look past my then boyfriend’s violation of me. I was naive, and thought that all men were just unable to control themselves and that I had to love my then boyfriend in spite of what I thought was simply just an inevitability.
Sexual assault very much felt like a taboo topic to talk about, so I didn’t get proper help until recently. Had sex-ed been implemented earlier, with sufficient inclusion of consent, I wonder if these experiences could have been avoided. Or if it couldn’t have been avoided on the boys’ part, perhaps I would’ve better understood that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable and criminal had I been properly educated about sexual abuse. The residual trauma has had, and still to this day causes intense mental and emotional turmoil, despite significant time having passed. Since all these incidents occurred while I was asleep or under the influence, I have no proper recollection of what actually happened. My imagination of what did happen haunts me even now.