Before It Was Date Rape

I grew up in a university town and was dating and partying with college boys while I was still in high school. These boys had gone to high school with me and my friends and several knew our older brothers and sisters. It felt safe. We knew their parents. It was small town familiar, yet at the same time held the thrill of opening some forbidden doors. The doors of frat parties. If you were a senior dating an SAE, well, status didn’t get much better.

But some girls, and maybe me, did not realize that there was a wide chasm between a high school, kegger in the desert and a frat party with no boundaries.

I do remember my last years in high school, but somehow this particular memory escaped my mental scrapbook until recently. It could have been because I thought I did something wrong or because it was just too embarrassing to remember it so I shoved it away in my unwanted memories file.

But this is what happened and this is the third time I have told this story.

My best friend Penelope and I were at a college party at a house which one of the boys rented near ASU. Our parents were not in on this plan–we never would have been given permission from them. A good number of the boys there we knew. Some we did not. We spent the night watching Saturday Night Live reruns, smoking weed, and drinking. I remember there were snacks being passed around, and for a joke, one of the guys, Skipper (how much of a threat could a boy named Skipper be?), passed around a bowl of dog kibble to gauge exactly how loaded this group was. Fortunately, I knew what he was up to and passed on the snack. Not everyone did. Oh, bark.

As the night ended, a few of us paired up and ended up in bedrooms. Penelope was with a boy she was dating. The bedrooms were side-by-side. I went into a bedroom with a boy I knew believing it was going to be a make out session.

Mark–he deserves at the very least to have his first name used–had a different idea. Within half an hour, I was trying to push a very drunk Mark off of me and telling him things like don’t, get off of me, and stop it. He was so much stronger than I was and determined as hell. Fortunately, the walls were thin and the door flew open. Penelope’s boyfriend had stormed in after hearing me, yanked him off of me, and told him to go home.

Penelope and I kept this to ourselves for two reasons. One, we thought our parents would kill us for lying about where we were and going to a college party. And then there was this. Mark was the son of a very prominent Phoenix businessman who owned a string of restaurants. His last name was recognizable to nearly anyone. Who would believe me?

Our circle of friends was very small at the time. I gave the story a little test by throwing his name out to a completely different set of friends who also knew him. Friends from where I went to school at St. Theresa. Who could doubt their judgement? It was a fail. As soon as I dropped his name, a few people went on and on about what a great guy he was. He was engaged! No! I wanted to tell them. He’s a predator! But I didn’t. I was complicit in this secrecy because I blamed myself for putting myself at risk. I did not realize at that time that no meant no.

Life went on. I moved away and never thought much about it for years, except for the rare times Penelope and I would bring up those wild party years and roll our eyes at the absurd idea that Mark was a decent person. Sometimes we speculated that “the incident” was just a drunken mistake on Mark’s part. But what if it wasn’t? Rinse and repeat. Drink and attack. Life continued.

So what is the point of this story?

I did not tell anyone what happened to me because I was afraid no one would believe me. His family was Phoenix society. I did not know that what he did was wrong and that there were consequences. Although, in reflection, I wonder if there really were back then. Thirty odd years later–not much has changed.

According to a CDC report, 1 in 5 women will be raped in their lifetime. This report comes out as the debate over preventing, addressing and prosecuting rape and other incidences of sexual violence is in the spotlight on college campuses. Many point to a rape culture bringing on a mindset that encourages sexual violence.

A number of universities have come under fire for their handling of sexual assault cases. Some tend to handle complaints through their own internal processes. I say these complaints should immediately be reported to local law enforcement. Because of this internal reporting process, who can even gauge the number of assaults that have gone unreported because of this reporting system tipped in favor of the perpetrator?

Thanks to the bravado of one certain Stanford University rape victim, and the public outrage over the ridiculous and insultingly short sentence her attacker received for his crime–it might make a dent in the prevailing campus rape culture and encourage more assault victims to come forward.

Perhaps I would have, perhaps I should have, told someone.

Photo Credit: Nadja Tatar via Compfight cc