Nine years ago Sally* was a student at the University of York when her boyfriend’s flatmate raped her. After falling into an almost decade-long downward spiral of depression, drugs and self-harm, she has now sought counselling through the Rape Crisis Centre, and is ready to tell her story.
“I was in my first year at York when I met a boy called David. He seemed to like my friend, Kate, and we all started hanging around together,” Sally explains. “Then I met someone I liked, Rob, and I was made up when it turned out he was friends with David. We started going out and I fell in love.”
First year passed in a haze of new-found independence, and as summer approached Sally and Kate moved in together with four other friends; as did Rob and David. Sally stayed in York over the holidays to be near Rob rather than going home to Kent. One evening she, Rob and his housemates were planning a night out together when Rob had to rush home to Leeds due to family problems. “It was a Thursday,” remembers Sally. “Thursday 19th September. It was fine, because we were all friends and I was happy to go out with David and others. After all,” she adds sadly, “he was one of my best friends.”
But Rob was worried about Sally getting home on her own, and with his house much closer to town, he suggested she stay in his room, so that David could look after her.
“I was drunk,” explains Sally frankly, “Not massively, so I didn’t know what I was doing, but tipsy enough to have felt hungover the next day. I remember sitting with David and he started saying things that suggested he liked me,” she recalls. “I was cross, mostly on behalf of Rob, who I thought was the best thing since sliced bread. So I made a swift exit and told him I was going to bed.”
Sally was in Rob’s bed when the door opened and David entered. “He kissed me. I didn’t know what to do… and then it happened.” Sally was so surprised when David kissed her that she didn’t push him off, but then he started touching her, and she told him to stop. When he didn’t, Sally tells me, she “just froze. Maybe I could have stopped him,” she says, “But I didn’t. I just ran home with no shoes on.” The next day David went round to Sally’s house with Rob as if nothing had happened.
Sally is now part of an online support network called After Silence, a non-profit organisation which provides a forum for rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse victims. Around a year ago she finally decided to share her story, and now shows me the post she made last September. “There are so many sad stories on here,” it begins, “mine doesn’t seem so bad in comparison. There was no violence, no stranger in an alley. In fact, after it happened, I didn’t even know it was rape.”
Reading the guilt in Sally’s words from last year is heartbreaking. “I feel like I’ve made it all up,” she wrote, “When I read other people’s stories I feel guilty, like I am making a fuss over nothing.”
Back in 2002 the chances of Sally’s case progressing through the courts would have been minimal. Over the period of 2002/3 the total number of rape offences recorded by police in England and Wales totalled 11,441. In less than a third of those cases was the defendant charged, in only 21 per cent of cases did court proceedings actually go ahead, and a mere 6 per cent resulted in convictions. On top of this, research by Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service indicates that reported rapes represent a tiny proportion of incidents actually being committed, with up to a staggering 95% of rapes going unreported each year.
Moreover, it is likely that the number of false allegations concerning rape is grossly overestimated. Research conducted in 2005 by Liz Kelly, Jo Lovett and Linda Regan (of the Child and Women Abuse Unit, London Metropolitan University) suggests that the rate of false allegations of rape are, in fact, no higher than those of any other crime. Further work by HMCPS goes on to state that this over-estimation results in “poor communication and loss of confidence between complainants and police.”
While she didn’t report her rape to the police, Sally did try to tell those around her. “The first person I told was Rob. He believed me but carried on being friends with him regardless… I eventually told my best friend from home,” she explains, “and her response was, ‘it takes two to tango.’ It devastated me.” Eventually Sally built up the courage to tell best friend, housemate, and David’s girlfriend, Jen. “She didn’t really understand, and didn’t show much emotion. But from that day on she never spoke to David again, so I knew she got it.” It was another of Sally’s housemates, Meg, who was the first to use the word ‘rape’. “She sat me down, told me point blank that what he’d done was rape, and that I needed to tell my mum… So I did.” Sally takes a deep breath, “She didn’t get it at all. She brushed it under the carpet. We didn’t talk about it properly until this year and even then she told me I need to ‘shelve it.’ But that’s just her way.”
After talking to her academic tutor, Sally was provided with a counsellor by the University. “I was still with Rob at this point, and he took me to my first session. I remember walking past the lake, terrified.” While the sessions helped Sally open up about the experience, her world was rocked once again when she discovered that she’d been allocated a temporary counsellor whose contract was now up. “I was furious,” she explains. “I’d been raped and the University had given me a temp like I thought my arms were too short or something trivial like that. It was a joke. On the last day she had a card for me, it said; ‘I’m sorry I can’t take you to a happier, safer place, but I hope you get there.’ To have to go through that with someone else would have been too hard, so I just abandoned counselling.”
Shortly after her counselling sessions came to an abrupt stop, Sally’s relationship with Rob ended and she began on a downward course, becoming a recluse and starting to self-harm. “I was all over the place. I didn’t even go to lectures and I did no work at all.” With her finals approaching, it suddenly occurred to Sally that she would be sitting her maths exams with chemistry students, and would be forced to face her rapist for the first time. The University organised for her to sit the exam behind a partition with students requiring extra time. “But I knew he was just behind a curtain the whole time.
“I think the University let me down,” explains Sally, “I should have had special consideration for my degree mark. As individuals they were brilliant, but I don’t think enough help was available back then.” After just scraping a 2.2, Sally had to put some of her ambitions on the back-burner, and instead went into teaching. “I love it,” she tells me. “But sometimes I wonder how I can be any use to the kids I teach, how I can ever think of myself as a role model. It just doesn’t seem right.” Two years ago a pupil came to Sally after being attacked herself; “I could not deal with it. I was depressed and not going to work.” Eventually Sally lost her role as Head of Year due to her instability.
For the past nine years Sally has endured tumultuous swings of severe depression. She describes her self-harm as “a weak and selfish thing to do,” but tells me, “I genuinely wanted to be dead. I did drugs. I stopped valuing sex, became promiscuous and contracted Chlamydia. I fucked everything up.”
But since joining After Silence and seeking help from a Rape Crisis Centre, Sally feels like she might be in a better position to take back control of her life. Rape Crisis is a feminist organisation that exists to promote the needs of women who have experienced sexual violence and improve the services available to them. The first Rape Crisis Centre was opened in 1973, and to this day they are independent of government and the criminal justice system. Victims of rape and sexual assault can seek help, as Sally has done, in addressing and overcoming their experiences. Sally speaks extremely highly of the support she has received from the organisation, and is now, for the first time in almost a decade, beginning to look forward. “I guess now it’s been nine years, and I’ve finally done real counselling, I can cope better,” she tells me. “It’s nice to think that I won’t feel that bad anymore. I still have wobbly days, sure, but I’m so much stronger now.”
*all names changed for privacy
Just awful :(