My own version. (a warning that there may be triggers here)

[FedUpWithIt All]

Mine is a little different and i guess it is the difference that confuses me. I wasn't sexually "assaulted" as a child, per se. But I was sexually threatened...for years. What i have been through would certainly fall under the classification of child sexual abuse. Any confusion is an embarrassment to me because i am a woman raising daughters and although i am very clear what sexual assault means regarding my concerns for them i still struggle with what it means for myself.

I have been forced into some physical activity but suggesting a forced kiss or brush is comparable to the "assault" of forced penetration is difficult for me, personally.

My first memory of "sex" being forced on me was around the age of four when a teen uncle and teen cousin forced me to look at pornography and laughed at my discomfort. Other early memories, which took place before i was in 1st grade include a circus of the bizarre as my mother forced me to stay awake, deep into the night, not long after the previous incident, so i could help her tape my father's pornographic material to our living room walls in some twisted effort to humiliate him for his regular cheating.

It was traumatic, but not "assault" when my mother had drunken sex with a man she brought home from the bar, in the same room and less than ten feet away from me. I pretended to still be asleep on the couch, where i had been while i babysat my younger siblings earlier in the evening. I was 11. I still have visceral physical reactions to the memories of this same man, weeks later, graphically discussing with his friends his fantasies of taking my virginity and them replying in vulgar terms the appeal of sex with young virgins. So many nights of caring for my siblings would end with me falling asleep where i was in the living room and being awoken by drunken and coked up people making a ruckus as the party continued at home. I can still hear the sound of their voices and the things that they said. I still feel the terror i felt when i tried so carefully not to move or breathe to loudly. I remember what it feels like to try and listen, beyond your ability to actually hear so you wouldn't miss the coming danger. I was scared and felt helpless but i wasn't "assaulted".

And i wasn't "assaulted" when my mother's boyfriend, one of the participants of the previously reported "discussion", came into my bedroom one evening, drunk and nude, and stood in my doorway, breathing heavily for what seemed like an eternity, before urinating on the stereo that was left to me a few months before, when my father had died in a car accident. After he defaced this beloved item from the one man in my life i had ever truly felt safe with, he laid down in my doorway and fell into a deep sleep. I barely breathed for a long time for fear that he would hear my breathing and once awake would have his drunken focus on me. The memory of the terror still causes my heart to race and for me to feel sick to my stomach but again, i wasn't "assaulted". After he had been there, in my doorway, for a time and i was sure his breathing was deeper and steadier i quietly...ever so quietly... slipped from my bed, my heart beating so frantically that it sounded as if it would surely be loud enough to wake him. I was terrified. I had seen the damage this man could do to a woman. I had watched him break my mother's face into a bloody pulp of busted lips, broken eye sockets and eyes bruised shut. I tiptoed across my bedroom toward my door and him and i carefully stepped over him before running to my mother in her bed. My mother was feeling less than protective and after an initial moment of fury she decided that i was the one to blame because i would not accept his apology the next day. I cleaned up his urine and i stayed in my room because my mother told me to and because i feared him still.

More years brought more of the same. A grandfather who tried to kiss and grope me. A cousin of my mother's who was caught trying to climb the stairs to my bedroom in the middle of the night and has made constant creepy and confusing statements to me when ever we happen across each other at family functions, to this day. The highly inappropriate conversations from the father of the children i babysat as i was a trapped audience in his car on rides home. A later boyfriend of my mother's who viewed me in a light that i was not accepting of or prepared to deal with and his constant pushing of boundaries and eventual forced attempts at things like kissing.

I watched this last man raped my mother. I was fully aware, at the time, that what had happened to her was, in fact, sexual assault. He sexually forced himself on her, in the midst of her attempting suicide and while she was still bleeding. She was in a "state and had tried to attack me and he stopped her. But the physical attempt of stopping her from harming me led to him raping her before i was even out of the room. I hid on the steps just out of their sight and cried, listening to make sure she was "ok".

An attempted rape by a boy from the foster/group/receiving home i was sent to as a young teen was the only time i was in danger of a "straightforward" rape scenario. My siblings and i had been removed and separated from our mother's home and in a fairly solitary act of defiance, stemming from my anger and frustration, I had cut school with a group of the kids from the home. That afternoon it was suggested that we head to one particular boy's house since his family home was near to our school. Before we got there the other kids decided they wanted to separate to do other things. I went along with the boy to his home and felt safe enough to enter his room with him because his mother was in the house and very near. As he pushed me down and tried to muscle me into a position where he could get into my clothes, I cried out for help to his mother, who i knew to be sitting just outside his bedroom. She made no effort to intervene or even call out to ask if i was alright. Fortunately, he was not a large boy and i was fighting him and he was unable to get a complete upper hand so he let me go. Again, an "assault" didn't actually occur. Fearful of this boy from then on, and knowing i would make an easy target for him during some of the group's activities, i was told by another boy, an older boy of 17 who had always been kind, not to worry. There was a function we were all supposed to go to and the home had a large van they would use to transport us. The older boy told me he would protect me during the drive and all i needed to do was sit near him and i would be alright. I did sit near him and he proceeded to lift my shirt, pull down my bra and touch me the entire 30 minutes or so we were in that van returning home. It felt like an eternity and i was sick and ashamed. I blamed myself for allowing myself to be in such positions, not once, but twice. I was 12.

Sex for me in the years since has been a very complicated thing. In my younger adult years i have been in scenarios where i felt sickened by my "participation" and I have forced myself into a severely drunken state because it was then, and only then, that i could stomach the sex that would get some man off of my back. And some men will not take disinterest well and will continue to pressure and that pressure, in my sexually active years, has always been very difficult for me to process. I have spent time detached and promiscuous and numb and vulnerable. I have always struggled with extreme discomfort over things like catcalls and un-welcomed sexual innuendo. My early adult years seemed to carry more of the same that i experienced in my childhood. Men physically forcing me to kiss them or graphically discussing their fantasies about me. A friend of a man i was dating forced his tongue into my mouth, as i tried to leave after he asked me to do specific things to him, because he wanted to know, "what he is getting". Events like this have been too numerous to list. There are a couple of instances in my adult years that are what i would more specifically label sexual assault, one involving a boyfriend at the time, that i had called during a moment of extreme grief over a very painful custody battle i was having with my ex husband. I had taken several sleeping pills and asked him to come and sit with me. I was heavily sedated when he arrived and he took that opportunity to have sex with me while i "slept".

With the couple of exceptions i mentioned, i have always had a hard time calling the things that have happened to me sexual assault. I grew up under the umbrella of some pretty extreme violence and sickness, that was consuming of so much of my energy and survival skills that my understanding of assault is defined as pretty severe. I have always been afraid that i would be maligning someone to accuse them of rape and more importantly i feared i would offend other victims by comparing my experiences to theirs. I will say though that i would no problem using the words sexual assault if my own daughters were subjected to many of the scenarios listed above. It's all very difficult and it is so heartbreaking that it is treated as nothing more than an amusing debate by so many on these boards. The consequences, even in my own experience, are so deep and lasting. I have PTSD from all the broader issues of my childhood and of course nightmares are a part of this. A good deal of them are sexual and they frighten and confuse me. The nature of them seems to bring to the surface some feelings i am not quite sure how to process and include some scenarios that strike me as a little too vivid and familiar.

I have told bits and pieces of my experiences on the subject to different people over the years but certainly never the majority of it in one place. I am sorry if any part of my story is offensive to anyone here. It is certainly not my intent. I am grateful this forum was created and although i'm not quite sure how i fit in here i felt compelled to share my own. I'm sorry for the length.

I wish you all peace.