What a Rape Victim Should and Shouldn't Do

I was almost 17 when I was raped by a 24-year-old man. I was drunk and taken advantage of in a hotel in Boise, Idaho. I didn't know what to do, and because of that absence of knowledge, the man who raped me wasn't even apprehended, but instead sent on his way.

The things that I did wrong were: I took shower after shower, trying to get the feeling of being dirty off of me. I washed EVERYWHERE on my body, and still that feeling of vulnerability and dirtiness wouldn't go away. That was mistake No. 1, washing away the evidence. The second mistake that I made was that I threw away the clothes that I had been wearing before and after I was raped. I didn't want to have anything that would remind me of the horrible experience I had just gone through. Mistake No. 2 was just as important as the first one, because the clothing that I was wearing, the underwear mainly, had his DNA in it.

The third, and most important, error that I made was stupid, but valid to me at the moment. I wanted to feel loved after he had raped me. I wanted to feel valued. i wanted to forget that I had just been violated. So I had sex with my boyfriend. The man that was supposed to take care of me and protect me from the very thing that happened. The man who, as I was being raped on the bed of OUR hotel room, was laying on the floor, eyes open, drunk, watching as that vile man penetrated me as I lay there, coming in and out of consciousness. I tried to fight him off a few times, biting his shoulder, and trying to hit him, but the level of my intoxication was to great, and he was so much stronger than I was. I was passing in and out of alertness. I had no idea what was happening to me one second and the next I had full mental capabilities. Yet I still couldn't comprehend why this horrid thing was happening to me.

Ladies, if you are ever in a situation where you can't fight a man off of you, or he isn't listening to your plea's, I know that this is a horrible thing to understand and say, but let him finish. You don't want to be hurt anymore than you are hurting, and you will have his downfall inside of you. You can enrage him if you fight to much. You can be hurt severely, or even murdered.

I am not saying to give up. I am saying that you need to come at him in a different way if you do not match him in physical strength. Attack him with the law. In my case, I had messed up any proof against him. I wasn't able to put him in jail, and because of my mistakes, he could have raped and taken advantage of another woman. I hate having to live with that thought.

What ever you feel, it is not your fault. The attacker is the perverted and demented one, and YOU are the victim, but don't let the feeling of being a victim stop you from truly being loved. Because I was under age I was not able to press charges myself. My grandmother, a very religious person, who had custody of myself and two of my other sisters, was the person who could have pushed the rape charges, but she felt that I let it happen to myself, that because I was drunk, I deserved to have it happen to me. That was stuck in my head until I met my husband and he told me how much he valued me and loved me. He knows all of my life stories, and believe me, there are a large amount of them. He told me that it was not my fault, that I was not in the wrong (aside from the underage drinking), that this man, this vile sick being, was the one who was the terror.

When you do report the rape, as soon as possible, you will be taken to a hospital if you are not already at one. You will be taken into a private room and have a rape kit done on you. In most instances a woman will do this, a man should be no-where near you. You do not have to worry about being safe. In my case, a female police officer was with me the entire time. I was taken back to my place of residence by a different woman officer, and any male staff at my vocational school were not allowed to have any contact with me.

A rape kit is very quick and usually painless. They will do a swab of your vaginal area to collect any semen and other DNA, such as pubic hair. They will also check for tearing of the vaginal walls. After experiencing a rape, I know that you wont want anyone to touch you, but it is needed to be done in order to nail the scumbag who hurt you. They will also give you a morning after pill if you desire. In my instance I did.

This is my experience and I hope that this will help someone, either to prevent it from happening, or to help you with the after effects of being a rape victim.