Anonymous Story: I Was

I was fifteen years old. He was my best friend’s boyfriend, and we were sat at a table at school. He was beside me–she was across from us–and he stuck his hand up my skirt, tugged aside my pants, and put his finger inside me, all while carrying on a conversation. I was so shocked I couldn’t say anything then, and later I couldn’t because she’d have thought I was trying to steal him away.

I was seventeen years old. He was my employer, and he cornered me when everyone else was out, held a knife to my throat, and threw me to the floor. He raped me–took my virginity–and then cut me and left me with scars so I’d ‘remember not to tell anyone or he’d kill me’.

I was twenty-nine, in a grocery shop with my baby, and I made the mistake of bending down in a nearly-empty aisle to pick up a can of soup from the bottom shelf. He was older, and he walked up right behind me and pressed his erection into my backside. When I reported it, the police got as far as establishing the shop didn’t have CCTV in the aisle and decided not to investigate further.

I was human, and no one cared.