Anonymous Story: Me Too

I remember it being a normal day in 2008, I was nearly 8 years old and had recently been moved into foster care, which was already a traumatic event and I felt unloved and unwanted. I was encouraged by my carers to go out and get to know the kids on the street as I needed new friends as I never really had any.
I met a boy about 2-3 years older than me who seemed really nice and became my best friend very quickly. He had a short temper and I was very careful around him. He had a good control over me; if he wanted to play outside, I had to as well. He was very controlling.
I remember he used to act weird around me, almost like how I did toward the girls I liked in school but he did it with no respect, he did it creepily. He was around 11 years old, which was a big age gap for me but he was my first real friend so I just accepted it and learnt to love it.
He convinced me to crawl under a fence to the school that is near my house. It was around 6 in the evening and it was late in the year so it was beginning to get a bit dark. He told me about a ‘den’ that he made at the bottom of the field and wanted to show it to me. There was a large bush that you could walk through really, and it was surrounded by other bushes so there was no way anyone could see in. The field was empty as it was after school times and far away from any houses.
He walked us into the little den and there was a large cardboard floor on the ground which he obviously set down so he could sit on something other than the mud that was underneath. He said that this is where he wanted me to come for a while and he wanted to make our friendship better.
I felt like I wanted to go and even writing this now, my heart is beating fast and I’m getting shaky. That’s exacrly how I was feeling back then. The vibe from him, the setting from the area we were in was all unfamiliar and scary to me. I was young and never really knew anything about being raped, let alone sex itself.
I said I wanted to leave and he had a tight grip on my shoulder telling me to stay and he told me that he wanted to do fun stuff. I asked what he wanted to do and he grabbed my genital area. I felt weird but I never knew what was happening. He asked me to take my trousers off and so I did just that, as I always did what he said and I never knew what rape was or what he was about to do. I felt weird though, and I wanted to go but I couldn’t because he was my friend.
I was taking my trousers off and then he just pulled his off immediately and then threw me down and I had no idea what was happening. He told me we were ‘wrestling’. He started touching my genitals and groping them. I felt scared, I froze and I couldn’t do anything. He was older, bigger and stronger than me. I couldn’t do anything to overpower him so I had to let it happen. He made me touch his genitals and put my hand there. He enjoyed it and he kept doing what he wanted with me.
Eventually he stood up and made me “kiss” his genitals. I did and he wanted me to lick, kiss, hold them too. I did. He made me do them and had complete power over me and I had no idea what I was doing.
After he was done, he told me to get out and I did. He never really spoke to me afterwards and I never went outside after that even because I felt disgusting for doing it. He told me that if I told anyone what we had done then he wouldn’t be my friend anymore.
He stopped being my friend as I never came out to play anymore, because I was frightened. I never wanted to leave the house.
I didn’t tell my carers because they wouldn’t have believed me, or that’s what I thought. They still don’t know it happened and I don’t intend on telling them as it was years ago and there is no point anymore.
The boy quickly became my bully and always hit me or pushed me or threatened me whenever I left my house to play with other kids. He loved embarrassing me until eventually I stopped completely. I did not set foot outside my door for years and no one ever knew why.
A couple years back, he reached out to me. Apologising for bullying me, but nothing about the assault. I brought it up to him and he never responded. He blocked me.
He was an acquaintance of one of the guys we used to foster a couple years back, and the boy who assaulted me had apparently come out as gay. And it’s sad to know that I was probably his first victim, and even worse to know that he probably did it to many more.

I never told anyone this because I am a guy, and no one would ever believe that a man was assaulted.