Athena’s story: When I was unconscious

My father died recently on a Sunday afternoon. I had to go pick up my daughter from her Dad’s house afterwards, and he convinced me to stay. He said he would take care of us and he promised he wouldn’t try to have sex with me. We have been separated for over a year and every time I see him, he tries to have sex with me, offers me money for sexual favors, or tries to touch or grab me. He used to make me show him my pubic hair because he believed that if I shaved, I must be sleeping with someone or several people. When I met him, I was taking really strong sleeping pills and I found out later that he would have sex with me all the time in my sleep. I tried to break up with him, when I realized he was controlling, manipulative, and distrusting, but then I found out I was pregnant. He had been so charming in the beginning, but after years of knowing him, he is a true psychopath. I don’t throw that word around lightly. My story is very based on this finding. You will see how it ties in while I’m telling my story. I could write a book, and I’m thinking if doing that, but here is what happened.

I arrived on Sunday after being bedside with my dad for 4 days, barely sleeping. That evening, I had some wine, took my pain medicine, sleep aids, and I really don’t remember a lot. He took advantage of this and went through my phone. He plugged it into his computer, hacked Everything, sent all the files to his email, and was able to see even my deleted pictures, messages, emails. During the night, I know now that we had sex but I have no memory of it. This is very common when I’m with him. He had promised not to try and have sex with me, but like always, I end up naked in the bed the next day. The problem is that whenever I bring this up, he gets defensive and has all these excuses. I was drunk, or I was taking sleeping pills, or I was all over him and wanted him. So, I just move on

I was a mess on Monday and he was actually being pretty nice and I stayed. It meant I got to be with our 2 year old daughter, and he was responsible for taking care of her. I didn’t sleep much the night before so I took a little sleeping medicine, my pain medicine, and my anxiety medicine. Everything thing hit me like a ton of bricks. All the sleep deprivation, the stress, the medication. I started to fall asleep and something woke me. He was videotaping me sleeping, while touching himself. 5 feet from our daughter. I barely had the energy to tell him to stop. I don’t know if he did.

A little while later, I felt a chill on my backside. Then I felt fingers slowly touching me. This is also a very common thing for him to do, as messed up as it is. I growled at him, and pulled the covers up. I fell back to a deep sleep. I remember absolutely nothing for hours. I started to slowly gain a little bit if consciousness, but couldn’t even open my eyes or move much. I just felt him inside me, rocking me back and forth, penetrating me, and throwing my body around like I was a rag doll. He put my legs on his shoulders and that’s when I started to wake up. It was because of the pain. I could tell he had been raping me for such a long time, that my entire body hurt, and my vagina was on fire. I didn’t have the strength to fight him, but I was able to pull my hips down and him out of me. I didn’t want him to know I was waking up because I felt weak, powerless, and terrified. He thought I fell back to sleep and he pull my hips up again, and boom, penetrated me again. I nonverbally protested, moving my body, pulling away, kicking him, growling. He would stop, take his hands off me, wait 10 seconds or until he thought I was back to sleep, and then, boom, back inside me. Over and over. I wondered if it would make a difference if he knew he was hurting me. So another cycle began. I was still so tired, but I was getting angrier and angrier. I still couldn’t just get up and leave. So I started saying ouch or stop. He would stop, take his hands off me, wait until he thought I was back to sleep, and do it again. He knew I was awake enough to speak, but he still thought I was going back to sleep. He knew he was hurting me, and he just couldn’t stop.

The other reason I kept my eyes closed, was to assess the situation. I was gathering information. He had done this so many times and had gotten away with it. This was going to be the last time. I was sober, so that was good. I wasn’t acting like I wanted it, like he always says I am. I gave him so many chances to stop, and he kept on raping me. He knew I didn’t want it, he knew it hurt, and I decided I was going to call the police.

After enough protesting, he stopped. He knew my vagina was basically broken, and so all of the sudden I felt his penis hit my lips. I couldn’t believe it. He had ruined me vaginally, and now he was trying to stick it in my mouth. I refused. I kept my jaw shut and he hit it against my teeth. He then stuck his fingers in my mouth, and manually opened it and stuck his penis inside. I had had enough. I wasn’t going to be orally raped now. I bit down. Hard enough to stop him, but not hard enough to make him need an ambulance. Without a sound, he ran out of the room. He knew he had been caught, and he was hoping that I would just go back to sleep and forget about it.

I had adrenaline pumping and I fought the sleeping pills, and got dressed. He is a 250 pound, 6 foot tall man and I was out of my mind scared. I was shaking. I thought I should get some help from his roommate. I found him downstairs and said “I’m calling the cops.” He said “why?” I didn’t have a chance to answer. My ex heard me and I ran upstairs to get my phone. He grabbed my phone and started pushing me into his room. His roommate was at the bottom of the stairs, and I was screaming for my life. “Help me, help me, call the cops, what are you doing, help me.” I was shoved into the room.

Our daughter was lying next to me while I was being raped. She was in and out of sleep, waking up when I cried out. Watching him do this to her mother. At one point I even grabbed her, held her close, thinking that might stop him. Now she was on the stairs watching me scream. She ran into the room, and that is where we were for 15 hours.
At first I fought with all I had. I screamed until my voice was gone. I have two disabilities. Ankylosing spondylitis and Fibromyalgia. He had already caused so much pain in my spine and muscles when he was raping me. Then he restrained me. He sat on me for hours, while our daughter cried. I couldn’t move with him on top of me. I was sweating, crying, screaming. If I tried to move, he would squeeze my arms. It was upsetting my daughter and I knew that I was just wasting energy. Outwardly, I calmed down , but I was raging inside. His roommate left, there are no close neighbors, and I was trapped.

My phone was going off. My family couldn’t reach me. They were threatening to call the police. They didn’t know where I was. I heard him calmly talking to my sister around 8:30 that night, from the other side of the door he was blocking. He said I was asleep. There was no hope.

He begged forgiveness, admitted what he had done, said he would go to counseling, and tried to bribe me with money and double child support. I was afraid he was going to kill me, so I told him I wouldn’t go to the police. I was exhausted and my baby and I fell asleep. He slept next to the door. I woke up around 5am. There was a red bucket by the bed. I have seen this bucket before. He is so controlling that he has made me urinate in it if anyone else is home. He is genuinely afraid I will get hit on or talk to someone on the way to the bathroom. So, I knew what it was for. I urinated and lied back down.

He had missed work the day before, because of what was going on, and he had to go in on Tuesday. Also, I had funeral arrangements to go to and my family was waiting for me. He had to let me go. We both had places to be. We left at the same time. He gave me back my phone. I put our daughter in the car and drove to meet my sister. I called her on the way, but she couldn’t understand me because my voice was gone. I know I should have called the police the minute he left the house, but how would I explain to my family that I couldn’t make it to bury our father? I got in my sisters car and called the police around 10am.

After the funeral arrangements, I went to the hospital for sexual assault and I had huge bruises all over my arms, especially on the back. I had cuts, scrapes, and a rug burn bleeding on my elbow. I was nauseous, had a headache, had anxiety, and I was in so much pain.

I went to the police station to do cold calls. It’s where you call the perpetrator and hopefully get them to talk about what they did. We talked to him multiple times. They recorded it all. The police were confident they had everything they needed. There were also texts that verified what happened. I have also been recording my calls lately because he has been threatening me. The cops listened to those. We talk about how he has done this before, he apologizes, says he’s sorry he hurt me, says he won’t have sex with me while I’m asleep ever again, admits he is a rapist!

He was looking at Felony Rape, sodomy, kidnapping, and unlawful sexual penetration. I went to talk before the Grand jury. I felt like I was in trial. I was rushed by the DA, told I couldn’t say certain things, told I couldn’t say what I thought he was feeling, and I was cut off many times, including when I tried to talk about how he has a history of doing this. I left feeling disgusting. The DA asked questions that seemed like they were meant to confuse me or trip me up. She said “Well, maybe that’s just your thing!” As if rape is my thing? I never had a chance to talk about my injuries, or about how he had my phone and copied it all. It was so informal and hurried.

Normally, the defendant doesn’t get a Grand Jury. I don’t know why, but they let him speak to them. I have no idea what he said. There wasn’t a part of me that thought he might just deny it happened. I mean, look at all the evidence.

I got a voicemail. Not a call, but a voicemail saying the Grand Jury came up with a “no true bill.” He was being released from jail. I lost my mind. The Grand Jury said my testimony was ridiculous, contrived, and dishonest. The worst days of my entire life were minimized to nothing. I look like a liar that just made up some crazy story.

I realized later, that he hacked my voicemail the day I called the police and told my family what happened. He checked and deleted all of them. The police left messages along with family and friends. He is an IT expert and he made sure they could never be recovered. So, he knew I turned him in. He had days to plan a story. He could have heard anything that day that could have helped him or hurt me.

I found out later that his roommate didn’t help me because my ex stole some of my medication and sold it to him. So, when I told his roommate I was calling the cops, he thought it was about him, and he left. All of these things would have been proven if there had been a trial.

Now, he is out of jail and I’m supposed to share custody and just go back to normal? After he did that in front of our daughter, and to me. I know exactly what he did. It’s the same thing he did to me the first time I called the cops on him. He was physically assaulting me, throwing glasses of water at me, and telling me to hurry up and pack and leave. So, I called the police. This is about 2 years ago. They came and separated us. I saw him on the porch, joking with the police. He said I was angry because I didn’t get my drugs the night before and I was crazy. I don’t do drugs. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. They believed him too! They even said they could arrest me because he had scratches on his arm from me trying to get my phone to call the police.

I can’t imagine what he said to The Grand Jury. Now, what am I supposed to do? He charms everyone, and inside he is manipulating everyone and no one has a clue. He is truly dangerous, unfeeling, and had a way of coming off as believable and as if he is the victim.

I finally caught him in the act, and the DA said “Rape either has to be by force or while unconscious, so if you were “fake sleeping”, you weren’t unconscious. And if you really were unconscious, how do you know you were being raped?She didn’t care about the hours that he raped me while I was unconscious. She was focused on the few minutes that I kept my eyes closed and didn’t want him to know I was awake. She said she thought I was fake sleeping and trying to see if he would rape me!!! He already was!!! Yes, I kept my eyes closed and I wanted to be clear about what he was doing to me. But I didn’t want it!!!! It was awful, painful, and horrible. I’m destroyed for life and he just walks among us.