Bill’s story: The Day My Childhood Died

It was a sunny April Friday afternoon, 1981when I came home from school, up until this point in my life I wasn’t very knowledgeable about life regarding sex, and or even my body, I just didn’t.

Anyway at 13, I was so proud that my parents, who I recently began living with, had bought a VCR, we were one of the first in 1981, l had known these two other boys and they wanted to see Rocky 2.

About 15 minutes later I went to the bathroom, that’s when my world ended.

I had just shut the door, the lock was broke, and was standing in front of the toilet so I could pee, when the door opened where one of the boys told me to lie down on the floor of the bathroom.

Still not understanding, but knowing something was wrong I began to protest, at this point he became somewhat aggressive borderline violent.

He pulled my pants down and had raped me right on the floor of the bathroom.

I remember feeling how hard and cold the floor was, I remember getting up in protest and him turning me back around and pushing me to the floor, I remember pounding my fists on the floor while I was screaming, as he was making guttural animal sounds, I even remembered him finishing inside me.

What took 10 minutes, changed my whole life completely. When we went back downstairs where the other boy was still watching Rocky, I acted like nothing happened, anyway they left shortly after.

To this day I remember everything about that night, I remember my parents coming home with my 2 step sisters from my dad’s side, I remember we ate foot long hotdogs that night as we watched movies rented from the video store, I remember having a migraine headache through the whole weekend.

I was so sick, that I had taken children’s aspirin in hopes to take my headache away, we didn’t have anything stronger, and I was so ashamed, confused, and sick that I could never tell my parents what happened.

Monday afternoon, it was all over the school. Both me and the boy who raped me were in the office, as they were trying to get to the bottom of what happened.

I had been raped on Friday, molested by the only father I knew on Wednesday, as he forced me to touch his penis, and considered a liar by Friday.

Everyone in the office, 2 counselors, the boy who raped me, his mother, and my parents had either minimized what had occurred or were convinced I was lying. The only witness I had was out of the state at the time.

I had realized what everyone was trying to do was sweep this mess under the rug, my mother didn’t want to face the fact t that her son was raped, the counselors were hoping that this was a nightmare, so they ignored the seriousness of this.

Meanwhile conflicting and confusing thoughts were plaguing my mind thoughts like am I pregnant, will everyone know what happened by just looking at me, is this painful trauma I went through how babies are made, am I going to get sick in the future, I had never heard of AIDS, or STDs so I wasn’t thinking that kind of sick.

The school year ended with me being bullied at school everyday, coming home and getting hit by the belt, with clothes on, and off, being punished and having to be live in my hot room cause everyone was convinced I was lying.

If I ever had to do it over again I would have done things so different, so very different.

But I realize now 37 years later that Friday was the day my childhood died.