Jules’ Story: I Thought He Loved Me

I was only 13. I’d known him for a year, he was the first person I’d truly felt close to outside of my family. He was 15 and in highschool, but I knew I wanted to be with him. I’d already started puberty so I wasn’t a stranger to sexual thoughts but I’d grown up a devout Presbyterian and I had every intention of staying a virgin until marriage. I was at a camp over the summer where I’d first met him a year previous. We became closer than ever. We were alone in the dorms one day at camp and he started to touch my boobs, I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. I asked him to stop by he convinced me that he was doing it because he loved me. I’d never been in love before so I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. His hand started to go lower and lower and I tried to push him away, but he was larger than me. He asked me if I loved him and I didn’t want to be mean so I said yes. He pulled down my shorts and then his, I said “No, please don’t, I don’t want to”. He pulled down his underwear and asked again if I loved him. When I said yes he moved closer, I became increasingly scared. He said that if I really loved him I’d have sex with him but it went against everything I’d ever known. He put it in and I nearly screamed. He put his hand over my mouth and kept going despite my crying. After if was done I went back to the commons and was silent. The camp was over the next day and I didn’t know what to do with myself. According to the church people who had sex were bad and they had given into sin. I knew my mom would be mad so I never told her and I never reported it to the police because I didn’t realize that I had been raped until many years later. But at the time I abandoned my religion and tried to forget. I know now that it wasn’t my fault but I still think about it every day. I’ve taken back up my religion and I see that it wasn’t anything wrong with me.