#6 - That Time I Was Betrayed by Women After Being Raped

Betrayal.

When healing from sexual violence, I expected the anger, the grief, the shame, but I was blindsided by the feeling of betrayal. Betrayal was the emotion that lingered and stayed with me the longest.

I felt betrayed by those who took from my body what was not theirs for the taking, and I felt betrayed by the many bystanders who stood by and did not intervene or speak up during my sexual assault. But the people I felt the most betrayed by were the women I encountered in the aftermath.

I felt betrayed by all the girls I considered friends who chose to slut-shame me and gossip about what happened behind my back. The female guidance counselor who turned me away when I reached out for help. The female teachers who labeled me difficult and idolized the teen boys who raped me. The therapist who abandoned me when she couldn’t “cure” me of my depression. My mother who ignored my pain and later blamed me for what happened.

But as I reflect on this feeling of betrayal, there are two women who stand out. One betrayed me and it led to my suffering, the other betrayed me when I went to her for healing and she used my suffering against me. I felt betrayed because I believed we were the same.

The first is the girl who was with me the night I was gang raped as a freshman in high school. This girl and I were fast friends. People warned me that she was a social climber, but I ignored the red flags. We bonded over insecurities and a similar sense of humor. We’d spend hours talking about everything and nothing. How could this girl who was labeled a “wannabe” be so bad when our friendship felt so pure? We were the same this girl and I, or at least that’s what I believed at the time.

But, I also see now that I didn’t just see us as the same, I also placed her on a pedestal. At this point in my life, I was insecure. After being bullied in middle school, I lacked confidence, real friends, and I felt ugly. This girl had also been bullied in middle school, but she now appeared confident and desirable. I deemed her cooler than me, and I blindly gave her my trust.

So, after weeks of spending all our time together, I was excited when she asked me if I wanted to meet some guys she knew at a well-known spot in the woods. I felt chosen. I did not know that my naivete and desperation for acceptance would be my biggest mistake, and also end up feeling like my biggest crime. The night that my body was tormented and pillaged for everything that was once holy to me, she stood by and watched.

After this night, she stopped speaking to me. I heard through the grapevine that she was telling everyone I was a dirty slut and she never liked me. She had only been with me that night because she was told to bring someone considered “easy” for the other guys to play with. I felt deeply confused and deeply betrayed. I had not yet learned that predators walked among the halls of my high school seeking out vulnerable prey like myself.

I watched her climb the social ladder. She became friends with the boys who raped me. She was now walking down the hallways with the popular boys and attending upperclassmen parties, while I had become a social pariah. How had me being raped upped her social status? Was it that they knew she knew their secret and they wanted to keep her in their good graces? Or was it that they liked to use her to give me messages such as, I needed to shut up or they would kill me?  Or was it that she started sleeping with one of the guys who raped me?

It took me months to see her true nature, because I remained blinded by the idea that we were the same. Had I completely made up the connection we had? The truth is I’ll never know how this girl truly felt about me, a truth that took me a long time to accept.

A little over a decade later, I found myself in a similar situation, but this time with an adult woman older than me.  She was a spiritual leader with a cult-like following. She was beautiful, confident, and bold. She was a survivor of sexual violence. She spoke about it publicly and credited a book she wrote for healing her from rape. I was immediately hooked. I fell in love with the woman and what I believed she stood for.

I, again, became blinded by the belief that this woman and I were the same. We were both survivors and found our faith.  I also deemed her better than me and I placed her on a pedestal. She had been to hell and instead of letting it break her; she chose to speak about it. This is what I wanted to do. I no longer wanted to hide my trauma, instead I wanted to wear it as a badge of honor and strength like she did, but I was still so terrified to speak up and be heard. At this time, I still lived with the fear that if I spoke up I would be shamed and blamed for what happened to me, and I wasn’t sure I could survive the blame-game again.

I read her book over and over again desperate for healing. But, as I read it repeatedly, something was still missing. The book didn’t actually tell me how to process my trauma, heal from rape, and go about my daily life as a trauma survivor.

About a year into following this woman on social media, buying her curriculums, attending live events, spending thousands of dollars on her products, and reading her book daily, I was excited to have a chance to meet her. I was finally going to meet someone who understood me and the amount of trauma I had been through.

I arrived at the event to meet the woman I admired most, and I sat among a dozen other women who admired her. We each had a chance to speak to her one on one. As the sessions began, I became nervous. This event was not what I expected. Some people received kindness and a motherly version of this woman, others received cruel words and harsh “reality checks” described as loving advice. My anxiety grew as I awaited my turn. Another red flag that I could only see as I reflected on this experience later.

When it was my turn, my anxiety had grown into full-blown panic. I got on stage and my mind went blank. I couldn’t speak. It didn’t matter though, because she barely gave me the chance to speak throughout my session. Most others had a conversation with her, mine was a rant. It felt like I was getting a verbal lashing. She yelled at me that I was a hot mess and to stop crying after I told her I was raped. She compared our traumatic experiences, and mine were deemed “not that bad” in comparison. As she berated me, my mind kept trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Why was she so mad at me? She had no love or compassion for me, even though her book mentioned love and compassion over and over again. I was devastated. This was supposed to be my healing, and instead I walked out feeling more ashamed than ever before.

I felt deeply humiliated. It didn’t take long for other women to approach me. They all said the same thing like they had been given a script. I was lucky to have had such a powerful session. I should feel honored. I was lulled back into a false sense of safety out of my need for acceptance and community. I refused to see the abuse I had just experienced. It took me another two years to stop engaging with this woman and her content, and to see how deeply this experience hurt and traumatized me.

Once I finally stopped engaging with this woman’s content, I finally saw how betrayed I felt. I went to this woman for help in one of my darkest hours, and she wielded my trauma against me like a sword to knock me down. What happened to empowered women empowering women?

It took me awhile to trust people again. I spent months going to a farm and developing a trust with animals. The funny thing about animals is that they are very intuitive. They sense how you are feeling, and what I learned from my time at the farm is that if you trust yourself, the animals will trust you. If you are a safe person, they know it.

I realized neither of these women from my past were safe people. There were signs along the way, like Hansel & Gretel’s breadcrumbs, but I had ignored them out of a desperation to feel loved. I did not know what unconditional love was, so I settled for behavior I did not deserve.

I also realized that my need for people to be the same had proven dangerous. When I labeled these women the same as me, I made assumptions about who they were without actually allowing myself to see their true nature. I listened to their words, and ignored their actions. I had viewed sameness as safe, and had been afraid of us being different because I thought if I was different no one would ever love me. So instead, I chose to conform and seek sameness, which in the end led to my betrayal.

For a while I carried self-blame and felt as though I had betrayed myself. I criticized myself for ignoring the red flags and conforming, but over time I realized I didn’t have to punish myself. I put my trust in the wrong people and that shouldn’t be a crime.   

Over the past few months, I’ve began connecting with more people, including survivors of sexual violence. At first, I felt fear. These women from my past would pop in my head and I would worry I would suffer again. Would these new women attack me? How would I know they were safe?

But, time and time again I see that I can now trust myself. I no longer feel the need to be the same as everyone else. I actually embrace that I am quite different, and I find that this gives others the permission to be different too.

I also saw through these new interactions with survivors that at one point in time, I would have viewed us all the same because we have a shared experience, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We are all so different, and so are our stories. The complexities of sexual violence and trauma are different for all of us. I understand these women, but I do not view us as the same. That would be a disservice to us and our stories.

Some of the survivors I have met are kind to me. Others not so much. The ones who are kind and are now my friends, I call shooting stars, because you only find a few people that magical in a lifetime. The others I wish the best. I finally learned to discern and now know that their unkind behavior has nothing to do with me.

I no longer look for people the same as me, I now cherish all those close to me and how different we all are, and I trust myself and my judge of character.