Shared Stories

I believed a dangerous lie

By “L” 

My housemate sexually abused me and I believed a dangerous lie: that he was my boyfriend

I graduated from uni not too long ago, but I’m still processing the trauma from my abusive housemates during my third year. I’m still learning the reality of it.

To try to summarise a complex situation, I was very innocent and extremely vulnerable at the time – just about surviving through uni. I ended up being sexually exploited by my male housemate/’friend’. He repeatedly sexually harassed/abused me, including rape. I never consented from the start, and could not consent because of being so vulnerable (emotionally and cognitively), due to recent and previous severe trauma.

He groomed, entrapped, manipulated, conditioned and exploited me. He made me feel so worthless. I became brainwashed very quickly (stolkholm syndrome) and trauma bonded with him under the constant emotional, sexual and sometimes serious physical abuse. It was so confusing, because he literally undermined my sanity and bent my reality to maintain power and control over me.

I believed a dangerous lie: that he was my boyfriend. I know it sounds strange, but it’s true – I looked up to him at the time, whilst taking on his shame and blame. It was such a twisted situation. I felt hopeless, helpless, powerless, ashamed and scared. I screamed many times because it was torturing abuse, yet I was drowning silently. I was in denial that it was abuse and instead believed the lie I was ‘crazy’.

Anyway, he was best friends with my female housemate/’friend’. They ganged up on me, whilst my resistance to the abuse was futile. It usually made the abuse worse and I was so desensitised, I didn’t realise it was ‘abuse’. She was extremely emotionally abusive and also physically assaulted me once. They tried to protect each other, and showed no respect for my life as they put my life in serious jeopardy. I may have reacted in some ways I’m not proud of, but I tried to survive in that environment.

The whole situation was extremely traumatising and became life threatening to me. My outside ‘friends’ were not real – as they victim blamed and shamed me, siding with my abusers. My abusers were popular and wanting to study medicine. They maintained power and control, whilst everyone trampled on my life as I was invalidated, devalued, discredited. I was pretty much shunned and ostracized, as my innocence, naivety and vulnerability were exploited.

I’m better than when I first escaped that house and situation. I’m physically away from all of them, but I sometimes struggle to deal with the pain and trauma of being silenced and dehumanised like this. There’s not much I can do about it, because everything has been turned against me so far.

They have no authority to tell me what my truth should or shouldn’t be. They can victim blame and shame me, silence me, dehumanise, devalue me, discredit me – anything to avoid the shame and blame that they know deep down is theirs. But I OWN my truth.

Shared Stories

I said NO to him very clearly

By an anonymous contributor

I’m not even sure my story is worth telling because when I read everyone else’s story I see how different mine is. I haven’t been raped or anything like that. I wasn’t forced to touch him in any way but he touched me pretty much everywhere without me wanting it. I said NO to him very clearly, I said I didn’t want it and that he had to stop. But he didn’t. I just wanted to get to know him but well it didn’t go as planned. I invited him because I already knew him and I trusted him. It was the worst idea ever. I told a friend that I invited him and she told me to text her it was okay or not. First it was okay right like he was normal he didn’t do anything weird. But then when I couldn’t text her back that it wasn’t okay it went bad. He started kissing me, touching me everywhere and I was afraid to not let him do it because what if he didn’t leave my place? What if he sensed something was wrong and didn’t want to leave me alone? So I played along but from the start I tried to say where my boundaries were and I said NO because I felt so bad. Eventually he left only like after 2 hours. When he left I was so relieved. He left and I just started crying and I didn’t know what just happened. Did I got sexually assaulted? Or is this not even called like that? I told a guy friend and he was there for me. My friend came to me the next day and I just started crying because everything reminded me of the attacker. He listened to me and he comforted me. I already had been through some rough relationships and it was already hard trusting people but this changed me even more. I still have trouble trusting men. I think every man is just the same. I’m even more afraid of commitment than I already was before. Also it turns out that this friend of me really didn’t care about me at all either so this makes me lose hope in finding a good guy.