By an anonymous contributor
Is it consensual sex if I was 8 years old and didn’t understand what you were saying? No.
I was 8 and living with my family in and out of hotel rooms because we didn’t have our own place. My mom would come home with new guys every once in a while so I learned never to get to attached until one guy came around and told my mom he had a place for us to live for awhile. My mom took him up on that offer and we moved to a little white house in South Saint Paul. A lot of people lived in that house but among all of them I remember one easily. He ruined my life for years. What he did to me consumed me. I had never had an older sibling that I felt truly cared about me and how I felt until I met him. When my bike was stolen, he comforted me. When I was upset, he was there. When I was sick, he was next to me making sure that I was okay. I didn’t know better. I didn’t know what he was planning. My mom should’ve seen the signs from him. At the time, he was dating my older sister and at one point during their relationship, he pinned her in the closet and tried to have sex with her. My mom heard her screaming and ran to go help but never stopped to think that he would try anything like that with me or my younger sister. One day, he noticed that I was really upset about something and asked me if later that night I wanted to have a sleepover in his room and we would watch a movie. I thought of him as a brother so of course, I said yes and I asked my mom for her permission and she should’ve said no but didn’t. I walked into his room later that night and he had candles lit and the movie ready to be played. I should’ve known something was going on but I was so excited to watch this movie that I didn’t even think. I fell asleep and woke up to being on his lap naked. He had decided he wanted to have anal sex with me. An 8 year old! He whispered in my ear that “it felt good” and I was frozen. Any movements I made that night were because I felt like I might be killed if I did the wrong thing. He moved me from the couch to the bed and told me to get on top of him and ride him. I did as I was told. I fell back asleep shortly after and I still have no idea why I didn’t leave his room. I suppose it could be because of the way I grew up, sex was a normal thing in my life. My mom did it all the time with me in the room so I didn’t know better. I didn’t know that it was wrong, I just knew that I didn’t like it. He took pictures of my naked vagina while I was asleep. I woke up the next morning and went downstairs to get breakfast and his mom stopped me in the hallway and said “you know he loves you right?” To this day, I still don’t know if she knows what he did to me. My sister and her friend were sitting in his room one day and found the phone that he had the pictures of me on. They didn’t know it was me and I was to afraid to tell them. I thought I did something wrong. I didn’t tell anyone until I was 11. My family was pissed but there was nothing we could do. I talked to so many cops and therapists, they didn’t do anything because there wasn’t much they could do. At the age of 9 I was diagnosed with PTSD and still suffer from that to this day. I am now 18 years old and I am a Freshman in college. He tries to reach out to me every now and then but I ignore him. He doesn’t understand what he did to my life. The thing that haunts me the most is that he came up to me one day while I was playing outside and whispered in my ear “are you ready for round two?