I am 17.
I’ve just got my driving license. It’s 1984.
I am starting to explore my sexuality.
I dare not go to a gay bar or club but know that gay men hang around in Hyde Park.

I drive up to the West End and park in Park Lane and walk into the park.

All I want to do is see a gay man who looked like me.
I need to see someone who I could vaguely recognise myself in rather than the gay men on telly.
It was about 9.30 or 10pm. Not late.

I’m sitting on a bench not really looking at anyone but catching furtive glances.
A guy sits down on the bench opposite.
A few moments later he gets up and walks away, pauses in a pool of light cast by a streetlamp and then turns and comes back towards me.
He sits down at the other end of the bench.

He offers me water.
He’s Scottish.
Early 20s. Literally model handsome. About 6ft 5.
We start to talk.
It starts to drizzle.
We are laughing and getting on OK.

Nothing sexual even hinted at.

He asks “Why are you here?”

I hesitate…
and mumble something about liking the night air.

He tells me it’s where he felt safest when he wasn’t out.

I open up and tell him I think I’m gay.

We talk more as the drizzle falls.
We sit there chatting for hours each at the opposite end of the bench.

The drizzle turns to rain. He suggests going for a coffee to warm up.
I’m reluctant.
He laughs.
“It’s just for coffee,” he says.
I agree.

We walk north from the park.

A Marylebone street lined with Georgian houses. Gated steps down from the pavement to a basement flat. He opens the stair gate. No lights on in the house. He walks down the stairs. I follow.

There’s a space under the pavement where the coal hole used to be.
He pushes me against the wall. He kisses me hard and grabs my balls.

I’m shocked. I’ve never kissed a guy before. I try to get him off of me but I’m 5” 10’ and he’s 6” 5’ and strong.
He’s laughing at me.
He’s saying this is what I went out for.
I’m crying.
He rapes me.

Afterwards I’m left in tears and he’s gone.

I don’t call the police because of the shame.
I walk back to the car crying.
I drive home crying.
I go to bed crying.
I don’t sleep.

The next morning I shower and scrub every trace of him off me and put my brave face on. I don’t tell anyone.

I think I deserve it because I’m gay. I think I deserve it because I’m somehow “wrong”. I think I deserve it because I was there.

I am 20.
I don’t know where we first met but I know we’d been out a few times. I also know I don’t entirely trust him. He lies constantly. Small things. Big things. He said he is in Heaven 17. He isn’t.
We’ve been out for a drink.
He asks me back to his and I said I want him to take me home.
We end up back at his.

He makes it clear that he intends to rape me.
I fight as he’s pinning me down on the bed.
I scratch. I kick. I bite. I draw blood.
He punches me square in the face.
I knee him in the balls and he recoils. I escape.

I walk home in the small hours of the morning clearly in distress. Clothes torn. Bloodied. Seven miles. Main road.

He drives and finds me and tries to get me in the car. I resist.
Cars drive by.
Nobody stops.

I am 30.
I’ve not seen him in ten years.
I’m on a tube platform.
He comes up close enough behind me to whisper in my ear that he’s turned on thinking about that night and that he wants to finish what he started.
I’m dressed in a suit and tie for work.
He whispers that I look sexy. My blood turns cold.
I remember the rage.

I turn and punch him once in the face and he goes down.

The train pulls into the station and I step on.
I go to work.

I don’t mention anything to anyone because of the shame.
I don’t call the police because of the shame.
Somehow I think I deserve it because… I don’t know why.

I am 42.
I am seeing a guy. We are in my flat.
There is a huge vase of flowers in the window.

I am breaking up with him because he’s controlling and he’s been stealing from me.

He takes a knife from my kitchen and says that if he can’t have me then nobody will.
I’m terrified. He has a history of violence. He has a police record. He oozes sex appeal from every single pore.
He’s a psychopath. He knows how to charm. He knows how to terrify.

Somehow I end up locking myself in the bathroom but he’s at the door. Screaming, trying to kick it down.
I have to open the door. I can’t defeat him physically, I know that much, but I have to somehow calm him down.
I can’t do that from behind a locked door.

He thinks I’m trying to escape the flat. He thinks I’m mocking him. He thinks I think he’s not good enough for me. He thinks I’d be better off scarred or dead.

I am trying to escape the flat but can’t. I’m not mocking him. I totally believe he’s capable of killing me.

He orders me to strip naked so that I can’t escape. I have no choice.

At knife point I’m forced to have oral sex with him in order to show him that I am not breaking up with him.

Over the next four hours he fucks with my mind. He holds the tip of the knife up to my eyeball and says that if I can’t see that he loves me then I don’t deserve to see anything. He traces the tip of the blade along my leg, over my groin.

He tells me I’m worthless, that I don’t deserve him, that I don’t deserve anyone, that nobody other than he will ever love me.

He rapes me. At knife point. In my own home. Twice. I don’t fight back.
He has oral sex with me.
He says “You’re mine. Totally” and pisses on me to mark me as his.
I’ve surrendered to him to dissipate the rage in him.
It works.

He suggests we go to a coffee shop opposite before coming back and me proving to him how much I love him.
I agree that we should go for a coffee.

I open the front door and hold it open for him. He steps through. He’s still carrying my chef’s knife. I shut the door behind him and pile up furniture behind it.
I check that all the windows are locked and I sit in a ball in the corner of the living room and weep.
I call 999.

He’s on the other side of the front door screaming and threatening to kill me.

The police are here in moments and peel him off the front door. They take him outside to talk to him and an officer comes in to speak with me.
They joke about it being a poof thing and a domestic. They don’t take it seriously until he punches one of the officers and also attacks a traffic warden.

No action taken on my report.

I let the flowers in the vase die. I keep them there for months. I can’t replace them in case he sees them and realises I’m at home.
I sit in the dark rather than turn lights on and show I’m at home.
I check the street to see if he’s there whenever I leave.
Coming home I hail a cab to the door so I would always have a witness if he was there.
A few times I saw him in the street as we pulled up and I told the cab driver to drive past rather than stop.

Years later I see him again. I’m walking north on Waterloo Bridge and he’s walking south. I know he’s seen me. I hail a cab and tell him to drive to somewhere miles away. I know he’s heard the address I’ve given. It’s a false address because I don’t want him to know where I’m going.
I’m terrified.
He winks and smiles at me as the cab pulls away.
The cabbie asks if I’m ok and I weep.
I ask to be taken to an hotel rather than risk being at home. He waives the fare.

The next day I go home and he’s standing on the opposite side of the road waiting for me. I call the police. He’s led away.
A few hours later he is back and climbing up the front of the building.
I call the police.
I am terrified.
They take him away.
I move.

—————————–

It’s now very rare for me to open my home to someone new. My home is my safe space, my sanctuary.

I don’t trust “love”. Sex is always tinged with “is this what I want or is that what I think I want” mixed with a bit of “this is all that I deserve” and “what if I say No”.

I have friends who are happy to go out walking or running alone at night. I’ve never felt comfortable doing that. I’ve always felt at risk at night no matter where I am, so I bought myself a bright yellow coat. I think that if I stand out then people would ignore me and I’d be safer.

I never knew why I didn’t feel safe until the memories of the assaults came back.

I used to walk at night with my thumb resting on the Lock button on my phone in my pocket. Just knowing that 5 presses of the button would call 999 was reassuring.

I didn’t know why I needed that reassurance. Now it’s so clear why I did.

Memories keep coming up. Sometimes they are faces of the perpetrators glimpsed in the shadows or in the faces of others. Sometimes they are mixed up in the narrative of what used to be regularly occurring nightmares.

The characters are different now. They look different. The voices they have are the voices of those who assaulted me.

In 1999 I had a breakdown. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I’ve had therapy and CBT and there’s always been a nagging sense that something was missing, that somehow I was incomplete. It’s now crystal clear that what was missing was the experiences of my assaults and their aftermath.

It’s not been easy to bring any of this to the fore and it’s not a quick thing to heal from and move past, but by acknowledging these assaults I am slowly reclaiming my experience.

There’s a comfort in the knowledge that this is a process and that my subconscious is saying that I am now strong enough to start to deal with this. Strong enough to process it. Strong enough to heal. Strong enough to move on. Strong enough to not just survive. Strong enough to thrive.

And none of it was my fault. I am not to blame.