In the past twenty-five years, since he raped me, I’ve looked him up once online. When I learned that he was still teaching, I rushed to the bathroom and emptied my stomach.
Guilt resurfaced, and I berated myself, “How many others has he raped? Why haven’t you gone public?”
When I think about the day he raped me, I am drawn into a nightmare that is all too real. I recall his liver-spotted hands, his naked body over mine, my confusion at how we’d arrived in his bedroom, and my repulsion at his lustful whispers. It was a jarring event without precedent, a visit gone awry but not the depiction of rape I’d learned about.
My sixteenth summer had been a lonely one. Estranged from my parents, I had couchsurfed for months, growing more isolated with each move. I had called him to chat, and he had invited me to his beachside house. When I arrived, he offered me a drink. He said it was his own concoction. I took his offer of alcohol as a compliment, his recognition of my maturity. Sitting on his front steps, overlooking the urban park and the lake in the distance, I thought I was lucky to have someone who saw me, someone to talk to, someone I could trust.
Years later, I realized that he’d drugged me. Up to that point, I thought I’d made a conscious decision, however off-putting, to have sex with this man: the man who had helped me navigate my…
