Rape victim regaining life by telling her story
Jennifer din't graduate with the rest of her class this summer.
It wasn't that she failed classes or did poorly in school. Jennifer had to drop out after she was raped by a friend.
Rape, until it happened to her was an attacker lurking in the bushes, a stranger pulling you off the street. it certainly
wasn't the guy you'd known since you were kids taking swimming lessons, a guy throwing
a 17th birthday party for you and your twin brother, forcing you to have sex in the basement of his parents' house.
"I didn't know you could be raped by a friend...I knew what happened wasn't right. It was - he wanted sex, I didn't
want sex, he got it."
An 18-year-old man was convicted in in St. Catharines court last month on two counts od sexual assault - in almost identical circumstances that occured a year apart and both involved
a party, a lot of alcohol, a girl passing out and a boy who took advantage of the situation and refused
to realize that "no" really does mean "no."
He will be sentenced for the crimes in September. Because he was a young offender
at the time of the assaults, neither he, nor the victims, nor the school they
attended can be identified.
But the rape, and especially the aftermath that tore apart a St. Catharines high school
and turned classmates against one another, has left Jennifer - not her real name - struggling to make sense
of what happened. She wanted to go public to tell her story but cannot under law.
She is an 18-year-old with a younger girl's face and blonde hair, who poured out her frustrations first in a letter to
the editor and then in a lengthy chat in the north-end apartment she shares with her mother.
She began her letter by calling herself a high school dropout and it is that which rankles her most of all.
Her high school struggled with the challenge of educating both te girl who says
she was raped and the boy accused of doing it.
Jennifer has to attend classes with the boy even after she told the school she'd been raped. When she complained, she said a
vice-principal told her to pull up her socks and get on with her life.
Her mother says Jennifer would come home in tears after seeing other kids whispering about her in the hallways and seeing washroom walls scrawled
with graffiti: Jennifer is a lying whore. Jennifer is a lying slut. Jennifer was never raped.
It has been years since feminism's No-Means-No campaign led the onslaught against date rape, but the confusion and misunderstanding about this crime persists.
Jennifer didn't know at first that what happened to her was rape. It was only after
her twin brother and his two friends sat her down and convinced her that she realized what happened wasn't just wrong, it was a crime.
About 20 percent of all sexual assaults reported to the region's rape crisis centre are acquaintance rapes. In the past year, 612 people came to the centre to talk about being
raped by someone they knew, says case manager Judy Calvin.
"This kind of incident where kids go to the same school isn't unusual," she says. "The unusual part is that there is a conviction."
Niagara Regional Police Sergeant Randy Bleich, who heads the force's sexual assualt unit, goes even further: "The unusual part is that they report it."
The turmoil that followed Jennifer did little to convince her she did the right thing in reporting.
"So many people turned against me...I lost friends, my whole life went totally downhill. I drank at school. I got really messed up."
But she is beginning to get her life back now through telling her story - to the court, to The Standard, to those who visit her survival guide web page - and being believed.
"I want people to believe me, that's all I want."
© 1997 sarahlynngardner@hotmail.com
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