WHEN I WAS RAPED

ADEBAYO OLUWATOMI

In higher institution, a relationship can only last a few days or weeks enough to get one through the social events of the session which in the case were the Basketball Game and the Campus turnup party. I watched the basketball match that followed the party and the formal dance with a rapis,"MY RAPIST".

   He was the captain of the Wildlions,the best basketball team on campus and was regarded as having a shot at a professional career. I liked him simply because i was concerned at that time with being popular, and dating a sport captain was an automatic ticket to the crowd.
   I was also uncomfortably a member of the most likely to succeed crowd and dating a star was becoming a habit for me, I was previously dating a guy in the sciences department, he was a prince of morals and never gave me attention.We left the basketball court to drive to his house and pick up some stuffs for the party. I had consumed a little bit of alcoholic drink just to fit in, as I didn't like alcohol and wasn't accustomed to drinking, I felt drunk and unstable on my feet.
   We went through the door, no one was home. He pushed me onto my back on the sofa in his room, pulled down my clothes and pant and forced himself into me. I recall feeling acutely aware of how weak my arms felt, the sensation of utter helplessness, I couldn't push him off, I kept on saying NO several times. It didn't matter to him, he kept going and was done quite quickly. He pulled up his pants and in mute shock,I assembled myself and we got back into the car and went back to the party. The dance came after rape and that I agreed to dance with him despite the rape because I was trying to maintain the fact that I was so cool and non chalant about sex that the attack had not upset me.
  Over the next several days, my mind was preoccupied with only one thought, What would I do if I get pregnant.
       
  When I saw my period, I was incredibly relieved, I felt happy about the attack once my anxiety about pregnancy was relieved. A couple of years later, I encountered my rapist at an eatery where I was having lunch, I got the flashback of how my rapist asked me to dance and I accepted, congratulating myself on my forgiving nature and again my cool attitude about the sex. My attitude at that time was that the poor guy was so stupid he knew not what he had done, I tend to believe that.
    But my rapist, well, I got to know that he was arrested and he ended up in jail on a sexual assault charge. His bright athletic future never came to fruition. As for me, I went to law school when I was 28 and still never told anyone what happened to me. I worked hard to be published in the schools law review, my topic was Rape Trauma, inspired by a teenager case in which the Jury acquitted the defendant of a rape charge, because the plantiff had shown insufficient trauma.
   The Jury had been allowed to hear evidence that she had gone out dancing and smoking in the days following the attack. The case outraged me. I knew from experience that it is not easy to pretend, even to one's self that the attack was nothing. Yet, I still told no one of the motivation behind my interest in writing on criminal law, a field I did not pursue. I never told my parents, I never told my elder brother whom I am still very close with and I never told  my girl friends whom I was very close with in university.
   And I still remember the attack as if it just happened. I remember the sensation of terrible weakness in my arms and that I said "NO" many times and was ignored. I remember the estate where the rapist lived and that no one was home and the details of the room in which the rape occurred. I remembered vividly what he looked liked. His name, of course,I will never forget.