A friend of mine was raped in the fall of 1980. We were young, maybe 18 or 19 and decided to visit a mutual friend of ours at Northern Illinois University. This friend lived in a dorm, and partied a lot, as we did at the time. Only, I had gone to a community college and still lived at home and my friend, D, lived at home and worked. We drove the hour to get there and sure enough, the parties started almost immediately. PartyTime was constant on college campuses...although usually mondays and tuesdays were considered school days. We were ecstatic! Bring on the college dudes!
This was a weekend. We started out in a dorm room and began playing drinking games. It seemed innocent and fun and we all started drinking beer. Lots of it. So much of it that the night became, obviously, a blur. Soon, all the dorm rooms were open and the party continued in all of them. People came, people went and the entire floor of rooms was the party.
My friend was flirting heavily with a guy. This was a co-ed floor and the guys were plentiful. We were delighted. Loud rock music, we felt gorgeous after primping and dressing in tight jeans......it was a blast! I hung out with the mutual friend, and spent time flirting and dancing. And drinking more.
I became seperated from my friend. At first, it was no big deal. These things happen when you party and besides, how far could she have gone? The party was confined to one floor of the dorm! She would show up eventually, and she seemed to have hit it off with that cute guy. She looked happy. Maybe she found a future boyfriend!
Hours passed. Hazy hours. I drank a lot, but as usual, didn't find anyone I liked and was ready to end the night. I began looking for my friend. We started searching rooms and asking, drunkenly, if anyone had seen D? No one had.
In my own drunken fog, I remember finding her. She was in a room. She was wearing man's clothes and hers were not there. She was in his room. She was hysterical; crying and screaming that she needed to call her sister to go home. We tried to calm her, to find her clothes...The boy said she wanted to switch clothes. That didn't make sense. He seemed very calm and quiet. Apathetic. It was all so confusing. I thought she liked him. She was flirting, kissing him, and now this.
The next thing I remember, she was running blindly through fields, parking lots, running to where, I do not know. I was running after her, trying to stop her. I was in no shape to drive us home, but she wanted out of there. She wanted to call her sister and go home. We had no cell phones in those days, so I took her to a gas station to call her sister. She was coming immediately to get her.
For some reason, I decided to stay. When her sister arrived, she asked what happened? I said I did not know....I said D had said she was raped. I said something I will always regret. I said to her sister, that I wasn't sure if it was a rape.
Those words came back to haunt me. Our friendship ended after D found out I said that. I was confused, but I should have taken her word that she was raped. How could I have doubted my friend? Rape doesn't always come in boogie man scenarios in the middle of the night. This was a rape. The term "date rape" didn't even exist at that time, but as a female, why did I not support her at that moment? I beat myself up mercilessly after this, and tried to woo her back with stuffed animals placed at her doorstep, notes, flowers, but she would not speak to me.
The night after the rape, I went searching for this guy. What the hell I could have done was beyond me. I was still probably drunk, as we all were, but I found him, and asked him what he did to her? He claimed she wanted it and wanted to change clothes, and that was it. He seemed bored, not the least bit scared we would go to the police. It was dawning on me that something horrific occured in that dorm room that night.
I was to find out later, she became pregnant from that rape, and had an abortion. D and I rekindled our friendship briefly, years later. I apologized profusely, and she accepted it. I still never felt right about my reaction to this. I felt it was a wedge between us, a horrible hurdle that I could never overcome in the friendship. She went on to have a brief marriage and 2 boys very quickly after all this and then she divorced. We lost touch, and have not seen each other since.
I don't know why she never pressed charges against that guy in the dorm. Perhaps she knew it would be hard to prove all this in court........?Or, she didn't think anyone would support her or believe her. She might be raped all over again in court. As her friend at the time, I failed her. Why would she expect to not be failed again by strangers?
It's over. And I am the guilty one in all this. Me and the rapist.
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