December 5

Not only do we give zero shits about men continuing to assault us with impunity, we’ve even rewarded a known serial rapist and abuser by electing him to The Great Golden Toilet in Washington; our highest position of authority in the country (and arguably the world). Adding insult to injury, now they can also force us into motherhood. With that, our bodies are essentially public property. This says, finally, men are simply dangerous and we have to get used to it. Some still pretend to be shocked, hurt, or annoyed to learn that most of us will take our chances being alone in the woods with a bear rather than with a man. But no one is surprised. Spin the wheel, get whatcha get. 

While this behavior continues to be laughed off as locker room talk, women need to get right with the idea that we’re on our own.

So before I go buy a bunch of EpiPens, load them up with drain cleaner and distribute them to every woman I know, I’ve decided to tell my story. There should be no question of how such a delightful woman went crazy and ran afoul of the law.

The birth of fury

I was raped at 18. It was violent enough to tear a hole in my body.

Take a moment to imagine the kind of force needed to tear a hole through someone’s flesh WITH YOUR DICK. And you’re not tearing just any flesh, but a tract of such strength and flexibility it can push out a 10 lb bowling ball without taking any real damage. I’m still not sure how he managed it, and I was there. The resulting scar tissue where the top of my vagina meets the cervix made it unlikely that I’d ever get pregnant, let alone carry a child to term.

But that’s the least of my problems as I’m bleeding out in the ER and they’re jamming 3 pounds of gauze into my cooch. The doctor pops up over my besheeted knees and asks in an almost accusatory tone, ‘weren’t you ready??’ Despite being only semi-conscious from pain and blood loss, I surprised myself by light-sabering his head clean off his body. But he came back a few hours later, so I had obviously missed.

No, doc. I was definitely not ready. I was roofied. But I guess this inch long tear in my vagina is MY fault: Ya see, I couldn’t tell him to wait while I warmed up because his hand was clamped over my mouth to stop the screaming, Oh Great Doctor of Doochebaggery, and Sworn Protector of the Patriarchy.

The play-by-play

Okay, let’s back up. I’m a freshman at Portland State. Shiny, eager but trying to be a little punky/cool, and completely under the spell of “I’m In College” and all the independence and the first-time-in-my-life insatiable brain hunger and discovering the bowling alley under Cramer & Smith Hall while staking out good study spots, and towering in my own agency. After 12 relentless years of “Julie has a lot of potential if she would just apply herself,” Julie was applying herself. With a passion. And that’s where ALL of my passion was going. I’m still a virgin, but not for lack of trying. I’ve never been a good flirt. The handful of guys I’d had crushes on had no idea. (I know because I laughingly asked a few of them later on.) I’ve always spent a lot of time in the friend zone, and I’m perfectly fine with it. Particularly now because there’s so much I need to do to start building my life!

The rapist —HIS NAME WAS CORY WIDENER, 28 at the time and would be 72 now— was in my Critique of Capitalism class. We were getting ready for finals, and he’d missed a couple of classes recently. Professor Buchanon asked if I’d be willing to share my copious notes with the guy. Me: Sure! We met later that afternoon to talk through them, I clarified some of the points, shared my pro tips for getting at least half a grade higher by quoting Buchanon’s paper on Friedrich Engels, etc. When we were done, the rapist asked if I wanted to grab some food. He was smart, easy to talk to, it had been a nice afternoon. Me: Sure! We walked around downtown for hours, talking about school, politics, family, music, ya know, all the normal stuff you talk about. I eventually realized it’s after 9:00 and I’d missed the last express bus. Now one of my folks would have to drive 4-5 miles to pick me up and that always annoyed them. My rapist says ‘let’s catch one to my place in Lake Oswego, and I’ll drive you home.’ Me: Sure! Thank you!

It was a long-ish bus ride to beautiful home and a deeply swanky part of town. He told me there was a bunch of crap in the car, so he made me a cocktail and I watched whatever was on TV while he cleared stuff out. Very suddenly, I turned into a few loosely-connected bags of lead shot.

Let me be clear: I wasn’t a hard partier, but I’d been drunk enough times to know my limits and what it felt like. This was not that. I. Could. Not. Move. What I remember of the violence is foggy. I definitely recall shouting ‘No’ and ‘Please stop’ a lot, followed by an angry whisper to “shut up, my parents will hear you.” I guess I didn’t give a shit about his parents and kept screaming. He growled something, clamped down hard on my mouth and gave my head a snappy shove down into the mattress for emphasis. I was dimly aware that my teeth had cut into my lip and there was blood in my mouth. This was followed by some blissfully blank space for a while before waking up on a cold bathroom floor, my back against the tub. The door opened and some towels and a few old lady period pads flew in. His annoyed voice on the other side telling me he had to wash his sheets; he was waiting for them to get out of the dryer. I looked at the floor and saw a large pool of murder under me.

My strange, disconnected brain: hope you used cold water; if this is what you’re washing out, the sheets are trash.

Somehow I’m now mostly dressed and in the car. Still very groggy from the drugs and now lapsing in and out of conciousness (I know now it was due to the blood loss). I can feel I’m sitting on a few towels, but pretty sure the upholstery will have difficult stories to tell about this night. I’m apparently able to give him directions, because now I’m home and pinballing back to the small bathroom off the kitchen hoping not to wake up my folks. But Mom’s a light sleeper; she finds me half dead on the toilet, gets me to stand up and sees that I’m hemorrhaging badly. Meanwhile, my rapist’s car seems to have died, and my dad’s out there helping him with no idea of the carnage the guy has wrought on his kid. Much fuzzy chaos ensues, and I eventually make it to the hospital.

Between the 20 minute drive home and my terror-stricken parents’ 10-15 minute drive to the hospital, I nearly bled out. I vaguely hear the not-headless doctor tell my parents that one extra stoplight would’ve probably cost me my life.

Law enforcement

Bear in mind, it’s 1980. The term ‘date rape’ wouldn’t exist for another 10 years. The kits and routine DNA tests wouldn’t happen for another 10-15 years after that. For all intents and purposes, no better than the Victorian era as far as victim’s rights are concerned.

When the female police officer/rape counselor came to the hospital the next day, I was scared but absolutely determined to press charges. I told her what happened. She took notes. At the end of it, she closed her book. She said we could charge him with 3rd degree —which is CARELESS OR UNINTENTIONAL HARM in conducting an otherwise normal activity— sexual assault. Because I knew his name, because I’d willingly gone somewhere with him, and because I TESTED POSITIVE for DRUGS, my testimony wouldn’t be seen as ‘credible’ enough to get a conviction. It was strictly my word against his. Even if the DA did take the case and we successfully convicted him on the 3rd degree assault, my rapist would feel all the inconvenience of an unpaid parking ticket. “Do you still want to press charges?” my hero sheepishly asks.

Legal redress

The officer told me that I had the option of a civil case. She could put me in touch with an attorney who handled these, but she strongly advised against it, saying I might be awarded a small settlement for the physical injury. But “I’ve seen what lawyers do to women in this situation, and I don’t want that to happen to you.” She went on to explain the digging into every high school party I attended, anyone I’ve dated, friends, former friends, teachers, anyone who’s seen me drunk at a party or making out with someone on the after-school activity bus, any type of normal teenage behavior. They’d turn my world upside down looking for anything that may further undermine my credibility. “And if you lose,” she admitted, “he can counter-sue you for defamation and try to recoup court costs… They win more often than they should.”

The rape was nightmare. But the thing that truly broke off a piece of my soul was being utterly disregarded by multiple medical and law enforcement professionals who had sworn an oath to protect me.

Aftercare

My parents were having the reaction of all Boomers when facing uncomfortable problems they never expected to have. Yes, they were genuinely terrified while I was bleeding out. Once the crisis was averted, what was left was deep disappointment and white-hot anger. Not at him, of course. At ME.

It’s baked into our foundation. My folks knew on some OG proto-human level that getting raped was the entirely predictable result of a girl’s bad behavior. And THAT is a direct reflection of poor parenting. You wore too much makeup. Your clothes were too tight or too revealing. You teased him or did something to encourage him, or failed to discourage him, and here we are. Right where we said you’d be if you didn’t listen. Yeah, Mom. Pull me out of a college kid fashion lineup: Schlubby cordoroys and jeans, a t-shirt informing us ‘this is not a dress rehersal’ in small courier type below the neckline. Throw in an oversized vintage suit jacket with little pins proclaiming my favorite punk bands and patches of snarky social commentary, and the obligatory ribbed duck boots required by every student navigating inch-deep leaf carcasses and puddles that are the PSU campus. Makeup: Chapstick. Maybe some cheek color if I’d had time that morning. I’m 18, have been a solid B student, I was in music and drama and student government and a couple of service clubs, all my friends are similarly squeeky clean; my biggest transgression so far was taking my 12-yr-old sister out TP’ing with me and a few friends while you were out of town once. Teachers tend to like me, I was voted ‘Most Versatile’ for the senior ‘hall of fame,’ and I’ve had 2 almost-boyfriends neither of whom got past 2nd base because they were decent and slightly weird/insecure like me. What kind of ‘slutty’ signals was I broadcasting? 

I was in the hospital 2-3 days so they could monitor my rennovations. Mom came to see me once. Her pinched face made it clear that she was only fulfilling an obligation. She very pointedly said that ‘there’s no way Dad was coming up here.’ He and I were in a perpetual state of cold war as it is, so this would usher in another 6-8 months of him not speaking to me. She sat there, pained, filling the space with as much fluffy nothing as she could get her hands on. Relieved the next time she checked her watch, so I guess she’d completed her obligation. “Dad’s waiting.” She picks up her purse, tells me to call if I need anything as she tippy-taps out of the room.

“Are you proud of this?

I didn’t know that one of my sort of 2nd-tier squeaky-clean music friend’s dad was a doctor at that hospital. He recognized my name and told Anne. She rallied ALL the troops and they swarmed me later that day. Armloads of flowers and candy and stupid little stuffed animals and hugs and I broke like hot glass. Cried for 10 minutes, so happy and relieved and grateful for these weirdos. Someone patted my head, held hands, gripped blanketed toes, and kept up a steady rotation of hugs. When I told them what happened, the barometric air pressure in that room went off the chart. Sound wouldn’t move and we were all being squeezed. Someone was crying and kissing my head. David, one of my absolute besties (only 17, but a big 17) asked for a name. He was usually the joker of the bunch, but he could’ve been carved out of stone in that moment. “What, the bastard just gets dead, but YOU have to go to prison? No.” Dave swoops in for another hug and he’s shaking. They saved me that day. Not the goddamned doctors or police or the social worker or fucking society or even my family. My Friends Saved Me.

Going home was… not sure how to quantify it. Cold and dead. I was kind of happy for my little sister; she didn’t have to share the center of the family universe with me. Years later, I’d see it happen in the movie Dirty Dancing. You know, when Baby fell from grace and her sister suddenly had all of Daddy’s attention. I’d been home for a day or two when my pal Janet came over. We were both at PSU, so she was eyeball deep in finals. We’d been on the phone a few times, but this was our first opportunity for ‘holy-shit-what-happened.’ I told her the whole thing. She’s not a real huggy type of person, but she was piiiisssssed off. I guess she’d told a couple of our other friends she was coming over, so soon there were 3-4 more at the house.

No news is shit news.

This was 40 years ago and nothing has changed. THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS HARDWIRED TO PROTECT THESE ANIMALS, putting an unattainable burden of proof on the victim. Every aspect of that system declares ‘you should know know better: Men are animals, and you engaged in dangerous behavior with one. Unless you have recordings and a bucket of witnesses of the actual event, you’re not taken seriously. And if you DO present recordings or witnesses, even a cut-rate halfwit attorney will call it entrapment.’

Outside the halls of ‘justice,’ most of our society still believes/behaves as if I’m trying to use him for my own nefarious purposes. I’m a prick tease and mad that he wouldn’t let me get away with it. I’m a woman scorned, or trying to get retribution because he wasn’t interested in pursuing the relationship any further, or simply misread his intentions. ‘You’re just butt-hurt because he doesn’t want you after all.’