Yes, I have. It was fifteen years ago. I was stranger gang raped, and then eight months later I was stranger raped again. Both happened during break ins to my house. The first time I could hear the phone ringing as it was happening, but I couldn't get to it to scream for help, I felt so powerless.
I didnt didn't think I would ever recover, I thought a lot about suicide and every time the phone would ring, or someone would knock on the door I would hide under the coffee table or in the TV cupboard sobbing. I would stay in there for hours afterwards. To say I was a mess was a massive understatement, I hadn't even begun to recover from the first rape when I was raped again. The one time I managed to persuade myself to walk two hundred yards outside to the post box I ends up hiding under a hedge sobbing for three hours as I became too paralysed with fear to move.
Mental health support didn't help at all, it made it worse, meds made it worse too. In the end I decided to tackle it myself. I became very angry and was determined not to let a few evil people ruin the rest of my life.
I read a book on PTSD called PTSD The Invisible Injury, I cant remeber who wrote it but it helped a lot. I refused to talk about it to anyone as I wanted to untangle the mess of my own feelings about it without people putting thoughts into my head, if that makes sense. I sat in silence with a cup of tea for hours each day just thinking about it, as mentally I kept shying away from it, trying to block the memories. It was torture at first, but very very very slowly, over months it started to get easier to think about.
After a year I took up a martial art and started learning how to better defend myself. It was very tough as it was the first thing I had made myself leave the house for, not to mention being in such close physical proximity to men. I had telephoned and spoken to the club leader before I attended, and explained as best I could why I wanted to go. They were fantastic, absolutely fantastic, such a supportive group of people. It helped so much and my self esteem started returning.
I had always had dogs, but at the time didn't have one, so after about a year and a half I got another dog, a guard dog. He also helped so much. He has sadly passed away now, and I have another guard dog who is equally wonderful.
As others have said, meeting my wonderful DH (about three years after) helped enormously, and not long after meeting him we left Europe and emigrated to North America. I learnt to shoot and joined a ladies gun club, and between that and my dog, I started feeling like I was evening up the odds a lot. I appreciate that gun laws are different in the UK.
Skipping to now, we have a wonderful toddler, and my DH is still my rock.
I still dislike anyone knocking on the door, or more to the point I hate realising there is someone unexpected on my doorstep, but it is an annoyance rather than sending me to pieces.
I still dislike the sound of a telephone ringing, but I can grit my teeth and put up with it. I can talk openly, even to strangers about what happened without it bothering me at all. Not long ago I gave a talk (at the request of the Principal) to our local high school about rape, recovery and the effects on victims, and answered questions afterwards, it didn't bother me either.
It has been a very long and exhausting road, with a lot of knocks along the way, but now the rapes are just another thing which happened in my life. A crap thing, but just another thing. You will recover in the end, sending
for what you've been through. Hang on in there x.
(Should add that I used to post on mumsnet very regularly a few years ago, but have just reregistered)