WARNING - VERY TRIGGERING CONTENT
I was raped and sexually assaulted in central London on a night out in October 2015. The attack was carried out by a complete stranger. I was on a first date with another man I'd met on Tinder, I have no idea if I went off with the second man willingly or not as either I'd consumed vast amounts of alcohol or my drink had been spiked by someone at some point in the evening. I do remember after 3 drinks events became completely blank until I found myself starting to come around at approximately 3am in the morning completely naked on the wooden floor of a house (i somehow located my phone, I tried to call someone for help, they didn't answer and after that I seemed to lose the ability to)
The next thing I was aware of was a stranger on top of me at points, behind me at other points as I kept slipping in and out of conciousness, I tried my best to say "no" and resist, but he didn't react or care. I was in a lot of pain and wanted it to stop, but I couldn't physically stop him due to the influence of whatever substance i was under. The next moment i was aware of anything was stumbling down the street towards London Victoria and somehow catching a train home at 6am.
At 9am i was at my desk and carried on as normal. I even (stupidly, unthinkingly) messages some friends regarding the night before, I carried on as before laughing, joking, talking about sex and ridiculously trivial things, you never know how you are going to react and I was firmly in denial/ yet to process mattes. after work i broke down and confided to a friend what had happened, at this point I did not want to take it any further as I completely blamed myself for what had occured, I couldn't believe I'd been stupid enough to have put myself in that position, id recently separated from my husband and had 3 children - I felt horrified that I could have let something like this happen to me when they rely on me so much.
I examined my body and saw I'd been left black and blue in many places, my genitals and anus were so badly bruised in places i struggled to sit down, I felt like I'd been repeatedly chewed and bitten. Teeth marks on my cheeks confirmed this to me. I had a large friction burn on my temple that no amount of foundation could cover and I struggled to explain it to my colleagues.
3 days after the attack i broke down at work, my managers could not have been more helpful, They took me to the local A&E department where the staff were incredible. The police were called and after i explained events i was gently told there would be nothing further they could do at this point as to them it sounded like a very grey area and events wouldn't stand up in court. The female police officer was visibly disappointed at this, but the decision had come from the METs Sapphire Unit and she couldn't overrule it. There would be no need for them to take my clothes away that I wore that night, no need for an examination at a specialist centre and I was advised to go home, rest, and chalk it up to a bad experience and to try and get on with my life.
The hospital staff did offer to examine me, but at that point i was tired, distressed and I didn't want anyone touching me, so a member of my companies HR staff took me home. I was signed off until I felt strong enough to return to work.
Two weeks later i was clearing out my phone as the memory was starting to get full when I decided to look in my deleted items. I felt instantly sick when I saw with horror there was a video of me in the deleted folder. I'm naked, visibly unconscious and the camera zoomed in to examine my genitals, then the camera turned to man operating it and caught the face of the man who attacked me. I'll never understand why he thought this was a good idea, or what purpose it served, I had one of those phones which you can unlock with my finger print and I had a flashback of him trying my different fingers while I was still out of it, but the sensation was very real, it also triggered a lot of other memories that instantly made me physically sick. I called the police back and they finally took my allegation seriously. I handed over my clothes i wore that night (mercifully not thrown away) and my phone was taken away as evidence. I was extensively interviewed and assigned a SOIT officer and detective for my case from the Sapphire team in the MET.
By the time January 2016 came around i received a phone call from my SOIT officer to inform me my attacker had been found and at this point in time he was in prison for another crime. I cried and cried from releif, I was warned however that he was due for release in August, but if the CPS did decide to prosecute there was a good chance he'd be held on remand due to the nature of the allegations and he was a high flight risk for leaving the country.
The CPS did decide to prosecute and on the strength of the evidence presented he was charged with 4 counts of rape and 2 counts of sexual assault. The trial took place in January 2017. Despite the best efforts of the prosecution he was found not guilty on 5 charges and on the final charge (the video documented sexual assault) the Jury were hung. I found the trial just as traumatic if not more so than the actual attack itself. The Defence made out as if I'd imagined the whole thing, apparently the defendant found me attractive which is why he had agreed to "consensual sex" with me, the way I spoke in my messages in the day after the attack apparently offended the defence lawyers "Catholic school boy morals" and apparently i was too professional, too functional, too put together and too self assured to possibly be a rape victim.
My warnings are this:
Even video evidence where the woman is unconscious cannot secure a conviction under our current system. The recent revelation of the brave lady in Scotland who made an audio recording of her attack really resonated with me.
Your text messages on your phone can and will be used against you in a court of law. You do not know how you will react in the following days/ weeks and if you try to carry on a veneer of normality or blame yourself like I did, it will be damming to your case.
As much as you may not want to, get your injuries documented. I wish I had, photographs were taken two weeks after when I re-reported, but these did not show the extent of the damage that had been visibly there.
I honestly have no idea to this day how I behaved with this man in the lead up to my attack, I have no comprehension of if I was flirty, all over him, consensual and intimate, not a clue. What I do know is he had absolutely no right to do what he did to me, and the justice system is currently firmly on the side of the perpetrator and not the victim. Their rights are paramount, ours are dust.
I also have much to say with regard to the current support of rape victims in this country, but I really have been writing this out for hours and it's incredibly late. I feel better for it though. Apart from social media, I haven't written about this publicly, in full, so far. Thank you for reading and please excuse any typos, grammar errors etc, I'm writing on a tablet that's a bit temperamental.