Apologies in advice for the length of this thread, but it's to help someone I see suffering the way I once suffered. @InsideOfEmptiness. I am so sorry. What that monster did to you was rape. There is no mitigation, no sugar coating. He's a repulsive rapist, you were his victim, and it was in no way your fault.
Rapists like him do it because they know women who speak up won't be believed. Just look at this thread for evidence of that. It's always the woman who bears at least some proportion of the blame. Because she got carried along. Because she withdrew her consent and some bastard chose not to hear. Because she dressed in some way she shouldn't have, or walked somewhere she shouldn't have been, or imbibed some alcohol, or engaged in a change of texts. Because she didn't report it. Because our inadequate legal precedents are skewed in favour of the rapists, and justice itself is a powerful cog in a system that's always represented a man's world.
I was a victim of gang rape at fifteen. That's possibly the reason victim-blamers make me see red. My own father - when some of the truth came out two years after it happened - threw out three disgustingly misogynistic and very contradictory responses. Firstly it must be my fault because I was a slut (like he'd know). Second, if I refused to report it, if they did this again to someone else it would be my fault. Thirdly, he later told my mother he didn't believe me anyway. So either I was a 'slut' or a liar: I couldn't have been both.
Talk about violated twice. I didn't realise at the time that these are stock responses to women who have been victims of sexual abuse. But it did leave me traumatised (there's a larger backstory here) with no idea how traumatised I was until a case of stalking/sexual harrassment in the workplace and #MeToo (coinciding at the same time for me) ended in making me seriously ill. It ended up being cPTSD, and I had 18 months of EMDR therapy. It works. I'm better than I've been in my entire life.
That's real self-care and I'd urge you to consider whether this might benefit you. There are numerous threads on Mumsnet from traumatised posters whose experiences with this therapy have been similarly positive and enlightening. It won't strip the memory away, but it will enable an objectivity and clarity of vision you never thought possible.
Also, some of the PPs on this thread need to take a hard look at themselves. Because God forbid we lay the fuck off victims of sexual trauma and put the blame squarely on the rapists who are wholly, absolutely and 100% responsible.