Shall I tell friends mutual friend raped me? (TW)

[TellingFriends]

NC for this.

This was a number of years ago, I tried to talk to them at the time but they didn’t believe me / didn’t want to believe me. I also minimised it, blamed myself and when none of my friends took it seriously I subsequently tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, even to myself. This worked for a while and I managed not to think about it, then it all resurfaced when he started dating one of my closest friends and I was expected to invite him to events such as my wedding / birthdays etc.

I have since had therapy and attended a group for survivors of sexual violence and understand that what happened was definitely rape and in fact pretty violent and premeditated rape.

I avoid the man who did it as much as possible. Thankfully he is no longer dating my friend (I found that hard to bear) but he is still in my friendship group and good friends with some of my closest friends. Some of them are even going on holiday together with him soon. As far as I know they have all forgotten about the incident between me and him as they invited me to come on the holiday too.

Every time I hear his name I feel physically sick. I still have nightmares about what happened. I have severe anxiety, panic attacks and flashbacks. My friends are all completely oblivious.

Shall I tell them and risk dragging it all up? Risk losing my friendships?

I know they care about me and sometimes i think they would be horrified to know what he has put me through but other times I remember they think he’s this great guy and would happily choose him over me and then I would be left with nobody.

Anyone been through similar?

Oh my goodness op I'm so sorry.i didn't want to read and run, I'm hoping someone has advice for you.

It might not be your first priority, but can you/would you move on from this group of friends?

I think it's not right that you didn't feel heard after the trauma of the incident. And my friends that have been through incidents in the past I will remember what they told me for my whole life, so these friends should not be able to just "forget" what he did.

I hope you are getting the support you need to stay safe from him and work through your feelings and memories.

Stay safe op, get as far away as needed from the perpetrator and I would seriously think about whether these people can still be called friends, after not listening to you, or picking up on your panic attacks and everything.

Hoping for better times for you x

Thank you Chotuladoo.

I did distance myself from the group for a while but have got really close to some of them again. We have been friends for so long and been though a lot together and actually have loads in common and I have lots of fun with them.
I don't want to lose the friendships. It's hard to make close friends as you get older, especially starting from scratch.

When I heard they were going on holiday with him it floored me.

These people don’t sound like friends when they didn’t believe you and continued being friends with a rapist

I think you should drop them

Have a look at this

captainawkward.com/2012/08/07/322-323-my-friend-group-has-a-case-of-the-creepy-dude-how-do-we-clear-that-up/

Op what did you tell them about it? I just cannot understand why a friend would ignore/ have anything to do with someone who raped their friend. So sorry op, these people are not your friends. To protect yourself from repeated upset, I would distance myself from the lot of them.

I'm so sorry OP.

I understand that you don't want to lose this group of friends, totally. But that's going to be a risk whatever you choose to do, because hanging out with them and pretending everything's OK isn't sustainable for you.

I wouldn't necessarily write them off. I don't know how long ago this happened but I do know people who would react very differently now than they would have when they were hedonistic 20-somethings 10 years ago. In a few of my social circles there's been some real reckoning done when it comes to things like assault that were brushed under the carpet a decade ago. People are simply more mature and more aware of these issues, and putting it aside as "he said she said, none of my business" doesn't wash any more.

Do you have any sense of how your social circle feel about things like MeToo? Could you sound them out in general terms - bring it up as a topic of conversation and see how they react? That might give you an indication of how to proceed/who to proceed with/whether you want to proceed in telling them. Anyone who responds along the lines of "well, we can't be sure who's telling the truth" or "men can't even flirt these days" unfortunately can't be relied on to be on your side.

I just can't imagine a friend group that wouldn't take this very seriously.

I feel so sorry for you OP.

I think you need to tell the friend group.
Perhaps your closest friends.
Don't play this down.
It has had an enormous effect on you and your life.

I hope you get lots of replies.

This happened when a few of us were living in a shared house.

I was very confused at first because he was my friend, I didn't want to believe he could do something like that and I had willingly taken drugs with him so I thought I was at least partially to blame.

I think my friends thought I had consented at the time then regretted it. I'm not sure if I ever really explained the full story.

I was barely conscious after the drugs so unable to consent. In fact he was hitting me in the face while it was happening.

If they didn't believe you the first time not sure they'll believe you now, but people change. Will they be suspicious of why you'd bring it up now, wrongly so, but that could lead to more hurt for you. Equally walking away from the friendship might lead to these questions so you're in horrible situation.

Really depends on your friends individually. It'd be your judgement of why they didn't believe you then and have they matured enough to understand it now. Of course they should have the first time, but understanding of rape and rape culture has improved and their life experience may have taught them a lot in the intervening years. I don't want to excuse them but as you said you couldn't process what actually happened straight away so maybe they didn't either.

Thank you gannett that is really good advice

I just wanted to say that I'm so sorry that this happened to you, and equally sorry that your friends didn't listen to you or understand what had actually happened.

Whatever happens, this issue will continue to exist within the friendship group. If you tell them, and they still support him then you have found out, sadly, that they are unsupportive friends and willing to excuse violent criminal behaviour. But they may well turn out to be decent, and appreciate how difficult it was for you to talk about it at the time, and they might now realise how horrific this incident was.

If I ever found this out about a male friend of mine, I would never want to see him again.

I'm sorry that happened to you and I'm sorry your supposed friends didn't believe you.
Why are you still friends with them? I know you say you have fun ect.. But they are not your friends if they didn't believe you then they aren't going to believe you now.
Cut them off real friends would believe you.
Make new friends and memories with them

I would be worried about you telling them and them not believing you, or minimising it again. I imagine that would bring up a lot of trauma for you. I’ve had friends in the past who I’ve tried to confide in about things like this and it hasn’t worked out. It makes it so much worse because you’re then dealing with what happened and also the insensitivity of people you regarded as close friends.
Is there another friend that you could talk to about it that doesn’t know this group? Perhaps some therapy or counselling would be a good start?
I’m sorry you’re going through this, it’s a really horrible situation.

You could consider telling someone you are very sure of- but not saying who it was.
You could say that you still have a lot of trauma to process, despite the counselling and self help groups you have accessed, from 'that time I was violently raped by someone I trusted'.

Depending on their response, you could over time tell them who.

It is completely understandable that you were unable to spell out what happened at the time due to trauma, and it's possible they weren't able to hear what you were saying through their own naivety. I'd like to think that I'd 'hear' a friend starting to open up about a bad experience in a way that I wouldn't have been able to pick up the cues when I was younger.

You'll also be better able to read the 'please don't tell me this' cues that someone may give, and stop before it hurts you too much, allowing you to distance yourself rather than having things explode.

Hi OP, im so sorry that this has happened to you.

I find sometimes writing it all down helps - have you thought about writing your friends a letter? Explaining what happened in as much detail as you want, but also your fears about telling them and how their friendship with him has impacted you.

I understand how it can be hard to make friends as adults and that you cannot just 'cut off' your friends, but I think it's important you communicate with your friends honestly about this - the fact is it is still impacting you and as friends, they should want to support you - even if it is not inviting him around when you are, or not inviting you to things he is at.

Thinking of you x

I think you should trust that your friends will do the right thing. You said yourself that you minimised it and forgot it for a while. It’s only with therapy that you have unpicked all this and rightly seen it for what it was. But your friends have not had that therapy, they only see you from the outside, looking like you’re ok and have forgotten it. Tell them the truth about where you are now, and what happened, and at least give them the chance to react appropriately. Maybe start with telling just one or two of them.

They often say that rape victims are being victimized twice - at first by the rape and second by the treatment they receive by those around them - mis belief, victim blaming. In your case it was even worse then that, they used your friendship with them to force you to socialize with your rapist.
I read some awful stories about fake friends on here but this is the worst one so far.
Please dump them and never look back.
You don’t need enemies with such ‘friends’….I’d rather have no friends at all then being victimized like this by the people that are supposed to help and believe me.
They are an unbelievably horrible bunch.

What an awful situation to be in op. I would ask yourself if you truly want to stay in this friendship group if it means you'll inevitably bump into him. It would be nice if they ostracised him for what he did to you but sadly I think that often doesn't happen. I was sexually abused as a child by my older brother and cutting all contact with him is the best thing I ever did regarding him. It enabled me to draw a line under it and move on.

If you do want to stay in this friendship group I would give your friends one last chance to believe you. As pps have said attitudes have improved recently. If they still doubt you then I have to say in your position I could not continue being friends with them.

I think you should try to cultivate new friendships to fall back on in case it goes wrong.

Whatever happens I hope you find peace xx

OP - this sounds a terrible experience and a lonely one too.

I was wondering if he could have done this to someone else? You might well not have been his only target.

I would tell them again what happened and give them an opportunity to redeem themselves.

Anyone who chooses to stay friends with him after that I would cut out. Who needs friends like that.

I believe you. I'm so sorry this happened. You are worth more.

Either way I would try to cultivate a new friendship group.

Similar happened when I was young and same reaction from those I told. I also reacted similar to you re trying to minimise it.

Honestly, I think they don't want to hear it know. Makes things tricky. Means they have to change the comfy way things are.

I don't think it will help you.. You already told them and they reacted. Unlikely to change.

Sadly irl when you tell stuff even to women there's a massive automatic desire to push it away and not think about it.

I did mention it to a couple of them years later and they didn't remember about it.

We were very young.. Now as adults I'm sure a different response would happen. In fact yes I know it would.

That’s truly awful, OP. I agree with those who’ve said you should at least consider giving your friends a chance to redeem themselves, but that you should also think through what you will do should they not want to believe you.

I think the factor to bear in mind here is that although you are all too well aware of the mental toll it took on you to minimise it, downplay it and pretend it didn’t happen for years, friends who don’t want their cosy ‘ButX is a nice guy!’ worldview shattered, or a big shift in their friendship group, are going to think ‘Well, it was apparently unimportant at the time, so why should I ostracise friend X now, if Y was ok with him at her wedding and birthday parties all this time?’ It’s inertia, and a refusal to believe in Nice Guy as violent racist..

You know these people best, OP. Are they likely to take a party line, or respond according to their individual judgements?

Best wishes, whatever you decide. And be kind to yourself.

The problem is it’s going to be very hard to move and heal with this
You won’t lose them all
You might lose some , and one day they will revert it
I’m
Ever so sorry this happened
And I’m sorry he is still in your life

Have you ever talked to anyone about this
useless I know but I’m so sad this happened and he went unpunished

Thank you so much all for the kind words and advice.

I should have said earlier but I continued to speak to the man who did it afterwards, at first anyway. So my friends probably followed my lead.

Once I couldn't bear to be around him I started to tell them why but I think they were confused as I still was civil to him for the sake of not causing drama.

I am seeing a good friend tonight just the two of us and I think I will tell her. I think out of anyone she can be trusted to understand. I hope so anyway.