life turned upside down

[dawntildusk]

I am really freaked out and need help putting this in perspective.
Here goes.
2 weeks ago a good friend of 25 years told me straight out that my dh (then boyfriend) raped her. It happened 14 years ago. She told me she has no recollection whatsoever of the night leading up to or immediately after the event. She woke up with him in the bed and he was inside her. She shouted at him and he left. Obviously I was shattered, devastated, nauseous, reeling from the shock. I sympathised with her, held her and hugged her and apologised over and over. When I confronted dh he was all the above multiplied by a million. His recollection of the event is this. We were all out drinking for the afternoon at a rugby match followed by the pub and then a club. 16 hours later we went to her house and he was helped to bed(by my brother and me). During the night he got out of our bed, he reckons to go to the bathroom, and climbed back in her bed. He remembers kissing and fondling, he does not deny he may have penetrated her but only "came too" after some kissing and they both realised what was happening at the same time. He left immediately, still really drunk and went back to bed.
I don't know what I am looking for by posting this but the word "rape" for me conjures up much different images than the one described to me. We have been married 12 years and have 4 beautiful children. My dh has been a kind, thoughtful, caring and supportive partner to me and I love him dearly. My friend is single, turning 40 this year and is blaming her recent breakdown on this event. I am so confused and need to know what you think. Is this rape?

Is this rape?

So did he think he was in bed with you?

I don't think he even knew he was attempting to have sex with anyone until he had started. He was practically unconcious himself. I casually asked my brother if he remembered the day and night and incredibly he does as it was the only time he ever stayed in this friends house. When I asked him about the night he remembered "carrying" my dh to bed and then the rest of us carrying on with the party for another couple of hours. It is not a regular occurance that my dh has to be helped to bed so can only assume he was pretty out of it. I, unfortunately, have very sketchy memories of the evening.

It doesn't sound like rape to me.

If they could face each other, maybe the best thing would be for your dh and your mate to talk about their memories of that night.

At the moment I don't think either of them could do that. I have not been in touch with her since the day she told me as my sympathy soon turned to anger when I heard the full story. I am not angry with her for telling me what happened but I know she has told at least 4 other people that she had been raped by my husband!! He is mortified by it all and worried sick that word will spread and he will be branded a rapist without any chance of defending himself. It would literally break both our parents hearts nevermind what it would do to our kids.

I agree with baskingseals. It would be rape if he had forced himself on her knowing she did not consent or not caring whether or not she consented. It sounds like he was too drunk to really know what he was doing and he stopped as soon as he realised what he was doing and that she did not consent.

At the same time, I sympathise with your friend. I'm sure she feels she was raped. However, it sounds like she may have been pretty drunk too. I wouldn't rule out her consenting whilst semi-conscious then withdrawing her consent as soon as she regained her senses enough to realise what was going on. That would be consistent with both your dh's description and hers. If that is what happened, it isn't rape in my view.

Not an easy situation, although it is a bit late for her to tell you now, 14 years after it happened. You say she is blaming her recent breakdown on this. Is this something she's arrived at after treatment/counselling or something she's come up with on her own?

This puts you in a potentially difficult situation. However, I would back your dh. On the basis of your description, this isn't rape.

it doesnt sound like rape to me either.

However. A friend has just finished jury service and the case he was on was exactly this. Both drunk, she doesnt officially give consent, she wakes up and finds him inside her, female friend is also in the room and wakes up and tells her that this is rape and to report it. Fast forward to a court case.

He was found not guilty, but the police thought there was enough evidence to prosecute.

By then he had lost his job and a lot of his friends. His name is all over the local papers. The fact that he has been found not guilty is irrelevant in some respects.

I dont know why she has told you this now.

What matters is what you and your DP believe. And how you feel about it.

I feel for your friend too, though, she has probably been tormenting herself for 14 years. I do wonder why it has come out now and not when you were about to marry him .

Having just seen your most recent post, this is even more difficult than I thought. Your friend telling people she's been raped by your husband is EXTREMELY bad. Your dh is right. There is a real risk that word will spread and he will be branded a rapist.

Your friend is behaving very badly in my view. If she wants to complain of rape she should go to the police. If she isn't going to do that she should shut up. As it stands, your dh could sue her for slander. I am not recommending that as a course of action but you need to find some way of getting your friend to stop. Indeed, you really need her to go back to the people she has already told and withdraw the allegation completely.

This must be a nightmare for you. You have my sympathy.

Thank you all for your replies, it has helped so much just writing it down and getting it all out. prh, I think it may have come up in counselling but not 100 percent sure. She said she was in denial for the past 14 years and had blanked it out. She was our bridesmaid at our wedding and has been at every family gathering since. She has always been extremely friendly and close to us both all these years which made it all the more shocking to hear. I am not sure what my next step will be. I feel I should make some contact with her as I don't want to antagonise her any further but may wait another while before I do so. I am also thinking about getting legal advice incase she decides to report it. such a bloody mess.

As BigBadMummy implies, you really don't want your friend to go to the police, so telling her to put up or shut up may not be a good idea. The fact that it was so long ago may mean the police will decide there isn't enough evidence to come after your dh but there is always a possibility he may end up being prosecuted. If that happens, your friend will have complete anonymity but your dh's name will be all over the press with the kind of consequences BigBadMummy outlines.

I wish there was something I could recommend. You really do have my sympathy.

Just saw your post bbm. That is exactly what I was afraid of. It would make no difference whetherhe was found guilty or not, the damage would be done.prh, I was thinking the same thing about letting the people know my dh side of the story. do you think I should let her know his side of the story too? I don't know how to approach it without letting her know that I don't think it was rape. if she believes it was then it might send her over the edge if she thinks i don't see it the same way?

I agree that talking to her could be a good step. I wouldn't leave it too long - you don't want her telling more people.

It won't be easy. I know how I think I would approach such a situation but, having never faced something like this myself, I don't think I'm best placed to offer advice.

Good luck and I really do hope you, your dh and your friend manage to sort this mess out.

Thanks for that. This has helped alot to put things into perspective and I will go away and think about my next step, fingers crossed
we can find some sort of solution to this that doesn't wreck all our lives.

Please dont flame me anybody I am not saying I know anything about it or that it is true as I have no experience of it but isnt there something called "false memory" where during counselling people can believe something happened?

Might this be the situation here? And that what she remembers is not rape, as such. I wonder who first used that word in the sesssion:

a) I was raped 14 years ago; or
b) you came to and realised this man was having sex with you? That is rape.

I don't know. And I am not for one second belittling rape or saying that your friend is not traumatised.

But for the sake of your DH is this something you could investigate?

I really feel for both of you.

I dont understand how she can have "blanked it out" to such an extent she would want to be your bridesmaid or play such a huge part of your life.

But then I am no expert on any of this.

Hi- I had a similar experience to your friend a long time ago, with a male friend of mine- lots of drink involved, no real consent. I had chalked it up to experience until out of the blue some random person at a nightclub asked me how I could bear to continue speaking to my friend after what he had done to me- apparently HIS friend was in the next room and had told this guy (who I vaguely knew!) that I had been raped, he had heard it! This shook me up a bit, and I didn't speak to my male friend for a while, not sure what to think. When I finally told him, he was, like your Dh, devastated- hugely upset, and adamant that that wasn't how he remembered it. As my memories were hugely hazy, I decided to let it go, and it hasn't been an issue in my life at all.

My point is that this kind of thing probably goes on a lot more than people think. Maybe your friend has been encouraged to think/ speak about this again due to other events in her life, rather than being "in denial" and it has become a bigger factor in her mind than it was originally (like when I heard the story from random guy!) I don't think there is much to be gained for your friend by making a huge issue of it now- it will only cause her, you and your DH heartache, and may well involve other people you know too. Do you have another friend that could talk to her and say that, although it is understandable that she is upset and shaken, maybe it isn't wise to broadcast to other people, especially if she wants to continue a friendship with you and your family. She should be very careful to think what she hopes to get out of this. I don't know if she could speak to your DH and hear his side- as I say, speaking to my friend and seeing how genuinely horrified he was and explaining how I felt was a satisfactory closure for me. I think to dwell on it and see it as a something more traumatic than it was at the time would not have been useful for me, and I can't see how it would be to your friend. She has put you in a really really difficult situation , and I hope you can somehow resolve it without anyone getting more hurt than they already are

I also agree that this doesn't sound like rape, and I think JJJ may have come up with the best idea - is there a mutual friend who could speak to her?

Every time I post I see that you've posted again!

Ok, since you ask, if it was me I would be careful about letting other people know your dh side of the story at this stage. That could antagonise your friend and make matters worse. I would try and make peace with your friend first and then figure out what to do about the people she has told.

As for how to approach her, I can only say how I would do it. She feels violated. She feels she was raped. In the circumstances that is completely understandable - she remembers finding your dh inside her and has no recollection of consenting to that. You can sympathise with that and support her without agreeing that your dh raped her. I think that should be your starting point - which means you need to lose your anger.

She might try to put you on the spot about your dh's guilt but you will have to avoid the question - not easy. I would certainly avoid saying that you think your dh didn't rape her. As you say, that could send her over the edge.

It may be that all she needs is to know that she has your sympathy and support. She may not need you to agree that dh raped her. However, if she does want you to agree that dh raped her, I think I would try to start with other people's recollections of the evening. If you can get her to see that she and dh were extremely drunk that would be a good first step towards getting her to understand what really happened.

She may need to hear your dh's version from him rather than you but that depends on her - you know her a lot better than I do!

BigBadMummy - There is such a thing as false recall. However, given the OP's dh's recollection of events, I think we are dealing with incomplete recall rather than false recall.

Dittany - You seem to be ignoring the fact that both participants appear to have been blind drunk. He probably didn't have any idea which room he was in. He may well have gone in there thinking he was going back to his own bed. From the description I think it is quite likely that she did consent initially whilst semi-conscious but withdrew her consent when she regained her senses enough to know what was going on. He stopped as soon as she withdrew her consent. Even on her description there was no force or intimidation involved. That suggests there was some level of consent, even if her drunken state meant it wasn't fully informed consent.

Jooly that is very kind of you to post your story. What you say makes alot of sense and I too have wondered what my friend is hoping will happen now. I have heard that when people are in counselling that they are encouraged to confront the person who harmed them but she chose to confront me because she "detests and hates" my husband for what he did to her. You mentioned other events in her life and, yes, she has had a pretty tragic life, losing both her parents and her brother early in life. She has also only recently stopped a pretty wild lifestyle of regular drug/alcohol abuse. In recent months she has become more and more depressed and I put it down to withdrawl from that lifestyle and drying up of funds when her money eventually ran out. She has not worked in years and was living off inheritance. She is talking to a mutual friend and that friend did advise her not to go ahead with telling me but she insisted on doing it in order to "heal and move on". It does not seem though that she is making any allowances for any of the numerous problems in her life and is blaming the mess her life is in on this sole event.
BigBadMummy I too have heard of the power of suggestion but having read some of the posts on the abuse site it seems that sometimes it can hit them out of the blue, but that seems to relate more to childhood abuse when they were very young.
I must say it is heartbreaking to read some of the shit that those women have to deal with and live with every day and to me this situation does not justify the use of the word rape when you see what they have gone through.

DIttany: Because, by the sound of it, this man was so drunk he didn't know what he was doing, may even have been pretty much sleepwalking and may have thought he was getting into bed with his girlfriend.
FWIW something similar has happened to me once or twice, and I didn't and don't call it rape. I am not saying this to invalidate the feelings of the OP's friend, nor to say that being drunk is always a get-out clause for a rapist ( a sober man who has sex with an unconscious or semi-conscious woman is definitely a rapist).

I do see what you are saying, dittany, but there is rape and rape, iyswim. I don't consider myself to have been "raped" despite the fact I didn't verbally consent to sex, and despite that (allegedly) I protested. It wouldn't help me to see myself as some kind of rape victim. I got angry and challenged my friend, we thrashed it out, there was a lot of "maybes" and misunderstandings, but I don't believe he set out to rape me, or even believed that he had- he was genuinely remorseful and shocked, as is the OP's DH. It is sorted and clear in my head without the need for interventions, or me labelling him a rapist. It was a very dodgy situation and there has been a line drawn under it, which is good for both our sakes, and I was only trying to show the OP how things could maybe get resolved.

I have also once sleepwalked into the wrong bedroom and got into bed with my friend and her boyfriend, butt-naked and snuggled up to them , so it's possible the OP's DH did similar and thought fried was the OP??

Dittany, that is exactly why i finally posted the question. I have never posted on any site ever before and I desperately needed to know how this sounded to people who knew nobody involved and were not biased in any way. It is impossible for me to remove myself from the situation to such a degree that I can see it clearly and that is why I asked for peoples opinion. I don't see it as cut and dried as you do though but thank you for your input.

Friend, obviously, not fried