#BreakTheSilence: I was Raped to Cure my Queerness

Trigger warning: References to Sexual abuse, rape and violence

It has happened multiple times. Ranging from a stare which lasted too long down my shirt to being raped. I was 9 and the boy was my age. His idea of playing was to tie up and undress me. It happened twice. I went to his birthday party and everyone there were boys. When the mother was not looking, he opened my dress and all the boys were howling with laughter. Around the same time a girl in the bus would gang up with the boys , lift my skirt and hit my genitals with a bottle. When I told my teacher no one believed me because she came first in class.

I am 19 years old and with my my first boyfriend who is 13 years older than me. I am hesitant to have sex because I feel like crying every time we are intimate and it hurts. But he convinces me otherwise anyway. A few days after I broke up, and I meet this person who is also queer and says he is homeless. I tell him he can spend the night at my place. That night he tries to have sex and I say no. He touches me and says I am wet and hence I want it. The next day he tells me I cannot be queer because I was wet. He starts emotionally manipulating me and stays in my house. He tells me not to behave and dress like a boy and throws away the clothes that I felt so comfortable in. He forced me to wear high heels and dresses and behave as he told me to. If I didn’t, he would beat me up. My self esteem was so low and I had nowhere to go to.

He would bring boys home and force them to rape me to prove to me that I was straight. He took a video of this and threatened to show it to my mother if I didn’t do as I was told. I ended up with bruises and bloody lips. He gaslit me to the point that I felt I deserved all of it. The breaking point was when he sent me to his friend’s house and he kept groping me. I left the city soon after and didn’t complete my graduation. It has been four years and I still sometimes get the creeping feeling that he is watching me. Consensual loving sex with my girlfriend can get scary. I react wierdly to being touched and have half a billion trust issues and severe PTSD. I am still going on. I have told my girlfriend and one very close friend about this.