Violation

"Annie" knows what it's like to be violated.

Annie, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, faced what may be every woman's worst nightmare: enduring a rape.

"He violated me, and he done something that I did not want to have any part of," she said.

Annie was a victim of a subset of rape that is more common than most people think, according the executive director of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault, a non profit advocacy and public policy center - acquaintance or "date" rape.

"The society has kind of told us all along that ‘stranger danger' (is the big problem)," coalition Director Monika Johnson-Hostler said. "But the reality is, since the inception essentially of humankind, rape has happened by someone you know. It's not new. It's not some new phenomenon."

Acquaintance rape, she explained, is a rape that is perpetrated by someone the victim knows.

Annie experienced this first hand.

"This man and I were together for 5 years, and we had a child," Annie said. "He wouldn't let go; he didn't understand me saying that it was over."

According to Johnson-Hostler, people often don't believe rape victims whose attacker was someone they'd previously had sex with.

"The myth still exists that once you have said yes to having sex with somebody that it's always yes," she said.

In Annie's case, her
rapist came to her place of employment under the guise of bringing their daughter to the doctor's office. Instead, he showed up without Annie's children and eventually forced his way into the driver's seat in her car, she said. He then took her to another location and raped her.

Then, more than one week later, he broke into her home and tried to murder her, she said.

However, for Annie, the horror of the situation didn't end there: Her rapist is HIV positive.

"He knew he was HIV positive, and I did too," she said. "He tried to inject me with the virus, but I'm negative. I don't have HIV. I've been tested and re-tested so many times."

The rape and the attack were the culmination of a long history of abuse, Annie said.

"Truthfully, I didn't know I had so many things going on," she said. "Not only was I a victim of rape, but also of mental and verbal abuse. So, it's a variety of things that go along with rape; it's not just rape alone."

To help her get through all she's experienced, Annie got in touch with a local domestic violence and sexual assault crisis center, SAFE in Lenoir County.

The organization exists in the county to help victims of physical and sexual violence, Assistant Director Carolyn Fields said.

"We act as advocates and try to do everything we can do to help her (the victim)," she said.

Fields said one of the problems with sexual assault is that it is a "hidden crime."

"It's a lot easier to get away with that sometimes," she said.

Statistics back up Fields' assertion: According to the N.C. Council for Women, only 46 percent of victims reported their rapes in the state in 2002.

Though Annie reported her rape to law enforcement, she said she didn't know much about the legal process.

"I didn't know anything about a protective order," she said. "I kept calling police on the regular about him. I kept trying to get him out of the house on the regular."

Still, she said she didn't want to get her child's father in too much trouble with the law, something experts say is common.

"This is my child's father, and I don't want to get him in trouble," Annie said she remembers thinking at the time. "... I tried to protect him for the child. A lot of mothers try to protect the father for the child, but he ends up hurting her."

Eventually, however, the matter did go to trial, though Annie said it took three years.

Being in the courtroom wasn't easy for Annie. She said it was "difficult" to talk about her rape and attack because she'd tried so hard to put it all behind her.

"It was like opening up something that had just happened all over again," she said. "I don't feel like he got enough time for what he done because I still have to live with these scars, this abuse, the rape, everything he did to me."

Fields said Annie's experience in the courtroom is fairly common.

"The person often feels they're being re-victimized when the go through the court system," she said. "That's why some men are able to rape over and over and over again."

Life for Annie has been different since the rape, she said. Sometimes, it feels like a second chance.

"I have a special chance to enjoy my kids," she said. "They are my priority... God gave me a better chance to be with my children."

Still, she said, life isn't easy.

"I'm happy, I'm content with my kids, but I'm hurt to think about what occurred, what happened to me," Annie said. "...It put a damper on me about trusting men. It will take a lot for me to ever trust one. You just don't look at them the same way.

"But, it's going to be a hard process. It's going to take some time."

Johnson-Hostler said there is no such thing as a normal way for a rape victim to deal with her attack.

"Clearly, the way a rape victim deals with rape is specific to that victim," she said. "There's not a cookie-cutter response for victims of rape."

To complicate matters, Johnson-Hostler said if the person is a victim of acquaintance rape, they often feel they should've known better or been able to prevent their rape.

Still, experts agree on one important fact: Rape is never the victim's fault.

Annie said she wanted to tell her story for several reasons, one of which is the stigma attached to rape victims.

"I feel like somebody should talk about it," she said. "It's something that you are ashamed of, but I didn't do it to myself: Somebody done it to me."

Now, she said, she's trying to put her rape behind her, and she hopes talking about her experience will help even "one person out of a thousand or a million" to not go through the same thing.

And the biggest lesson Annie said she learned?

"A woman don't need a man to stand up on her own two feet."

Vanessa Clarke can be reached at (252) 559-1076 or vclarke@freedomenc.com. Check out Vanessa's blog at http://vclarke.encblogs.com.