50 Years Ago

Date Rape! I said it! Today! Out loud! To someone else! For the first time! October, 1960. My first date with a classmate from my French class in my first fall at the University of Saskatchewan. We went to a movie but it was sold out so we went for coffee and then walked back over the bridge. He said he wanted to show me pictures of his family that he had been telling me about. I was very naive and too trusting. We went to his basement apartment and sat on the side of the bed to look at pictures. Then he pushed me down, got on top of me, pulled down my slacks, pulled down his pants while I kept saying, "No, No, Don't, Don't! Afterwards, he hugged me and said he loved me so much he couldn't help himself. I was scared, totally confused, upset and didn't know what to do. Afterwards, he walked me home assuring me how much he loved me and couldn't live without me.

He never took me on another date but raped me probably another five times, the last time without using a condom. I tried to break up with him every time he left town but he said he would kill himself if I left him. I had been told at Bible School that all parts of the Bible were to be adhered to and in Leviticus it was written that if a woman is raped, she and the man must marry or both will be stoned so I thought I had to marry him.

He made no secret of the fact that he was seeing other women. In September, 1961, after I had sent him a letter trying to break up with him again, he came over to my apartment after the University Freshman Dance, which he had attended with the girlfriend he was dating before I met him, and again forced himself on me, this time without a condom. He said if I got pregnant, we would get married. By this time, I felt quite hopeless about getting out of the situation in which I found myself.

The next month, I found I was pregnant. When I told him the results of the pregnancy test, he began to cry and said he couldn't marry me because he had a responsibility to look after his other two girlfriends who were new in town and needed his company. He later denied saying that because I thought it was hilariously funny. After that, he only came to see me after dark. He was by then going to Teachers' College and dating a girl he had met that summer whom he later married. The other girl was the girl he had been going steady with before he met me.

Periodically, throughout my pregnancy, he would say perhaps we should get married. I really didn't want to marry him but thought I had no choice so never pushed it. He drove me to the hospital when I went into labour but waited until dark and didn't get out of the car to open the hospital door for me in case someone might see him.

Word got round about my sudden loss of weight and two weeks after my daughter was born, two ministers from the Mennonite Brethren church in Dalmeny came to see me. They were mainly interested in having me make a confession to the church that I had had a child. They then went to see my parents who had remained unaware of my pregnancy in spite of my being at home every weekend, including theweekend three days after my daughter was born.

There was a court hearing because a social welfare worker came in the morning after my child was born to ask how I would look after her and made me sign a paper giving the welfare department authority to look after her. I was not allowed to see my child in the hospital, to hold her or have any contact with her after the moment when she was born. At the court hearing, I said I was not willing to give away my child. Another court hearing date was set for a month later.

On the morning of the next court hearing, my mother came in and said my parents would look after the child and they had bought a crib for her. One condition was that I would have nothing more to do with the father of the child. I wrote him a farewell note and told him to go to hell, then took the scribbler in which I had been writing over to his apartment where I left it.

On the last day of summer school, he came over to my boarding place to say good-bye. As he whispered through the screen door when he was leaving, "Good-bye, my love, good-bye" I thought to myself, "You can't even be original". He was repeating the words I had written in another part of the scribbler.

I never heard from him again. I wrote to him once a year later and sent a picture of our daughter. I still felt that I owed him something but after there was no response I felt free to continue with life.

The life I had had was destroyed and it was a new life I had to find. I met a man, who, unknowing to me, had been bullied by his family for many years. My first reaction on meeting him was that there was something wrong with him but I didn't know what. It took a lifetime of living and experiencing to come to the root of his low self esteem and sometimes unpleasant behaviour towards me and my first daughter. Now I've been alone for two years and am rebuilding my sense of self and trying to make sense of the past.

I have read many words of wisdom over the past and one of them says, "What doesn't kill you, strengthens you." It came so close to killing me - November, 1966 I had life-saving heart surgery for the problem brought on by my experience. The cardiologist who put the wheels in motion for that life-saving surgery just died last week. I owe my life to him and to the many others who provided support and true love thoughout the years since that time. So much to try and understand and so few years left to enjoy in peace and contentment.