My 2008 rape by a then-neighbor was not enough to inspire me to start this blog. Neither was either one of the two sexual abuse-related incidents that happened in the 8 years before, one at the hands of a Herndon, VA chiropractor; the other a thwarted and reported incident involving two seminary classmates. (Posts detailing those events will be made available again very soon; see Dec. 21 post titled Legal Update: Why You Won’t See Certain Posts).

What was the spark for this blog? Watching that man across the parking lot with women who had no idea what he had done to me, no idea of what he could do to them and no idea that he refused to submit to testing for sexually transmitted diseases after the condom broke during the anal rape. He refused this testing even after he angrily admitted having herpes, after I pressed him. The type of disease and his admission didn’t matter, at that point.

Medicine is a demanding science. My doctor needed the medical proof to treat me effectively and with least harm. Without official test results, I endured six months of HIV testing, as my body broke down, while I wondered if I was HIV positive. I wasn’t. My suffering didn’t end there. Again, those newly edited posts will be reposted shortly.

Watching him with these women woke me up from my stupor down in the rock bottom well of despair. I didn’t want company. I didn’t want them to follow me there. I could not shrink silently into the night of victimization, again. And I would not. 2008 was the year I drew a line, The Line, and decided that being sexually assaulted at ages 3, 10, 12, 16 and 38 was ENOUGH.

Sick, weak, weary, I would find a way to warn them, those women he was dating, and warn them I did. No apologies forthcoming. I will keep warning them—empowering myself and others—until my time on this earth is done.

I am the first and only of four (so far) to name this man publicly, to raise my voice about this man, publicly. Soon, I will be the first of us to face him in court, because he is maliciously suing me for defamation. Though my path to wholeness is crooked and full of painful truths, I walk it with a pure heart from which I speak and write truth and only truth, as I regrettably experienced it.

That man is the plaintiff in CL11-5265-00. Public case information is available by accessing the below link and following the directions:

http://www.pwcgov.org/default.aspx?topic=040052002550004714

When I started this effort in 2008 at the weakest I had ever been in my life, I knew there was no turning back. I was so very frightened to tell these stories of violence and abuse, and still sometimes catch myself feeling damned for telling them. I was a child victim, and silence for children is a hard bind to break, even when said children grow up. When that damnation rears and demands silence, I remind myself that I am grown and have a right to speak, to be heard, to never feel the crush of silence’s deadly weight again.

It’s the dawn of 2012 and I feel a new peace coming—here even—in great defiance of so many things and people who purposed to rob my peace throughout this twisted, beautiful journey. The peace I feel is not a quiet one. It’s a peace that comes from broken silence and victims who refuse to stay victims.

Loud, proud and bombastic—this is the year that the world will know who we are and that we have had ENOUGH. I promise.