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In my survival story, "Just Words, Dirty Words", I shared so much and I brushed over an experience with a male gynecologist. It was a much bigger deal that I let on because it had triggered my previous abuse as an adolescent on my first job. I wonted other girls and women to understand what is not okay for a gynecologist to do. It was not until after it happened that I realized the full impact. I realized I had let myself be victimized again without trying to stop it. I felt self-loathing and anxiety. I write this letter to that opportunistic predator. You broke your oath. You betrayed the trust. You are terrible! I have done research on what a breast and pelvic exam is supposed be like and understand you used the framework to sexually assault me. I was late for the appointment to get birth control at the university clinic when I had just moved for college. You let me in even though you had no nurse chaperon, it seemed that you might have sent them home after putting me in the room. You are a man and that is against policy. We shared our first eye contact and I ignored your lust and first glance flirtation. You saw I was vulnerable and needed something from you. You told me as a new patient you have to do a full first visit exam. Now I believe you may have lied. I nodded and put down my guard. When you returned I was undressed wearing a paper smock for a false sense of security. I was self conscious even though I had impeccable hygiene and grooming but worried I was not fresh enough so late in the day because you were a man and you made it sexual. You examined my breasts with no gloves. I said nothing. I knew you were massaging them for you pleasure. You went on for five minutes like that. I think five whole minutes while you kept talking. When my boss used to molest me just seconds was plenty to make me feel sick and used. He would sit on my torso, compressing my ribs to the point I could not take a deep breath and have sex with my breasts and he usually took less time than you. do remember you used the words “wonderful” and “amazing” when commenting on by breast health. We could both smell the musk from down below from stimulating me like that. I was embarrassed. You should have been the one ashamed! You mentioned the textures and gave some instructional anatomy to pretend it might be official. You asked random questions and you shared personal stories like it was a date. All the while you were groping my tits like a pervert. Both hands at the same time! I tried to cover for you by pretending like this was not insane and not a sexual assault. You were twice my age and your mustache was ridiculous. You finally moved on to the pelvic exam. You said the words, “Very nice” when you lifted up the paper drape to help my feet into the stirrups. That is not appropriate when viewing a patient’s vagina for the first time. You explained every step from “I’m going to touch your thighs now” to “take a deep breath as I insert the speculum”. That part was quick but then you explained the manual exam that you did for too long. You inserted two fingers to check for cervical motion tenderness but rubbed my clitoris with your lubricated thumb as you did so. That was wrong! You explained that you were going to move your other hand to check for tenderness of my ovaries to check for infection but kept working your other hand on my clit and inside me. You put what felt like three fingers in me! You were sexually assaulting me again. Breaching my trust. Ignoring you oath. As a last indignity you felt for masses in the space between my vagina and rectum. You left your thumb in my vagina while you put a finger in my anus and moved them both back and in and out explaining you thought you felt something for a second but it resolved on massage, meaning it was nothing to worry about. You raped me! That was rape! I looked it up and what you were doing is a real part of an exam but no gynecologist had done that before then or ever since! Instead of leaving the room while I dressed you stayed and helped by holding out my clothes! Totally inappropriate! You should not have a medical license! Sure I let you, and I cooperated, and even tried to endure it and put on a pleasant face. I was a different person then and you just continued my cycle of being abused by men. But the anus part was where I felt true terror and wanted to get out. You gave me a business card with your name on it and told me to call and ask when you were working to schedule next visit. Then you only wrote me for 1 refill on 30 day birth control! Like I would even come back to be assaulted again. You smug abuser of power and trust! I left with you thinking I enjoyed that and would see you again!!! You make me want to scream and pound on things! It was delayed, but my abuse anxiety was triggered that night, and days after. I will never see a male gynecologist again. Your lust and greed is not better than that of a rapist. You broke my trust in the medical system and I still get anxiety at any doctor visit. Just because a girl’s reaction to abuse is not instant, because of some survival mechanism, does not make it any less painful. Sometimes even more, because we feel guilty for not being strong and assertive. You were in a position of authority and abused it so badly. You should be ashamed, doctor! You should be in prison!

Im struggling to get my head around what to do and who to speak to. I was comfortably asleep and cuddling my boyfriend and had my head kind of on top of him, i woke up slightly and he was moving my hand to his crotch that was h*rd and at that point i was wide awake with my eyes still closed wondering what he was doing, i opened them a little and pretended i was moving in my sleep but he kept on using force moving my whole arm and hand to touch him and i didnt know what to do so i was still and he took out his phone like he was gonna take a picture. He knows i wouldnt want to do that and I dont know what to do or how to feel, i confronted him about it when i ‘woke up’ and i was in shock shaking, we were arguing and he started crying and long story short i ended up comforting him. he never truly said sorry once and i just feel lost because i have so much love for him but i genuinely never want to be with him again but the thought of never speaking to him again hurts me, and i know he wouldnt live without me. which is what scares me because im the only one there for him, i dont know what he would do without me. i just need help on a decision please im feeling very alone in this.

It took me years to come to terms with what was really happening. When I was 9 years old, I met a boy online, and we quickly became friends. We knew everything about each other - He was 15 when we first met. When I was 10 and he was 16, he asked to be my boyfriend. Being a naive 10 year old girl I said yes. I can’t be mad at her for that. It was innocent at first. Just what you’d expect from a childhood relationship - “I love you, goodnight.” “Hope you’re doing okay.” “Let’s play some games together!” The only difference was that one of us were nearly an adult. Someone who should have known better to not even THINK about being romantically involved with a 10 year old girl. However, it went sour. He started talking to me about sexual subjects. Stuff I wasn’t at all familiar with. He’d make us roleplay situations, what he’d do to me if he got ahold of me in real life. Asking for photos. Guilt tripping me for seeming “off” or uninterested. I began to feel distressed at the time, but I was so young, that wasn’t really an emotion I had felt before. I told myself, this sick feeling must be love. That must be why I feel so nervous, why I feel knots in my stomach when I see his name pop up on my screen. I was very attached to him, at least I thought I was. I was always picked on in school and the few friends I had were awful to me, so he was my only real friend. My worst fear was somehow losing him, and he must have known that I thought that. He took advantage of that, and would guilt trip me at any opportunity to make sure I did whatever he wanted me to. After a while, he broke up with me, but we were still very much so “friends”. We would talk everyday, and he was still just as inappropriate and creepy with me as he was before. Throughout the years, he would begin to talk to me about worse and worse stuff. He explicitly told me about his attraction to children, and that he worked as a teaching assistant in a primary school. I tried to brush it off and keep it at the back of my mind, but I got to tipping point last year when he started to pressure me into meeting with him in real life. It went on for 7 years. I hate to say it, and it makes me sad for the little girl that I was, but the rest of my childhood was stolen from me. I’m 17 now, about the same age he was when we met. The thought of EVER saying the stuff to a 10,11,12 year old that he did makes me feel physically ill. I still haven’t fully processed what happened to me, but I’ve been working on it. I’m yet to cry, at least properly, about it. The thing that sucks about this is that this went on for so long, that it felt completely normal. The people in my life who know all cried when I told them. It felt unfair, really - that they could cry about it. And I’m just stuck in a mindset I’m desperately trying to get out of where this is normal, and I feel completely numb. Recently, I decided I wanted to do something about it. I went to the police. This night, I sent off old screenshots of conversations between us to a detective working on my case. It’s terrifying, being that vulnerable. But I feel obligated to do it. The thought of him being around children all day makes me sick. I don’t care if he doesn’t go to prison - as long as he’s never near a child again I’ll be happy. That’s why I’m doing it. I won’t let shame and embarrassment stop me from doing this, and I especially won’t let my brain tell me he doesn’t deserve punishment. Because that’s exactly what he’d want me to think, too.

Firstly I want to thank ourwave for creating this safe space and thank anyone who takes their time to read my story, when my mum was a teen she fell pregnant with me, once I was born we didn’t have a stable home we lived between houses the main house was my nanas, where my uncle lived too. I was 5 he was 15 and When no one was in my uncle would take it upon himself to rape me I don’t remember everything as I was so young and somethings slowly come back especially since my police report but I vividly remember him taking out his penis and putting it my face telling me to suck it..the other memory I have it him sitting me on my nanas bed and him attempting to rape me..he used pliers to try make it easier and also asked me to try help too which I did.. these memories stuck so well in my head and I can never shake them..I also remember my mum bathing me and she has since stated she saw very sore red skin around my lady area and asked “who’s been touching you” to which I replied “name” …now I may not remember everything I may not have been pinned down but that day a piece of me died and I haven’t been the same since, I went my whole life my mum telling me it never happened all my family went against us told everyone i was lying and he was protected whilst I questioned should I even be alive right now at the small age of 9 years old..because I did question my mum on the night terrors and I asked why I got moved so far away and why I have memories of it and I went all this time thinking I had made it up I told myself I was a freak an attention seeker but all along I was right I was a survivor and now I’m 21 years old I’ve just recently reported my uncle to the police and I have my own baby to protect..I don’t get why everyone or how anyone can hurt a child the way so many are hurt

PART 2 The emotional abuse was the worst. I started to feel i was a bad girlfriend. I started to think that all our arguments was because of me and i started to submit to everything we wanted, even if i didn't want to. It was particularly difficult when he proposed loosing our virginity together. I initially said no and that we needed to wait a little bit longer, but through out a few weeks he kept pressuring, subtly but enough for me to feel like i have to say yes. And when we did i tried to stop him because i got cold feet and i didn't like it, but he ignored me💔 After this, I felt annoyed and upset, and i wouldn't speak to him about it. He would just laugh and act like nothing happened. Things got harder when he told me he wanted to marry me. He told me because of his culture he needs to marry me fast otherwise his parents will arrange a marriage with someone else. he told me it would be good because he wants to spend his life with me and he doesn't want anyone else. I shrugged this off as much as I could before it got too intense for me to ignore it. I tried to tell him we need to wait for at least a year but he started panicking about his VISA! Looking back now, he could have been using me, which breaks my heart entirely. When we were talking about marriage, he made me promise not to tell anyone about this (and he did this with the money too). After a lot of wood pecking (my way of saying a lot of nagging, coercion and manipulation) i gave in and said yes. He was very happy and we eager to get married as soon as possible in his home town. I tried to persuade him that we married quietly near where i lived or where he lived, but he seemed too keen to get married where he was from, which now scares me... what could he have been planning? Not too long after i agreed to the marriage, he tried to get £500 pounds because a family member needed it for a medical reason. i refused and told him the most i could give him was 200 (i didn't even have enough for the rest of the month, which i had told him) He agreed with this and left me alone... for the whole of 2 days before trying to manipulate me for £300 more. I refused and things got heated. I found out after that the money i sent for the family member, only a little bit was sent to them and the rest was for his phone data which was only £17!. I was really annoyed about this and when he sense this, he told me he will send the rest over soon. I don't think he ever had. Not too long after, i saw the app i met him on still on his phone. I asked him why he had which he replied by just deleting it. So many difficult things happened, things i am not ready to talk about. But one day, my boss got in touch with someone close to me , because she was worried about me. That person then talked to me, I disregarded all of the concerns before calling him... he went straight into blaming me, refusing to talk on call and texting me. we were still on call but chatting on text because he didn't want to risk anyone hearing the conversation. He started to manipulate me and guilt trip me, turning things on me and being dismissive. As i was reading the messages and trying to get him to talk on the video call not on text, my mum came into my room asking if i was okay. I hung up on him and told her EVERYTHING. It was then i realized i was abused, manipulated, coerced and hurt. As i heard all of this coming out of my mouth, i burst into tears and my mum just had to hold me for ages. It was then that i broke up him, and after a week of crying and having to block him every time he messaged me, i haven't heard from since. Its been 4 months and i have my days where i don't want to get out of bed because i feel like i dont know if my feelings are real or not and i feel my mind isn't my mind. But i also have days where i feel free and i can do what i want, i can talk to who i want and i can hand around with who i want. Its okay to have ups and downs, we'll get there together xx