I was gang raped. I was drugged, so most of what I remember is just a stray memory here and there. but I had several bruises by the end of it and was in a lot of pain. I am not dealing with it very well. I didn't tell anyone about it. I mean, I told my aunt and mom and being raped, but I never told them how many men did it to me. I just thought it would hurt them. I honestly try not to think about it at all. Which, I guess isn't a very good coping skill.

I was gang raped when I was 12...they term it "gang" when there are more than two individuals who perpetrate the crime. Mine was three - two men and a woman...legally equalling a gang I suppose.

"How are you doing now?" Wow, but that there were an easy answer to that one. Now...right at this point in time - I struggle. I have many, many years sitting with this, so perhaps that is why I feel an urgency to get to the place where I can jab my flag in the ground and proudly proclaim, "I am healed!" But, I am not even sure where that 'flag' is. I do know I am NOT where I was. I know that I have moved froward toward healing, and it has been a painful and slow process. It has been hard work. But every stride I have made has been based on my ability to disclose the most horrific, painful, shameful and embarrassing deatails of this crime to the therapist in whom I have placed my trust. So, I suppose, short answer would be - where I am is closer to being the woman I was meant to become before rape devastated a little girl's life.

Yeah, that feels right - I am closer to being the woman I was meant to be.

Mayday...can I ask why it is that you asked this question? Is there something specific you need help with?

thanks for your responses, Mockingbird, I don't know if there is anything specific I want help with I have just been thinking about this more for the last few months. I read the book 'I never called it rape' and there was a chapter in there about gang rape and bits of it really hit home it was stuff I hadn't really heard about much before as most of the stuff I hear/read is about single perpetrator rapes and I wonder if some of the stuff I struggle with is to do with being attacked by a group of men and I am not sure if I have really picked up on all of that stuff because I don't hear it so much from other people. For example I have a lot of nightmares about being attacked by groups of people (not nessicarily sexually) and I can struggle with groups of people and get very uneasy and even panicy in group situations sometimes and it wasn't till fairly recently that I twigged that there might be a reason for this, that in face the 'group' aspect of what happened might be what I haven't quite dealt with yet. So I guess what I wanted was just to hear from other people, to see if they had the same reactions as me and to see if there is anything else that I am missing

I can say to a reasonable certainty, that gang rape has differences to it that a single perpetrator rape does not, and you are correct, there is not much written about the gang-rape scenario. In fact, I had felt quite the freak because so little was written. I felt that since my rape was 'strangers' that I was in a minority, and I have had conversations with other gang-rape victims who felt the current available articles on rape tend to down play and call stranger rape...'stereotypical'...and that is happens so infrequently in the general concept of rape that we had a sense of feeling MORE excluded as victims of stranger rape than if we had known our rapists. I know I wasn't raped by a person I trusted as a long-time friend, but my situation did involve a man I believed I knew...as muchas 12 year old believes she knows anyone - I thought he was trustworthy, and I had no idea about rape...or that sex could be so harmful.

I have mixed emotions about the fallout from stranger/gang rape. I don't want to upset anyone or get into the 'which one is worse' discussion, but for me, I felt like my rape encompassed both, and for me, it was the aspect of not believing I would live through it that created the terror. It wasn't just the fact that something was being taken from me against my will, or the pain inflcited...I believed when they left, there would be no breath in my body. I prayed and accepted that I was to die that day. That I didn't has been both a blessing and a curse....so, I agree - there are alot of things not discussed in date-rape scenarios that can attach easily to gang rapes.

I do struggle against groups in my sleep...which is odd when I didn't struggle in real life...not really. I do get panicked in large crowds of strangers...fairs...malls...those places make me back against walls and look down at the ground. I think you might get some benefit from journaling about the group aspect of the attack. The...sense of being out-numbered. That is a horrible feeling to me...to feel like I am of little consequence simply because I cannot possibly win against the greater number involved. I always believed that is why I fought so little...why my screams were simply gasps in my throat...I think that is why I believed I would die...aside form what they said, that they...'discussed' how safe it would be to leave me. I haven't written that in ages...that they talked about my death in front of me..or, not the act of killing me, but the wisdom in leaving me alive. I guess I had given them enough information in advance...he knew I had no one to tell.

I would like to know what it was you read that triggered your thoughts...if you care to go into more detail that is. I will help if I can.

When I was 19 I gang raped. There were 9 men that decided they were entitled to take turns. I never told anyone. It still isn't something that I talk about. No one knows. It's a scary thought even saying anything now. But there it is. I went to a party when I was 19 and got wasted. If it could be drank or smoked, I did it. The last thing I remeberis this guy that I only knew as "Shorty" and 8 of his friends were standing and kneeling over me, laughing. When I came out of it the next day I was stiff and naked. My "friend" was nudging me with her foot and laughing. All she would tell me is that I had way too much fun for my own good and need to renew my wedding vows. ??? That still makes no sense to me!!

heres one bit i read that applyed to me ' sometimes the woman may have consensual sex with one member of the group and afterwards that man invites the others to take turns'
well that is what happened to me and is something I feel a lot of shame around and part of what makes me think that it wasn't really rape but to see it written in a book made me realise that I am not the ony one this has happened to.

'a gang bang as the rapist might call the incident is not group sex, not kinky sex. Even for the few women who might participate with seeming willingness such an episode is so basically coercive and degrading that it is akin to rape'

I completely agree with this statement, I think that this kind of sexual experience should be illegal that way they would know what they did was wrong, I often wonder if they do know that, I didn't protest much and not with every guy does that mean it wasn't rape? Or that the only guys who raped me where the ones I said no to? Maybe but i think my body language and my reactions to what was happening should have been enough and decent men wouldn't have set me up like that in the first place.

I am sure I read somewhere although now I can't find it that physical resistance to gang rape can often be less than to individual rape (although I think they also quoted another study saying the opposite so maybe the evidence isn't very clear) due to the nature of being outnumbers resistance can seem pretty futile.

I think for the men it is a group activity it even says in the book that some men who rape in a gang would not commit individual rapes, it is a group activity and I imagen that the residue to that group aspect in the victim must show itself somehow, i am just not sure how


Just to reiterate what mockingbird said I am not saying that one type of rape is worse than another but just wishing to explore this particular kind of rape and its after effects

I think if your intuition is telling you that the "one consensual/many not" aspect is important, you should honor it, _most especially_, if there is very little material out there. Your own sense of meaning may be your only guide for working this through.

Feeling like your story isn't being told in the literature can be paralyzing. I wasn't gang raped. I was stranger raped by a boogie man who literally appeared out of nowhere in the dark. As mockingbird pointed out, for all the claims that "stranger rape" is the stereotypical rape, there is actually very little victim/survivor focused material on stranger rape, whether in popular self-help book form or in research articles.

For years I felt frozen in my attempts to deal with the rape because I didn't trust my own intuitions about the importance of this being a stranger rape and the research/self-help material didn't really give me any guidance either. When I made my first thread on RAR, I actually was almost feeling my rape didn't count, it wasn't real rape, however stereotypical, because it wasn't like all the others (that everyone was writing about). I really hope you don't feel that way even a teensy bit. It is an awful feeling to feel wounded but to feel like one ought not be.

I also allowed myself to be guilt-ed into ignoring differences, as if acknowledging differences would somehow mean I was minimizing other sorts of rapes. Interestingly, when I finally did start honoring the differences, only then, I was able to see how much all the forms of rape have in common, despite their differences.

However, these commonalities aren't where the healing happens. I think they let us understand and support each other, but only so long as we don't pretend it is all the same. I really do think the social specifics of what happened - who, what relationship, how many - matter. So much of rape is about how we relate/were forced to relate to the world outside of ourselves.

Trust yourself on this one.

There's been some discussion before about the different 'style' of attack that can happen, and the different effects that it can have. It's also come up on the RAR discussion group.

The idea isn't to try and put a 'hierarchy' on these things or say that one kind of rape is more serious than another, but to me it does make perfect sense that the effects for us will be different - so I would welcome more research into this area. It might help therapists and counsellors to recognise different patterns or 'clusters' of trauma symptoms, and perhaps in the longer-term future better treatment approaches could be developed to fit this.

(Although of course there's always the risk that some people will try to make it a 'hierarchical' thing and rate one attack as being more worthy of support than another - but to my way of thinking, that would be missing the point completely!)

So for my money, I don't think it's at all wrong to talk about the differences in our experiences; I just feel that it all helps to increase our understanding. It's never made me feel threatened since I've been on DS, and I've certainly never seen anyone try to make it a one-upmanship game (heaven forbid!) So I hope this issue doesn't make anyone else feel threatened or uncomfortable either.

I don't so much feel threatened as much as I feel sad. It has been my experience that rape, wheather by one or many, is absolutely devastating. I know I had just as much trouble with one as I did the other. It's just heartbreaking that so many of us have been through this. Granted, I don't feel so alone, but I honestly don't know if that helps as much as it hurts. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, let alone so many that I call "friend"!! Not threatened, just sad.

This happened to me, but I am only just talking about its so bear with me if I struggle a bit.

Just saying, "This happened to me" is a huge, courageous step. Everyone here understands how difficult that is.