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#NotGuilty: it’s not just strangers

TW: Rape, sexual assault

On 24th December, 2014, I was raped by two men, both of whom I considered to be very dear friends of mine. All three of us went to high school together, and I had known them for four years. They were also ‘friends’ of my boyfriend, who also went to high school with us. All four of us had been hanging out together regularly for years, and I trusted them wholly. 

That night, Daniel* and Jesse* invited me over to Jesse’s house to drink with them. My family wasn’t celebrating Christmas Eve that night, and my boyfriend was spending the evening with his parents, so I agreed to go. When Daniel and Jesse picked me up from my house, they handed me a bottle of Jack Daniels and told me that I needed to “catch up” with them. I took a couple of swigs from the bottle on the way to Jesse’s house, and when we got there, we briefly spoke to Jesse’s family before heading upstairs to continue drinking. After taking a couple of shots with Daniel and Jesse, I began to feel very intoxicated. I told them repeatedly that I couldn’t drink anymore, but they kept telling me to take more shots and insisting that I needed to “catch up” with them. I remember taking one more shot, for a grand total of three shots, before I had to sit down on the bed and feeling like I couldn’t stay awake. I remember feeling someone get on the bed, and opening my eyes to see Jesse staring at me, watching me intently as if he was waiting for something. I closed my eyes again, drifting out of consciousness, and felt Jesse move in for a kiss before my memory goes blank (later I would conclude that I was drugged). 

The next thing that I remember is coming to, lying face down, with my pants around my ankles, while Jesse was on top of me. When Jesse finished, I remember laying on my side, pants still around my ankles, thinking, “Did that just happen? Is that what I think it was? Did Jesse rape me?” I felt so confused and disoriented; like I was dreaming, and I wasn’t sure if it had actually happened or not. Then, I felt Jesse lay down behind me in a spooning position, and start to touch me, initiating sex again. My memory goes blank again after that, and the next thing that I remember is hearing Jesse say, “Daniel, you can come out now.” After that, my memory becomes very unclear, and I just remember a series of flashes of what happened. I remember one of them being on top of me while the other one was shoving his penis in my mouth. I remember not being able to hold my head up, so whomever was in front of me seized a fistful of my hair to do it for me. I remember them taking turns on top of me and me not knowing which one of them was on top of me. I remember hearing them laughing, like they had some kind of inside joke that I wasn’t in on, and I remember hearing them moaning. I remember thinking, “I need to stop this,” but I felt totally paralysed and powerless; I felt frozen, like I couldn’t speak or move. At one point, I mustered up the strength to slur out “Stop! Stop! Stop!”, and one of them responded with something along the lines of “We’re almost done”. When they were finished, I laid face down on the bed, pants still around my ankles, feeling exposed, and burning with humiliation. I remember thinking “I need to pull my pants up” but, again, I felt paralysed. I’m not sure how much time passed, but sooner or later, I felt one of them pull my pants up. After that, I remember going into the bathroom and throwing up and then asking them to take me home. I don’t remember how I got home or how I even got inside my house, but my family told me that when I got home, I was crying and that I couldn’t sit up or stand; they told me that I had to be helped to the bathroom and held up to throw up so that I didn’t choke on my own vomit. 

My mum convinced me to report it to the police the next day, Christmas Day. After I made a police report and Daniel and Jesse were questioned, I was told that no legal action was going to be taken because there was no “probable cause” to make an arrest. Daniel and Jesse’s stories matched mine, except according to their versions, I took off my clothes and put them back on myself, and it was consensual sex. Because it was two against one, and there were no witnesses, there was no case. 

After doing some investigation of my own, I came to find out that Jesse had been charged with sexual assault in high school, and that he almost wasn’t allowed to walk at graduation for an incident in which he exposed himself at school. I also learned that another girl came forward and said that Daniel had raped her two years earlier. Upon presenting this information to the police, I was told that there was still no probable cause for an arrest. Today, my rapists walk free. 

*The names in this article have been changed

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