A Testimony

Before I became a Christian I would have been offended at being associated with what I had considered to be a human construction, sold as some ‘truth’, taken up by those too gutless to live according to their own sense of morality. I was polite to Christians, but inside they made me sick. They promoted an absolute: God. I didn’t believe in absolutes. I equated that with the denial of true human freedom. Christianity was simply an oppressive system of thought and the sooner the world was free from its ‘taint’, the better.

If my criticism of Christianity had once been rooted primarily in academic thought, it also soon became one emotionally motivated by the personal experience of rape. If I could find, or create, opportunities in my teaching position to undermine some of its basic tenets, I would. I wanted to show Christianity as both ‘mad’ and importantly ‘bad’, and to be rightfully challenged. I believed the personal to be political and so I took witchcraft as a symbolic contestation of the patriarchal content of Christianity, and lesbianism in the same way. My Will, (despite having had occasion to confront my mortality and that of my daughters’), stated the absolute need for me to have a humanist burial. I wanted to take my challenge even to the point of my death.

What began as a range of hostile emails to various Christian anti-abortion groups, led to my participating on Christian discussion forums. I enjoyed the challenge of this, often boasting to my students of my ‘victories’ in arguments. I read the Bible in order to challenge it. After some months I began to be more than intellectually curious and found I was battling against a heart which wanted to ask ‘are you there God?’ I was angry with myself for wanting to even ask this question. As the curiosity grew, so did the conflict.

Partly in response to a challenge and partly as an attempt to just end a journey that I had never imagined finding myself on, I decided to go to a church. Apart from a couple of marriages and funerals, I had never been to a church service. I sat for many weeks outside Grace. I watched. My pride hurt. When I finally made it through the doors, on the way in and out ensuring that nobody I knew would see me, it was less with a truly seeking heart and more with the hope of confirming my original criticism. Then life would return to normal.

For months I listened to the preaching, and the conflict and frustration grew. For some reason I couldn’t just quit and ‘walk’. I could only walk away when I had the ammunition needed to justify my original position. So I decided to create a situation (an argument) which could justify my leaving in a self-righteous manner. The problem was that those involved were not playing the game the way I had hoped. . I tried to engage the visiting pastor. He wasn’t having any of it either.

I was left very angry and frustrated. And still needing an excuse to quit and walk. Whilst in the car driving home, God became a reality. I knew He was there. It was a simple knowingness-as I know the reality of the air I breathe. For over thirty hours I struggled with God. No sleep and no work. I tried to ignore Him by desperately convincing myself that His reality was in fact just some psychological phenomenon. If I ignored Him, stopped going to church and stopped reading the Bible, I would soon recover. I went to bed early quite at peace with this. I had a strategy to deal with His seeming reality. In fact I was quite chuffed with myself. I had a story to share: how Christianity had even near indoctrinated me. At one o’clock in the morning I found myself wide awake. I walked downstairs. I just sat there. Through what seemed like an eternity, a sense of nothingness just grew and grew-beyond a mere negative emotion-beyond depression. Absolute nothingness. And then I was made aware of the presence of Christ. I did not see or hear anything but my very being knew His reality and His presence. And I knew what He was saying: that’s enough now. He was right.

During the moments that followed, I did not decide to adopt some man-made principles. I did not reach out in human desperation to some therapeutic humanly constructed knowledge form. I did not even become ‘all religious’. I entered into a relationship with my God who had hung on a cross for me so that at that moment I could finally be made right with Him-so that I could finally know Him.

That happened October 30^th 2002. I was baptised seven months later. Today I remain convinced of the reality of Christ. Through the many physical, spiritual and emotional trials that followed my conversion, I have known more than ever that October 30^th 2002 was indeed no illusion.

With trials have come great blessings, the greatest one being the constant affirmation of Christ as indeed real, alive today, still calling people to know Him, and still remaining the closest and wisest friend I will ever know who guides me daily through this life and eventually into eternity. I know I remain far from what I should be. But I know with absolute certainty that I am no longer what I was.

That is the power of the God that I had once declared ‘dead’.

My Experience

My story ultimately spans many years; here I present some of the main points. I was 24. I was happy, in a relationship, healthy and confident. What happened over 25 years ago would today would be called an ‘acquaintance drug rape’.

The man was old enough to be my father, a friend of my own partner and father to a friend at work. He was somewhat of the ‘big man’ of the village, owning most of the land and whose family had dominated the place for generations. But he was friendly enough and we got on well over the two years that I had known him. He was a drinker and regularly got into fights with non locals due to his Welsh nationalist beliefs. He was a 'ladies man' but always with those of his own age and we had all heard rumours of his use of prostitutes since his marriage ended. But I was a confident and assertive woman and I thought he was ultimately 'alright' He was always kind to me and my partner. He had always told both my partner and I that he would always help us out-he had even offered to pay for the wedding if we ‘just got on with it and got married’. I felt safe.

One Friday night, a group of us went out and as with many people in that farming community, we all had too much alchohol. During the evening I had a massive argument with my partner and walked out. He threatened to take the lamb that I had hand reared (and thereby my pet) to the slaughter house with the rest of his flock the following day. The walk to a base from which I could then travel home was two hours. 30 minutes from this intial destination, I decided to pop by 'this man' and ask for his help in retreiving the lamb. I felt safe. As predicted, he was kind and understanding. He promised to sort things out with my partner and if necessary to buy the lamb and keep it at his farm until my partner had ‘calmed down’. I had a cup of coffee and some soup. I lost the next three days.

The passage of time and place over those days is completely distorted - even to this day. I remember times of joking and feeling fine, and times of fear and physical pain; which came when I couldn’t say. I can recall him raping me at least four times, passing out and being revived. I remember sometimes putting up a fight, getting hit, being muffled with his hands- and other times freezing with fear.

The first time I became truly lucid, I found myself sitting on a couch and the news was on a television. I felt sick, confused, dizzy and shocked. I didn’t even know for sure what day it was. I think Monday. He just looked over at me, laughed and said it was the best sex he had ever had. My first thought was that he must be joking and so I just said well I hope you took precautions. No, he assumed I would be on the pill because of my being in a relationship.

He asked me to leave. So I did. A zombie-like state I would now describe it on reflection. When I finally got home, I went into the shower and only then did I see the state of my body, the cuts, bruises and bite marks. One was so deep it produced a scar that took many months to fade-eventually into oblivion- or near enough. It was only then that the internal pain hit me.

My partner blamed me for going to his house, and for drinking. Despite some attempt to restore our relationship, I eventually moved 200 miles away.Flashbacks occurred over a period of a year. My ex claimed that 'he' eventually did admit in public (some months later) what he had done but claimed that it didn’t matter because ‘she was out of it’.

When I found out I was pregnant, my ex-partner immediately suspected that it wasn’t his; so did I. I was horrified and 'knew' that an abortion was the only way forward. However, a scan at the hospital suggested that it could be my ex-partners: perhaps I could live with that. So I decided not to abort. However, when at supposedly 28 weeks, I became critically ill with fulminating pre-eclampsia, a scan changed the original date making the baby very likely to be 'the man's'. After three months staying contunuously with a very sick (initially ventilated) premature (2lb) baby I couldn’t bond with, and after the trauma of two tests for HIV, I suffered from what they called a psychotic episode brought on by severe reactive depression. I was sectioned and locked up. Eventually released, albeit against medical advice, but no longer under section, I was determined to somehow crawl my way back-and get revenge.

Some years ago I sought a paternity DNA test from 'the man', now in his 80s. He refused. I have been unable to trace my partner. I have thought of police action even after all these years. But then I consider the impact upon me and my now grown up daughter and the little liklihood of any successful prosecution. I also remember the response of people. Some thought little of it, some doubted, and some blamed me. It is hard to get justice in this context. I wasn’t a virgin. This wasn’t in a dark alley by a stranger. Somehow it didn’t ‘fit the picture’ of the typical rape. I now suspect a substance such as Ketamine was used because of the relative ease of access a farmer could in theory have to this drug. It is a veterinary sedative used in 'date rape', producing dissociative amnesia, confusion, and unconsciousness.

I spent many years angry struggling to bring up my child, often seeking and planning the bloodiest of revenge. Utimately, fear prevented action. Shame and anger dominated. It was my anger with what the Bible seemed to say about rape that was the means God used to open my eyes to the fact of His existence (see my testimony above). He has taken my anger and shame and used it to show me things about who and what I am , and about who He is.

There are no happy endings - in this world anyway. My daughter has been shaped and hurt in many and complex ways by my past, and by her beginning. New challenges emerge beacuse of this. Social, emotional and physical difficulties remain. Routinised GP-led female health checks become the source of great anxiety and physical pain, requiring hospital-administred pain relief. Fear still grips. Relationships are impossible. Social activities are rare. And yet, I also know that it is in the midst of this darkness that the Light of the World declares His presence and power. Ultimately, I would rather be in a flimsey boat in the middle of a storm-hit ocean with Christ, than on a mighty ship, in calm waters without Christ.