Rachel's Story

This story is published w/the victim's permission. Names have been changed . This story is a  true      account of abuse and, as such, has some violence of a sexual nature.  

XOXOXO 

Lavender Skye                                                                                                                                        

Rachel and David

It started off as a relationship made in Heaven. A few days after we started going out he spouted I love you’s and I love you so much. I couldn’t believe someone had fallen in love with me that quickly. He was always holding, hugging and kissing me. He was so sweet that after a week I had fallen in love with him also. We had our first passionate kiss on our one week anniversary. I moved faster with him than any other guy I had ever been with. Soon I was letting him touch my breasts over then slowly it progressed to under my shirt. I remember we were in the movie theater as he was doing this and I was thinking this is okay as long as you don’t move your hand under my bra but he did. I thought it was okay because I ended up liking it. After a couple weeks the first red flag went up, but I didn’t see it because I was so in love with him.

After about a month he attempted suicide. Now this was a flag that he wasn’t in his right mind, but neither was I. The red flag I’m talking about is when he blamed my sister for his attempt. She had said he wasn’t right for me and he overheard it. He blamed her words for his attempt rather than the real issues he was having. That’s also the day I found out he was lying about some things, including the death of his brother’s girlfriend. I talked to him a few days later, and he said it was another girl with the same name but he didn’t know that until after he told me and never even admitted that until I confronted him.

I made up my mind to end it after his other brother told me a bunch of things he was supposedly lying. Then we talked and after our talk I decided not to end it because we got some stuff cleared up, and his brother admitted to lying about a few things. We were back to our happy relationship. We were supposed to go out on a really special date for Valentines’ Day, but my mom wouldn’t let me. He told me he was going to propose that night. We ended up getting officially engaged when he brought me a ring to work months later; I don’t really remember when. It wasn’t romantic as he just handed me the ring and told me it was an engagement ring, but I was thrilled anyway. This was only a few months after going out.

We were always together and holding each other. We were always making out, even in front of my family. About three months after going out we had sex. I didn’t really want to but didn’t know how to say no. He got mad when he found that out later. That same day he promised to always take care of me. I could go to college and he would work so I could focus on school. I found out later that was a lie. He ended up leaving that job and working somewhere else. Now he couldn’t do that. In April of that year we moved in together. I wanted to move out from my father so bad because he was abusive and I loved my new fiancé so much. What I didn’t know was that soon I would be living in a worse nightmare than I already was.

David couldn’t pay the bills so I had to move back in with my parents. He actually tried stealing money from his work, and I paid it back. I ended up taking care of him, lending him money, etc. He ended up homeless at the end of the summer, and I was paying for him to stay in a hotel when I could or letting him come over to shower and nap when my parents were at work. This went on until the end of August when he moved back up to Massachusetts. He told me his sister was in a coma in the hospital so he couldn’t wait for me to be able to come with him. He promised to come back for me the next week or two. While he was up there he emailed me every day. He told me about the inheritance he finally got from his mother and how he had a four bedroom two story house being built for us on a lake. I was so excited. I was going to be with my dream guy and own a house and have a family soon. At this time he had convinced me a doctor had told him I was pregnant so when I was supposed to go with my parents to drop my sister off at college I didn’t go. There’s a longer story to that I’m not ready to discuss

A week later when he was supposed to come for me he said he couldn’t because his sister was still in the hospital and was doing worse. I kept begging him to come get me because my home life was so bad now. I was suicidal and needed someone around who loved me. He eventually bought me a bus ticket and sent me some money to go on the long trip all by myself. When I got there he saw that I had brought my favorite stuffed tiger and was happy more about that than seeing me. We hugged and kissed and he told me how much he missed me. I was so relieved to see him. I was nervous the whole trip because I couldn’t get a hold of him and I’d lost his work number. I was so scared I’d end up there and he wouldn’t be there.

He brought me to a couple he was staying with and told me to lie about who I was to go along with what he had told them. He said he had a surprise for me and showed me a tattoo he got with my name. I was thrilled! He had previously told me he never believed in getting names of people tattooed on himself so I felt very special. He told me he did it to prove his love to me and that he wanted to be with me forever. But as soon as we got to his friends he went to work. He let me rest while he worked. As I was sleeping, though, his friend sexually assaulted me through unwanted fondling of my breasts and touching and manually penetrating my vagina. I was so scared. I didn’t know how to tell David.

We ended up moving for other reasons and hiding from his friends due to him breaking a promise with them. They were crazy, too, though. One day they were all friendly and the next hated us. I eventually told David what happened and he said I was lying. That’s when the relationship took the terrible turn. He started calling me a liar and said his friend, who he hadn’t seen in two years and hardly knew, would never do something like that. I felt so violated again. That’s when he started to falsely accuse me of cheating on him and saying he was cheating on me. He called me a slut, whore, bitch and cunt. A few months later he started hitting me. At first it was ‘accidental’, then it went into the “I’m sorry” stage and stayed there for awhile. I was so scared of leaving and never seeing him again. Besides he’d taken me from everyone I knew.

I could’ve called my parents, but I never thought of that. He kept getting worse and worse. He was cheating on me, calling me names, telling me I was ugly and pointing out girls to me saying he wanted to have sex with them and I need to look like them. One time we were having sex and he insisted on doing anal. We tried it before but it hurt so I didn’t want to. He turned me over and forced himself into me. All I could do is beg for him to stop and cry that he was hurting me. He didn’t care though. He never even apologized. To this day he insists he never did this to me.

We would have what I thought were heartfelt talks and he’d make promises, but then he’d never keep them. One day while I was working in the hotel we lived in he grabbed my hair and, threatening to throw my head in the furnace, attempted to drag me down to the basement. He would strangle me, punch me, and bite me. He would verbally and emotionally abuse me. He would constantly look me straight in the eyes and tell me “I don’t love you.” He even told me he was in love with an ex-girlfriend. I cried myself to sleep many nights and prayed for us to be able to go back to how we were. He would talk and flirt with other girls, especially at night on the computer. He’d never pay any attention to me; even during sex he wouldn’t touch me. It was all about pleasing him. I was so scared he’d rape me again if I didn’t have sex with him, and I was so desperate for him to touch me I’d try to have sex just for that. I ended up cheating on him because I was so desperate for attention. Plus, he was cheating on me so he deserved it, or so I thought.

He never cuddled anymore, never even hugged me. He would always sleep with his back facing me. A couple times he acted like his old self but most of the time he was this new monster. I was terrified of him and even started having nightmares of him killing me. He told me we were married, that he’d gotten it taken care of by taking our records down to town hall. I finally got a break when a marine Corps Recruiter came up to me and I was able to join the Marines. I did it so I could get away and have a place to go. During Boot camp he wrote me the most wonderful and apologetic letters. I fell in love with him all over again, so when I got leave we got married. I thought he was back to himself. Later I would find out how wrong I was.

He was a great guy until I went away to training. At the beginning of the training I spoke with him all the time until I had to go out to the field. Then one time he told me he had no interest in talking to me even though we hadn’t spoken in two weeks. I cried at him saying that. I called him a few days later because I heard he was having chest pain. He apologized and said he was upset. I later found out he was talking to another girl for several hours every night. He still hasn’t told me what they were talking about.

Upon completion of the training he went to MOS School with me. We got along great. He’d always come to see me, and he even got a job so I wasn’t paying for everything. One night when I went out with a group of friends one of them raped me, and David never believed me about that either. Once again he was back to his old self, but after that school I took him to my next school with me. When I got to the next school he started accusing me of cheating on him with everyone again and said our baby I was pregnant with wasn’t his. We argued constantly. One of the guys that had come from the other school also said my husband was very disrespectful to me and I didn’t deserve that. When I told David he accused me of sleeping with that guy.

I eventually got assigned to the station, and we got housing. He still beat me and even beat me in the stomach telling me he was going to kill the baby. I should’ve left him, but I was scared to leave. Even after the baby was born he continued to beat me and call me names. At some point I started fighting him back because I had had enough. So now it was both of us hitting each other. He acted like the victim at one point saying I was the abusive one, even convincing the base it was all me. After the military this went on for years.

Eventually we had another daughter, which he also accused me of having another affair and the baby not being his. This time while I was pregnant he was always working and yelling at me about the room we were staying in being a mess. I was exhausted I told him. I was pregnant and constantly caring for our two year old with not one single break. Eventually my mom started to help me so I got a day to myself. He would always put work first and was only home a couple hours a night to sleep. Then when he was off the few times he was, he insisted on staying home and got pissed because I wanted to go out and have some fun instead of being stuck home. We eventually ended up in a homeless shelter because he gave up his job and lied about having another one as a camp counselor and having a house in Maine ready for us, but then he supposedly had money stolen from him by his brother.

In the shelter DCF got involved and eventually the kids were taken because one time the house was a wreck when they came over. I hadn’t had time to clean it from the day before because I was too busy with taking the kids to school, the doctors and getting prescriptions. The night before my back hurt so much I could barely move and David was fixing some legal problems in FL.

He continuously blamed me for our children being taken, but then he eventually got them back. My oldest daughter was taken again when my youngest passed away from what was thought to be a bathtub drowning. It was later found out it was a brain hemorrhage. We got back together and things got worse again. At one point I wanted so badly to leave because I felt like he didn’t care anymore. This went on for months. After my first stay in a psychiatric hospital due to my baby daughter’s death I wanted to work it out. Eventually everything went back to him being his cruel self. We both verbally abused each other. He would continue to falsely accuse me of cheating on him with every guy I met, including male college professors when I went back to school. He continued to call me a slut and a whore and ugly and fat, saying I was too ugly to get anyone else. At one point we had his friend, Lisa, staying with us, and he always took her side. He would flirt with Lisa, let her sit on his lap and even dry hump him one time. He even let her stay with him after she got me kicked out for the weekend. I finally kicked her out with his support. She was supposed to be out the same weekend, but he never stuck to that promise either. I eventually got her to leave when he finally took my side for real.

We separated and got back together several times. Now we’re done though. He stopped hitting me for six months and then started the accidental stuff again -- grabbing me really hard and saying he just wanted to pull me close. All our arguing led me into a psychiatric hospital so I moved out. We were doing good but then decided on a divorce. I ended up moving back in with him to save money to move near my family, and we tried it one last time but split for the final time a few weeks ago.  I also recently found out he lied to me again. I have finally learned he’s never going to change and I am moving on from this point forward. I will admit I do still love him though.