Anonymous Story: I Refused To Talk To Anybody About It

On the 17th/18th of Dec 2013, I was happily packing my bag to travel from home the following day to my initial state of NYSC deployment for my relocation letter. Around 11 pm, the door of the room was violently pushed open and I was on the verge of lashing out thinking it was my sister since I had earlier sent her on an errand. A masked man holding a gun rushed in, immediately instructing me to keep quiet and move to the living room where another masked robber was with every other member of my family that was around.

They began to threaten us. Everyone obeyed and we gave them all we had but unfortunately, the estate security men were already out by then so they couldn’t leave our house again. In their words “We are going to have a vigil with you people today” and that was the beginning of the longest and worst night of my life. They moved us to one of the rooms while they kept watch making sure we kept quiet all through. After a long while, one of them tapped my legs and asked me to move to the next room. I was scared and helpless! He asked me to strip and it then dawned on me that my worst fear was about to happen. I tried to beg but he corked his gun so I mentally blanked out and complied.

He had his way, stood up, and called the other, they whispered for a while and asked me to get dressed. They locked us in and left around 5:30 am. Police officers came, did the formality and all. They asked if anyone was raped but I couldn’t say anything, I mean, there were about 20 people including my family, neighbors, and even strangers. We all said no and they left. I wasn’t ready to get pregnant from that tragedy so I had to open up when my grandma asked me. We went to the hospital, and the doctor asked about my menstrual cycle and said I had to undergo a procedure to evacuate the deposit in my uterus to prevent pregnancy.

I felt ashamed, dirty, and depressed, in fact, I was at my lowest for a long time because that was my first sexual experience and the memory was something I needed to be eternally erased. I ran the scenarios all over every day thinking of what I could have done or what could have happened differently to prevent it. Anytime I was alone, I would weep endlessly hoping to wipe out that memory but it didn’t work. I refused to talk to anyone about it, always putting up a strong and happy face pretending to be fine.