Dear Rapist

Tom,

Do you even remember me? Or was I nothing to you, a little conquest, a trifling diversion that for one brief evening made you feel powerful? Do you know how hard it has been for me to understand what happened that night? To remember how naïve I was, even at twenty-five, and not feel ashamed? To stop blaming myself for getting drunk on a few cups of sake, and for being unable to shove your six-foot-plus body off of me? Did you plan it, or was it merely a crime of opportunity, your secret safe because I was in town for only a few days?

For decades I kept the memory of that evening carefully buried. The #MeToo movement gave me the courage to uncover it and reconsider what happened the night we had dinner at the restaurant next to your luxurious office. When I arrived at Benihana’s, I believed you when you said your wife Judy—the friend I was eager to see—was sick, so it would be just the two of us. But I should’ve been suspicious later in the evening when you told me about the coat Judy wanted to give me for my first winter in Boston, the one waiting for me in your office. Was my judgment clouded because you’d slipped something into my wine cup? Did Judy even know about the coat? Was she really sick that night? So many questions.

My story, unlike yours, didn’t end that night. And now, almost fifty years later, I want you to experience every step of my journey—because it should be part of your journey, too.

When we got to your office, you showed me the lovely tan suede coat with the white fur on its cuffs and hood and insisted I try it on. “You look terrific in it,” you said.

As I took the coat off, the room started spinning. You suggested I rest before driving home, which seemed reasonable given my dizziness. As soon as I lay down on the huge, white leather couch, I drifted off.

A pressure across my chest jolted me awake. It took me a few seconds to realize you had pinned me down with your massive left arm. I was naked from the waist down, my skirt bunched up around my hips. When I tried to move my legs, they wouldn’t obey. I hated my weakness.

You wouldn’t stop despite my sobbing and saying no, over and over. But even now, writing that sentence, I question myself. Was my voice too soft? Should I have yelled louder? or longer? I remember giving up, but was that after saying no twice? three times? Would you have stopped if only I’d said it one more time?

I don’t remember throwing my clothes on or driving to my parents’ house, where I was staying. Although they were asleep, in my head I heard my father’s voice shouting, all night long, “How could you be so stupid!” If my parents noticed how withdrawn I was, how little I talked or ate the last two days of my visit, they showed no interest in finding out why. But I want you to know every consequence of that night.

Back in Boston I told no one, cut off communication with you and Judy, and tried to channel my turmoil into energy for practicing the flute. I ached to listen to the most agonized movements of Mahler and Tchaikovsky. I had no stereo, but whenever I heard an emotionally wrenching piece on the classical music station, I surrendered to it, finding comfort in the profound grief I could not put into words. I wish I could say I was furious with you. There were women, even then, who put the shame where it belonged. But for most cases in the 1970s, rape was the woman’s fault—the shame, all mine.

After two weeks, I could concentrate better. Throwing myself into musical pursuits, I pushed the episode to the bottom of my consciousness. But the relief was short-lived. In early February, the day before my birthday, I bought a pregnancy test kit. Though the odds were against it, I knew I was pregnant. How could such a terrible night not have dire consequences?

When I saw the test was positive, I felt like you had won. You were free to forget about the evening; I was left not just traumatized but responsible for the consequences of your actions. Politically, logically, even morally, I’d always been pro-choice. An easy belief, in the abstract. But you made it real; you forced me to choose—and quickly.

I hated myself for having part of you inside me. How could I care for someone who might have your blond hair, your deceptive, guileless smile? How can any woman love the child who reminds her of a night of violence? And how could I support a baby? I’d have to give up my dream of being a professional musician. The modest scholarship I depended on would disappear if anyone found out I was pregnant, and other than being a musician, I had no job skills. As I struggled with the overwhelming emotions, my mother’s oft-spoken warning came back to me, “If you ever get pregnant, don’t come here, because you would not be allowed in this house.” Not knowing where to turn, I felt isolated, powerless, and frightened.

In the mid 1970s, Roe v. Wade was still new, and abortion doctors were hard to find. If I’d still lived in Atlanta, I bet you could’ve directed me to the right doctor, despite your anti-abortion activism. If I’d told you about the pregnancy, would you have acknowledged responsibility? Probably not, because in your mind, there had been no rape. So I did not ask. I would not risk your denigration. During my week of agony over the toughest decision of my life, you had a normal week, treating potential clients to lavish lunches. While I frantically tried to find a place where I might end this nightmare, you were named one of the Best Insurance Agents in Georgia.

Although I had no close friends in Boston, I eventually got the name of a woman who set up the appointment for an abortion. I took the subway to the hospital, hoping I’d feel well enough to take it back to the graduate dorm. After paying for the abortion, I had no money for a taxi. Like a criminal, I arrived at the hospital after hours and went to an unmarked back entrance. A nurse unlocked the door, took my cash, and led me into a small room. After giving me a hospital gown to change into, she told me to lie on the table and put my feet in the stirrups. She
said I wouldn’t have to wait long.

You should’ve been the one in that room, with your huge feet forced into those stirrups, lying flat on your back, helpless, humiliated—like I’d been December 27th. Like I had to be again, while you spent the day charming people, offering them a seat on that horrid couch. You should’ve suffered the indignity of a doctor who said nothing, who made no eye contact before plunging his hands inside you.

I wish you had experienced the physical pain of the procedure, had been overwhelmed by despair afterward. I wish you’d been the one crying quietly in the deserted waiting room, the target of the doctor’s contempt when he walked by and said, “Why are you crying now? You got rid of it.” In my shattered state, I felt I deserved that comment—but you were the guilty one. And he did have a point: the ordeal was over. Or so I thought.

Would it make you proud to know your effect on my life didn’t end there? How would you feel if you knew I’d attempted suicide, to escape the bottomless shame? You probably wouldn’t feel any responsibility for my anguish. She was already unbalanced, you’d say. She wasn’t an innocent teenager. She should’ve been on the pill. And she did agree to go to my office.

This is the way it works, as true today as it was decades ago. Rapists get to walk away. They don’t have to make the agonizing decision if they get pregnant, don’t have to bear the pain and humiliation of an abortion. In cases where a woman is unable to get an abortion, the rapist is not the one forced to bear an unwanted child. Men stay in control of their bodies, with no disruption to the plans for their lives.

This story doesn’t end in tragedy. Because I could get an abortion, I went on to have the life I’d planned, to earn a doctorate and become the flute professor at a good university. I am happily married, with a son I adore. The nightmares ceased long ago. But I will never forget the experience, and it has only deepened my belief in a woman’s right to choose. I wish that belief had given me the courage to confront you. In that era, however, as seems increasingly true today, accusing you would only have heaped more shame on me. Who would side with the graduate student who got drunk and went to a man’s office, versus the much older, successful businessman, loving father of six?

You now live in the most exclusive senior care facility in the state. In your upper nineties, you no longer lead the charge for anti-abortion legislation, but I bet your grandchildren do. That is, unless one of them was raped and got pregnant.

If every woman and man who pushes anti-abortion legislation had to face the decision of whether to devote their lives to raising a rapist’s child, the abortion question would not seem so clear.

I am writing a memoir: should I use your real name?

-Ernestine Whitman

After playing flute professionally with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for five years, Ernestine Whitman became the flute professor at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she taught for thirty-three years. Her writing has appeared in Six Hens, Persimmon Tree, Jaden, Postscript, and most recently, The Ravens Perch (2023). Her memoir, Countermelodies, will be published by She Writes Press in September of 2024.