Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [9]
I have a million other details, but you will understand if I want to keep them to myself. I want to [e]ffect change at the University and by sharing these things with you, the perpetrator, it may give them power to squelch my cause.
I simply suppose I do not know why we are addressing this now, except for the fact that it’s part of your recovery and I cannot fault you for working on yourself. I think in recovery they don’t really teach you about how your admission now causes turbulence in the victim/survivor’s life. From my discussions with people in the program, I hear that addicts on your “step” just want forgiveness, neatly tied up in a bow. Know this: you and I will never be friends. I forgave you long ago. But I don’t wish to keep delving into this, and now, I have no choice. I did not get to choose being raped and having my virginity taken from me so brutally. Now, I don’t get to choose having this wound reopened. Everything is on your terms. I have a small child who needs me to be happy and calm and serene and this is not really going well for me. I am angry that your account is so very different than mine, which is burned into my memory as if it happened yesterday. But, then again, you were a heavy user at that time and I will not trust your account and [will] stay true to my own. I was a mere child of 17, but not stupid. And, I was rather sober.
Nor do they prepare you for the consequences, if any. This is very difficult for me. I feel raped and betrayed a second time. I have the most difficulty in your careful choice of words—there’s a whole lot of PR spin, or so it seems. “Harm,” “what I did to you,” et al. don’t really feel like coming clean to me. I suppose it’s a difficult word to utter or even write, for you.
There. It is done. I have told him he’s forgiven, which he is, and I have the feeling that’s all he’s really after. He doesn’t want to know about me, who I am, who I was, who I have become because of and despite what he did to me. I wish I could better express how hurtful and frightening it is to hear from him, and tell him how painfully wrong he is about what happened.
I crawl into bed beside my husband, where I begin to cry. I tell him everything about the e-mails. Mike props himself up on one elbow, stares intently at me, his expression changing from sympathy to anger to fear in the time it takes for me to sputter out what is happening. He holds me and breathes with me. I look up at him and see tears in his eyes. Beebe has hurt him as well. Once Mike falls asleep, I get out of bed and pace, unable to sleep, as usual. I have a hunch Beebe knows that we are at an impasse and that he is doing more harm than good. I step into my office, not an hour later that November night.
He has fired back.
Dear Liz,
I want to make clear that I’m not intentionally minimizing the fact of having raped you. I did. And I understand how our now differing accounts have evoked an angry conflict within you.
He says he doesn’t know what more to say. He takes full responsibility, and is not trying to convince me of anything.
It seems that I’m actually doing more harm than good, which is not what I want to do. This wall in our dialogue saddens me. I hope it is only temporary … If you have any further suggestions, please let me know.
Best to You Always,
Will
I feel validation, but also deep pain. I have lost all desire to find out who this person is, and if I can’t trust his version of events, I can’t trust anything he says. I am broken. In this moment I do not know what the future will hold, nor how long the road ahead will be.
CHAPTER 2
High Ambitions
When I headed off to the University of Virginia in 1984, I am certain there was no more excited student in my matriculating class than I. The valedictorian of my all-Catholic girls’ school, I had been accepted to several good schools. My parents were extremely proud of me: I was going to be the first in my family to attend college. The University of Virginia had not been my parents’ first choice, since it was far away from our home in