I've done a lot of thinking. I do want to share what happened 5 years ago. Running the risk that people won't believe me, I'm going to tell my truth. Everything I say is the truth.
I was groomed, sexually harassed, manipulated, gaslit and stalked by my high school coach.
I was 14 when I met him, which is likely when the grooming started. It is for that reason my therapist says this was considered child abuse and needed to be reported to DCFS. She also said it is probable that he groomed other children, as most of the time that is the case.
For me, the grooming was rather intense. I was brought between him and his wife, stalked, and not so subtly pushed towards being in a relationship with him. When it was clear I was never going to be interested, he made me promise that we would stay "forever friends," which he reminded me of and asked for reassurance about almost everyday thereafter, all the while trying to convince me that age gaps in relationships don't matter "if you really love each other." To put it into perspective, he was in his 50s.
He once asked me what my biological name used to be (I was adopted), then before I could tell him, he blurted it out. He then told me not to tell my parents.
He had another job and during one summer (the summer before I left for college) he was working on a neighbor's house. He would sit outside in his car, wait for me to get home from work as witnessed by my dad, sometimes confront me and sometimes only watch me. That summer I never felt safe walking out onto my front porch.
The stalking continued even into my freshman year of college. He once followed me out to a meet in Minnesota (I'd gone with my college team), with the excuse that one of my high school teammates needed more competition- but we'd never travelled east for high school meets before. He was also wearing an SUU shirt when he surprised me with his presence, saying it was his "lucky race day shirt" because my high school teammate had won every race he wore the shirt at (which had been all of them that season up to that point). He literally could've cared less about SUU until I signed with them. There were many more inappropriate instances. The only reason I put up with what was going on was because I was convinced I needed him in order to be a fast runner.
I was never sexually assaulted, though I most certainly was scared that he'd take it too far one day. I would take measures to ensure I was never alone with him, and yet he always seemed to find his way around them.
When I started skipping out on practices, he used strong manipulation to guilt me into coming back. He would emotionally abuse me at practice by calling out my efforts to distance myself from him in front of other teammates. He also said many jokes that were of a sexual nature.
He would often give us rides to and from practice, which was against a rule at the high school. He said that he was okay doing it because his son was on the team and he would act as a parent at those points. Except he kept giving us rides after his son had graduated. This is what led to many instances of me being alone with him in a car (I didn't get my license until I was 18- I was a late bloomer lol). It was during one of these that he touched me- first on the back of the neck, next on my thigh, and I was genuinely terrified that he might attempt a sexual assault. Thankfully, he didn't.
My therapist said that he raped me in all senses except for physical. It is termed emotional rape. Sexual rape was the only step left in the grooming process.
The effects of the abuse have lingered even into today. I still find myself worrying about what he's going to do if he finds out I spoke out against him. It was very much a pattern that he'd find some way to explain any of his bad behavior to others and I'd be left questioning myself, defeated. I don't want this to go that way so I'm going to try really, really hard to stand my ground and keep on telling my story. While I don't want to cause harm to anyone including him, I do feel as though not talking about it could allow him to get away with what he did and continue to do it to other unsuspecting girls.
There is much more to the story, so many more details. But for the purposes of this blog, I've tried to keep it short and to the point.
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