My Dream Job: Part Two

My Dream Job: Part Two

Hello and welcome to Raped 25 Years. At this time, I share with you my journey to heal from sexual assault and abuse. Don’t forget to stay to the end, in order to enjoy my gem of positivity. 

 This is part two in this three-part series. I am continuing to take you further into my “dream job” experiences. This part carries on directly from where we stopped last post.  

After two months Jacob asked to be moved to another farm. Now I had no protection against Derek. He started to drive around the farm looking for me when he finished his assigned duties. Derek tried to catch me alone. Sometimes I was alone. Then he went further than touching. He became very jealous if I was sent to work with the other men. Especially new worker Max.  Max became a good and loyal friend. He told me to say something about what Derek was doing. 

In the mean time, Derek started openly raping me. He did it at break times but no one said anything. So neither did I. But I started to avoid break times. Derek started catching me in the cool cells when I was sent to clean all sheds. I couldn’t get away in the cramped space and he committed the same traumatic abusive rapes as Jacob had. Derek laughed as he hurt me. 

I made a random comment to a family member, Jack,  that I didn’t like being hugged by Derek or having his hands on me. Jack gave me an ultimatum. Either I told Mr Jones, or he would. I felt angry with Jack for not really giving me a choice. The next day I was scared of telling Mr Jones, as I knew I would be blamed for being trouble. So instead I told the assistant manager, Stan. I am too afraid to tell Mr Jones. I don’t mention things have gone beyond the odd feel and hugging. Even Jack didn’t know about that. 

The same day Mr Jones called me into the small office. He typed out my formal complaint. He then told me he knew I would be trouble. I felt very guilty for having spoken up at all. Max stood up for me and verified my complaint. Derek was moved to another farm. It was the same one Jacob was on and I got a perverse kind of pleasure in knowing that. I found out Derek did the same thing when he worked as a manager in a fast food restaurant as he had done to me.

After Derek was moved he started leaving notes on my car. It was all my fault. I was ruining his marriage. When he and his wife started phoning me at home and threatening me, I moved out of  Jack’s home into rented accommodation. Anything to get away from Derek. I needed to keep Jack and his family safe. The threats only stopped when Derek was transferred to one of the farms over 470 miles (about 750km) away, at his own request.

One day I was going into a shed. Mr Jones’ manager Bob hit me on the back of the head. I blacked out for a minute. When I came to my overalls were undone. He had his hands in my pants. I was too dazed. I couldn’t struggle. He savagely raped me, whilst I was on the floor of a shed, frozen in terror. When he finished humiliating my inner self, Bob told me if I said anything Jack would lose his job, and I wouldn’t be believed anyway. I increased my weight loss efforts, trying desperately to become invisible to the other workers.

Then Bob lost his drivers license due to drunk driving. He was demoted into a manager position on a single farm. Everything at work was reshuffled. Mr Jones moved up the promotional ladder into Bob’s vacated position.  Stan became my manager. His brother-in-law, Alex drove trucks. One day Stan talked to me. Since I  lived in a whole house I rented on my own, I needed to take Alex in as a housemate. If I didn’t I would lose my job and it would have made things difficult for Jack to keep his. I didn’t want Jack to lose his job because of me. And so Alex moved in.

As you can see, my “dream job” was well and truly becoming my worst nightmare. I wanted to stick at my work, in the naive hope that all these perpetrators would change if I did something different. I took on the blame of the traumatic and criminal acts that these perpetrators violated me with. But the blame was not my burden to carry. The burden of blame belonged with these perpetrators.

In my journey of healing, I am needing to learn to put the blame where it really belongs. Not with me. Not with you the reader. But the criminal perpetrators of such insidious abusive trauma. It is with them alone the fault of the situation lies.

And now for your gem of positivity. It is attributed to C. Kennedy, and is perfect for this post:

“Don’t judge yourself for what others did to you”.

My hope is that in my journey of healing, I will be able to apply this quote to my unresolved feelings of false blame and guilt. Because the feeling of needing to carry that burden is a false one. It was never mine to carry. And it’s not yours either.

Thank you for joining me in this second part of my three-part look at my experience in my “dream job”. Please leave a comment on how you are releasing your false burden. Don’t forget to return next time, as I conclude this series of  sharing my experiences in this particular situation with you. And until next time, breathe - and believe.