Rape, abortion, birth control, gender roles: all of a sudden conservative men running for office can’t seem to talk enough about these issues. People have been fighting about abortion for many years, and recently everyone seems to want to talk about rape, too. Legitimate rape. Rape as a part of God’s plan. Girls who “rape easy.”

The absurdities I’ve heard this election year never seem to end. And it’s triggering memories inside me; things I have spent the last 26 years trying to forget.

I was raped. It happened in 1986 at a small Mennonite college in the same red state where I reside today. I remember how the situation was handled, and then listen to the things conservatives have been saying about rape now–in 2012–and I think, “My God, nothing has really changed. People are just being more up front about their crazy beliefs and other people are actually supporting them in their craziness!”

What happened to me would most certainly NOT have met Todd Akin’s definition of “legitimate rape.” I made a lot of mistakes the night my rape took place.

But let me back up. Those who have never attended a tiny Mennonite college cannot fathom the environment. Everybody knows everybody else. If they don’t know you directly, they certainly know your parents or cousins or somebody who went to your grandma’s church a few times as a kid. There is a lot of connection. And there’s also a sense that some negative things just can’t happen in these places.

I was raised in a rural community on a farm in a happy home, surrounded by a loving and caring extended family. I led a very sheltered life and there were so many things that I did not know. My parents certainly did not know these things either, as they had grown up with similarly sheltered lives. Nobody got divorced. If there was any incest in my family (and I’m pretty sure there wasn’t) nobody knew about it. Nobody drank. Everybody helped everyone out. The church family was caring and gave a sense of a larger community. Really, it was so idyllic that if I had not lived it I would not believe it possible for someone to have such a benign childhood as I did.

Sending me to a Mennonite College upon high school graduation made perfect sense to everyone. Though nobody expressed it, I think there were assumptions of safety and community that existed at Mennonite schools as opposed to secular schools. And even though I was very far away from home at this college, my family had a lot of faith in the Mennonite church community.

There is no naivete deeper than that of a young girl who has truly never known a “bad person” in her life. Couple that with a deep curiosity about certain “forbidden” activities (sex, drinking and dancing), a lack of experience with men (my high school boyfriend was extremely pure and that relationship was completely innocent), and this belief that all the Mennonites around were good people “like us.” No harm would come to me there.

And for my first two years of college, it didn’t. Oh, I experimented with drinking and was definitely in with the “wrong crowd” at this tiny school. I went out dancing frequently with other students at a nightclub in a larger city nearby. Of course the news of that behavior quickly traveled back to my parents 8 hours north. I received a letter from my father gently admonishing me for going to places that Christians ought not to go and doing things that Christians ought not to do. I was deeply ashamed because I could see how I had hurt him, but I was also young and rebellious so I didn’t alter my behavior.

Things became a bit messier my third year of college. I had a boyfriend and was too young and immature for the level of seriousness he wanted. Being “nonresistant” (haha), or in other words, incapable of asserting my needs and my feelings directly to him, I cheated on him. Immediately I confessed to him and he broke up with me. Even though I’d been feeling smothered in the relationship I was still heartbroken. At 20-years-old, still very naïve, I didn’t have many coping skills, so I spiraled down into a few months of drinking and promiscuity. Everyone in school knew that I was doing those things–it was a small place–but that did not matter to me. My “wrong crowd” friends liked me for being so rebellious and encouraged my misbehavior. A lot of them were doing similar activities on an even greater scale. Really, when I look at college students today I see that a lot of these activities were rather age-appropriate behavior. What do college students DO if not drink and have sex? But there was no context for that at this Mennonite College. We were supposed to be abiding by a code of conduct known as “The Covenant,” and if you got busted violating “The Covenant” they would fine you, call your parents, and even ship you home in disgrace.

One night in early November I was at a party in the dorms. Considering how strict the rules were, it still astounds me how much sex, drinking, and drug use went on in these dorms. I got drunk that night, like so many others, but that night I made a different choice. Instead of pairing up with some random guy from the party or going down to my dorm room to sleep it off, I headed across campus to the boys’ dorm. I was looking for my ex-boyfriend; I was sorry, I missed him, and I wanted to apologize to him.

The single sex dorms had strict visitation rules. People of the opposite gender were only supposed to be there during certain restricted hours. This rule didn’t faze me as I’d been in that dorm illegally plenty of times. I entered the building discreetly through a fire exit on the second floor and went to my ex-boyfriend’s room. I started to pound on his door. He didn’t drink or go to parties, and so I assumed he would be there asleep. I pounded just a little louder to wake him up. What I didn’t realize was that he was out of town visiting his grandparents who lived in another small Mennonite town nearby for the weekend. My pounding did not go entirely unnoticed, however. Adjacent to my ex-boyfriend’s room, the door creaked open. Out came two hulking individuals, obviously curious about the racket. I recognized them as two football players. Being drunk, naïve, at loose ends (and besides, I KNEW these two because I worked in the lunch line as my campus job), I began to chat with them. They invited me into their room to play cards and shut the door. I wasn’t worried in the least.

It is here that my recollections become hazy. I do remember leaving their room some hours later sobbing my eyes out. I remember going back to my dorm and taking a shower and scrubbing myself raw. I recall that by then it had gotten light outdoors and I was too upset to sleep so I tried to distract myself by reading the Sunday paper, which had just been delivered. Our dorm do-gooder came out of her room and found me there. She could see how upset I was and asked me what had happened. As if from a distance, I heard myself telling her that I had been raped by two football players. Until that sentence came out of my mouth I hadn’t even THOUGHT the word rape. All I knew was that something terrible had occurred, something that I very much did not want.

To this day I am not certain whether it was the effects of alcohol or the effects of trauma that have obscured my memories of the details. I remember flashes here and there but nothing linear. This proved to be a real problem for my credibility. Of course, the do-gooder insisted that I report the rape to school authorities. I was compliant at that point, and being in crisis I let her take over for me. The school authorities wanted me to contact the police. I refused. Somehow, even in the state I was in, I knew that was going to be a bad idea. Later, my parents were informed. My mother was alarmed and wanted me to get medical attention immediately. Somebody drove me to the local emergency room. I had NO idea what was in store for me there. They did a rape kit, which was a horrible, painful, and humiliating exam. The nurse told me that they needed to collect evidence, but I wasn’t stupid and knew there would be no evidence as I had taken the most thorough shower possible. Nevertheless, I complied. The hospital staff then told me that they were required to inform the police whenever somebody came into the ER claiming to have been raped. Next thing I knew I was talking to a detective.

My recollections of the next few days are hazy. Somebody decided it would be “safer” for me to go stay off campus in a Super 8 motel. Having sufficiently isolated me, the police began to try to wear me down. They would pound so loudly on the hotel room door. I would answer the door and they would ask to speak to me in the hall. They kept asking me to tell them one more time what had happened. It went on every half hour, all day and all night for at least two days. I had no sleep. I did not eat. I was completely traumatized. I had been separated from my support system of friends on campus. My parents were out of state. I couldn’t even remember completely what had happened, in which order, and when. The more they questioned me, the more confused I felt. Still, I was sticking to what little of my story I could remember. They turned up the heat: Was I sure? Did I want to ruin the lives of two innocent boys forever? Why was I doing this to them? Was it because one of them was black?

At some point I finally broke. I said I must have been mistaken. I must have imagined it. I must have misunderstood something. The boys had been telling the police that it had been a consensual encounter. Their explanation to the police was that the reason I’d been so upset was because I was worried about what my friends would think of me when the story got out. There were two of them and one of me. Their stories matched each other, while mine differed. Two against one means I was the one who was wrong. So I just agreed, said it never really happened that way, and I was free to go back to my dorm and finally get some sleep for the first time in many days.

The aftermath was brutal. Campus was divided over the issue. People who knew me well said they didn’t believe I would yell rape for the simple fact that I’d had a lot of men that year down in my dorm room and never shown the slightest bit of shame for having done so. Why would I suddenly start telling lies to cover what was for me, essentially, usual behavior? All the minority students on campus banded together to create a racial issue about it since one of the football players who raped me was, in fact, black. A campus feminist group befriended me and crusaded on my behalf, with little effect. Much was made by school authorities of my disobedience: the fact that I’d been drinking, was known to be promiscuous, and was in the boys’ dorm after hours. These things were all against the rules.

I was sent for counseling, not because I’d been traumatized, but because the school personnel concluded that I must certainly be mentally ill to have done such a terrible thing to our little campus community. I needed my campus job so I had to keep serving food to my rapists in the campus lunch line day after humiliating day. I never spit in their food even one time. The fact that I was taking the birth control pill at the time of the rape saved me from having to experience an unwanted pregnancy, but it was also widely used by my peers and the cops as evidence that I was a slut and therefore couldn’t possibly have been raped.

My parents wanted me to come home immediately. Their trust in that school had been shattered and they wanted me back in their protective arms. But I was stubborn and refused to admit defeat. I finished that school year and did my best to ignore the people who said horrible things to my face and behind my back. I didn’t do well in my classes because I had missed so many while the police were interrogating me at the Super 8. I had to drop some of them and ended the year on academic probation.

The following year I dropped out of school for a period of time. I moved home with my parents and worked as a waitress, spending some time healing. I returned to college at a large state university closer to my parents’ home. There was recognition on both our parts that I needed to be within easy driving distance of their home.

By then I had begun a romantic relationship with yet another Mennonite boy I had met during my years at the Mennonite school. When I finally got my bachelor’s degree I moved back to that stupid little town to marry him. I had completely underestimated the effect and trauma being there would have on me. Three years had passed since the rape and I had done my best to put it out of my mind, even convincing myself that it did not happen. Returning to that community ripped open old wounds immediately though. The first Sunday back my then-husband asked me to go to church with him. He had been telling me about this particular Mennonite church that he really enjoyed going to. The congregation was really cool, he said, more open minded and liberal than the people who attended the church he had grown up in. I was excited to finally go to that church with him. We arrived and the very first person I saw was the Dean of Students from that college. It all came flooding back: How he had been the first person I’d reported the rape to on campus; how he had believed me at first, until the rapists denied having done anything I had not wanted them to; the conversations he and I had about my responsibility for what had happened; how he had forced me into mental health counseling to fix my pathological behavior. I melted down into a full blown panic attack and ran out of that church as fast as I could. I never went back. My then-husband didn’t go back, either, as he didn’t want to upset me.

After that I was scared to go to any church in that town. I didn’t know WHO I might see from my past, or what they might remember about me. My job changed and I had to work with the same mental health center the school had sent me for counseling. I was in a state of panic, anxiety, and dread at all times. I began drinking again, developed an eating disorder, and began to cut myself. When I was accepted to grad school and he medical school, we were able to leave that town. It was such a relief. I think I would have died or gone crazy had we stayed there forever.

I’ve realized that the biggest loss I suffered through my rape experience was the loss of my faith, my community, and my sense of connection to my roots. Upon moving I remained very wary about going to any Mennonite churches. Who knew who would be there? I was almost pathologically frightened of going into one. I’m 46 now and still don’t go to church, though I definitely flirt with Mennonite culture. One of my good friends is the Mennonite pastor in my current town. I got to know her because we lived across the street from one another, and though I haven’t attended her church, I adore her. I read the Mennonite-related blogs on the Internet and befriend all the fringe Mennonite movements on Facebook. I believe I am still longing for my roots and heritage. The Mennonite belief system I was raised by appeals to me and fits in with my current values. Yet, if asked I say I am an agnostic, a secular humanist. I don’t go to church, even as my background calls to me.

When I was raped in 1986 I wouldn’t believe someone had they told me that the same attitudes about women and rape would be prevalent in our culture today. The politicians during the recent election saying all these comments about rape have no idea how triggering these comments have been to women who have been raped. She asked for it. She was a slut. She was drunk. She wasn’t a virgin. Sometimes she dressed seductively. All of these comments were true of me and reasons not to believe me when I was raped. They’re still unfortunately reasons to not believe women who are raped in 2012.

I don’t know what it’s like at those little Mennonite colleges today. I have no idea whether things are different than they were in my day. I hope they are. When I was at my lowest point, what I needed more than anything was for someone in authority to believe me, stick up for me, and help me get the support I needed to recover from my trauma. Some of my friends helped me through it, but the school, church, and Mennonite community turned their backs on me in every way. I believe there was pressure on the school to cover the incident up because they didn’t want Mennonite congregations to think that something like this could happen at our nice, little, safe Christian campus community.

I have categorically refused to talk about this experience for many years because it is still very painful. When you are systematically broken down by the police, you really begin to doubt your perceptions of reality. I have no doubt now that this was what they were trying to do. I just hope that attitudes about rape and women will change over time, and that through my story and other’s like it more women will be willing to speak out against the injustice they’ve experienced too.