Nick

Dear Nick,

Let me tell you what happened in more detail. This is what she told me on that first terrible day when this all began a few months ago and over the last few months as she's dealt with the feelings.

She met this man at the Reading Festival - and he is a man - in his 20's - called Joe. He flattered her and praised her looks, her body, and he showed an interest in her at a time when her relationship with Alex was failing. Alex fell asleep in his and Grace's tent and Grace was tempted to go and sit with Joe outside his tent next door. He gave her alcohol - Grace's first ever - and he got her drunk. Deliberately. He then took her for a walk to the area behind all the tents, She said she wanted to go back. He refused and tried to kiss her. She said no. He wouldn't listen. He got on top of her and pinned her down. She told me he was so heavy. My heart breaks to think of her struggling beneath him and being drugged into limpness and ineffectuality. She was too intoxicated to fight him off and anyway, he was a big man with something terrible on his mind and even if she'd been sober, there would have been nothing she could do. He ignored her. He didn't use a condom. He took her virginity. Seems he took a whole lot more than that.

She went back to her tent. The next morning he smiled at her. Laughed at her. Tried to get her to be mates again. Behaved as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She took herself to the medical tent and got the morning after pill. Brave, sensible, thoughtful, frightened 15 year old girl. When she got back to London, she went to the Brook clinic in Brixton and got all the STI tests done. All by herself without me to lean on. She was too ashamed to tell me. She thought what happened was all her fault. That she should never have drunk the alcohol. That she should have fought harder. She blames herself entirely. Intellectually she knows NO MEANS NO but emotionally, she feels she is to blame. The guilt is overwhelming her.

I have bought her books on date rape. I have talked to her. I have taken her to counsellors. She would tell any other girl that rape is never the victim's fault. NEVER. But she can't apply that to herself. When her eating disorder was in its infancy, 3 months or so ago (such a short time for my baby's life to be so radically altered) she used to tell me she wanted to make herself small and unattractive so no man ever found her sexy again. (That man kept telling her how great her body was.) But the anorexia has grown two heads and a mind of its own now and it has little to do with rape or ugliness or sexual safety. It's just about control and fear of everything,

Please - PLEASE - don't try to discuss this with her. I know you won't but I have to say it again. It's of the utmost importance that you are strong and normal for her, Just normal, affable, loving, friendly, funny Dad. She needs normality and she needs to deal with this her own way. It would set her back terribly if she thought she had distressed you, if she learned that this knowledge had hurt you. I know she wouldn't be able to cope with that. I know it will be hard - that you'll want to crush her to your chest and never let her go when you see her tomorrow. Please be strong and don't let tears leak from your eyes or let a tremble into your voice or let your gaze rest on her sadly. She'll know. And it will devastate her. I cry every day in the shower with the radio blasting so she can't hear me. Months of crying now. Still she hears me and reaches out her hand to me and we hold each other and I feel her bones creaking beneath her skin and I wonder how I'll go on.

Tears are blurring my eyes now.
See you tomorrow.