Quiet Mountain Essays

Copyright ©, 2005

Raped by an Angel
by
Katarina Tepesh

One day, in the college cafeteria while ordering French fries and soda, I met another student, a Puerto
Rican named Angel.

"I remember seeing you last week.  You wore the same blue outfit," he said, staring at my legs. True,
short on money, I always wore the same clothes.  My hair was long because I could not afford a
haircut, so I just let it grow like most kids in the 60s.

Skinny and tall, I thought Angel was handsome, very dark.  Wearing jeans and a plain t-shirt, he
appeared friendly, talkative, speaking in Spanish to other students.   He asked me out on a date, but I
said no, because I was only 18 and still felt like a child.

The next week, I saw Angel again.  He asked me about my family and I haltingly told him how my
parents were divorced.

"Mine too," he exclaimed and then corrected himself.  "Ah, uh, actually, my parents were never
married.  I am an out-of-wedlock child born to a woman whose lover was already married, with his
own family.  There was a lot of trouble.  My mother is light skinned, like you, with blue eyes. My
father is very dark, actually black.  You see, I look like him."

"Did you ever meet your father?" I asked.

"Not really.  He never acknowledged me.  But one time on the street, my mother pointed him out to
me and said 'Mira, mira. You look just like him.' "  When Angel talked about his difficult life, I
assumed the two of us had a lot in common.  

When he asked me about my family, I said, "My family just immigrated to the United States last
year, in 1968.  In Eastern Europe, I was one of many children in a troubled family."

I was so ashamed to tell Angel the truth, how my father was a violent alcoholic and my mother, a
deeply religious Catholic, was submissive and obedient to my father and God.  In fact, my sisters and
brothers, along with our mother, had to escape from our abusive father.  Then, finding ourselves
practically homeless, without money or jobs, we had to escape the abusive communist country that
failed to help us.

I felt I was alone without any support and could never tell anyone how, within three months of our
arrival in America, my family split up and everyone went their own way.  I was living with other
students, even sharing a bedroom, since I had very little money.  I worked during the day at a full-
time job, doing menial factory work and attending evening classes at City College, taking English
101, communication and history.

Angel and I kept running into each other in the cafeteria, week after week.  One time, I could swear
he was waiting for me at the exit.  He walked me home.  When Angel started to talk about sex, I told
him that I had never had a boyfriend.  I was a shy teenager, insecure, with low self-esteem due to the
verbal abuse I received from my father. Considering how hateful my father had behaved towards us,
I did not feel comfortable with or trusting towards men.

One evening, instead of dropping me off, Angel insisted on coming into the apartment I shared with
three other students.  No one else was home.  We talked for a while and then it was time for him to
leave.  Instead, he approached me; I thought to kiss me, which he did.  Suddenly, Angel grabbed me
by the shoulder and violently threw me on the floor.  A scuffle broke out.  He was pulling my clothes
off, ripping them.  Being very rough, he soon overpowered me.  Angel was much bigger and stronger.

Angel got on top of me and I tried hard to get him off.  I started to cry and put my arms up to stop
him.  I said, "No," but Angel covered my mouth with his hand and hissed for me to be quiet.  I
kicked, but Angel used his legs to hold mine apart.

I screamed and called for help.  The rape was violent.  It hurt and I was bleeding profusely, crying
hysterically and shaking from trauma.  When it was over, I crawled to the bathroom, where I shut
the door and quickly locked it.  I took a shower by mostly sitting instead of standing.  Still trembling,
I found bruises around my neck and arms.

Much later, when I opened the bathroom door, Angel was gone.  He had cleaned up the evidence, all
the blood from the floor.  I thought about calling the police, wondering if they would they help me.  
Back in communist country the police were used for political purposes.  They were not there to help
women or children in need.

Feeling bitter, I thought to myself, 'Why are there eight million people in New York City, but no one
heard me?'

I thought about how back in communist Yugoslavia, my parents forced us to go to Catholic Church
to learn catechism, where the priest preached how angels are there to protect us.

I felt so humiliated.  I remembered how rough and violent my father behaved towards my mother.  
She was always pregnant, and now here I was violated.

I never called the police or went to the emergency room! I was petrified of being pregnant.  Terribly
upset, I could not sleep and had no one to talk to.  I felt totally isolated.  I could not call my family,
knowing they would blame me.  Growing up in a deeply dysfunctional family, they always blamed
me for everything bad that happened.  This was an old pattern in my family and it never changed.  I
could just hear my mother's voice: 'What did you do? Why did you talk to him?'  

A few days later, I finally summoned enough courage to confide to another student, Suzana, who
was a year or so older, and also an immigrant from Hungary.  When I told her, with great hesitation,
that Angel raped me, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "That's life! Guess what happened to me?  
I escaped from Hungary with my boyfriend and as soon as we reached Austria, and stopped in a
motel, he raped me."

Like me, Suzana never called the police, knowing that in communist dictatorship the police were not
there to protect women and children.  Like me, she had been petrified of getting pregnant.  Suzana
had an abortion and spent a year in a refugee camp in Austria before coming to America.

I was luckier.  Although terribly afraid and nervous for weeks, I went alone to a clinic for a pregnancy
test.  It was negative! Just as I was walking out of the clinic to go back to work, I finally got my period
and felt relieved.

For the next thirty years, I kept quiet about the date rape and told no one until the bloody collapse of
the communist federation of Yugoslavia in the wars of the 1990s, which cost more than 200,000 lives.
The Serbs, to "ethnically cleanse" the Muslims through forced pregnancy, violated some 20,000 to
50,000 women.  

In New York, I was invited to a fundraiser where we collected money for rape survivors.  Each
contributor received a t-shirt with the slogan, "Jas am tvoj svjedok!....I am your witness!"

The slogan referred to Serb perpetrators denying the systematic rapes.

"Women's bodies," said the speaker at the fundraiser, "historically have been and continue to be the
source of great trauma, ridicule, torment, and violence.  Women from former Yugoslavia specifically
have witnessed or grievously experienced first hand the use of women's bodies as a tool of war."   

It's taken me forever to write this article, because it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do.  Some
people say that silence is golden, and it is in certain instances.  Like for rapists.  Rapists thrive on
women like me who keep silent.

Contributor's Notes...

Katarina Tepesh once lived in Slovenia and Croatia; she now lives in New York City and facilitates a
monthly Croatian Book Club.   Ms. Tepesh is a member of The  International Women's Writing Guild
(www.iwwg.org)  Her article, "Yearning for Freedom in a Land of the Free", appeared in The Tapestry
magazine.

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