Male rape on the increase

Nov 23 2009 by Aidan Charles Marlborough-Perez, London Informer

Paul, 35, was raped by a man he met on a gay pick-up website this spring. In a brave, rare interview,he talks frankly about sex, power and why increasing numbers of men are accepting sexual assault as the norm

"IT WAS a Saturday night and I wanted to meet him at a neutral venue. Somehow he convinced me to invite him round to my flat.

There were drugs involved and he was constantly mollifying me; persuading me to take them. We had sex - the website we met through is for a particular fetish. But when I said I wanted to go to bed, he started to become weird and aggressive. From that moment I knew I just wanted to be rid of this guy, but I didn't find the strength to do it. Eventually, he calmed down and we went to sleep. It was when we woke up the next morning that he raped me.

For reasons I'm still not entirely clear about I allowed him to stay in my company for another 12 hours after the rape. We went out, had dinner, and he tried to persuade me to get into a relationship with him.

There was no question that I shouldn't be submissive to him, he was trying to wear me down. Finally he left, and I went home. It sounds ridiculous but in a sense I 'forgot' that he raped me, I had put it out of my mind as much as possible.

I woke up crying on Monday morning.

I sat down and told myself 'that really happened', it was a complete realisation of things I had to put aside the day before.

I had thought about what I would do or say if I was ever in that situation but, when it came to it, I wasn't decisive.

I couldn't believe I had slept in the bed where it happened.

I went to work, but had a panic attack on the way in. I got through the day somehow, but it was very clear to me that I needed to speak to someone.

On the Tuesday, I called The Havens and spoke to a nurse. They were amazing, they just listened as this outpouring of memories - some as flashbacks - and pain came out. We talked about what steps I wanted to take, involving the police and that kind of thing - I still wasn't convinced that what had happened to me was important enough.

The second time I came back to The Havens was harder. I was coasting one minute and screaming the next. It's a crisis time that's very difficult to describe... I was up and down, I was trying to understand what had happened.

Once I decided to involve the police I was impressed that they believed me from the start. I was desperate to get some control somehow, so even that little decision of asking for a gay officer to interview me felt like something. Eventually, I gave an official statement, which was one of the hardest conversations I've ever had to have.

It was a long session, recorded on camera. I'm normally quite articulate and able to express myself, but it was very difficult for me and I kept breaking down. I had to go into details about the sex, and the rape. But the police believed me and sent forensic officers to my house.

He was arrested, but denied it wasn't consensual. Three months later the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute. They felt, probably rightly, that a jury wouldn't believe me given the circumstances and told me it was better not to put me through a long trial if the chances of gaining a conviction were slim.

I am angry and I want some kind of justice.

Everything that had happened to me was about taking control away from me, consciously or not. So the emphasis at The Havens was about allowing me to have control, talking at my own pace.

I come here now to talk about how I'm feeling... to get some hold on what happened and what's still happening inside my head.

I'm not somebody who takes the passive role. I'm a man. I want to be treated as an equal - sexually and emotionally. This person tried to take that away.

I know that guy is still picking up men on the gay scene.

But sexual assault is something that is being normalised among gay men; the lines are blurred. There's an unhealthy culture building up to do with sexual roles and dynamics and people are being raped and not reporting it.

There's a sense of 'just pull your pants up and leave', no one is speaking out, despite the fact the choices they are making are leading them into great physical and psychological damage.

Safe sex is about physical and mental health, but no one wants to talk about that, throw in drugs and a really sexualised culture and, even if they recognise that they have been assaulted, few people think they have a right to report it.

The point is, rape isn't about sex, it's about Tawny Kitaen.

There's a stigma among gay men about male rape, but I can tell you it's happening across London."