I’m a 27 year old woman and when I was 15 I had a s***** encounter, the consequences of which I am still dealing with today. It occurred in that sometimes murky borderline between consent and r***.

As I said, it happened when I was 15. I was spending the weekend at a friend’s house. She lived with both of her parents who had been married for several years (the girl was my age) but had fallen on difficult times since her mother was left quadriplegic after an incident on an interstate highway when a large stone fell off a truck and crashed through her windshield while she was driving a little over a year prior. As you can imagine this caused considerable stress in the family and even affected their daughter’s school attendance. It was under these circumstances that she and I became friends and we had known each other for about two months and this was the first time I met her parents and stayed in their home.

It was Saturday evening, the second night of my stay, and I was simultaneously excited about the evening I was to spend with my friend and slightly melancholy that I would have to go home the next day. Please understand, I had a very good home life up to this point; I was not dreading my return to an abusive or dirt-poor family; rather that I was merely sad that the adventure of spending time as a teenager with a teenage friend would soon come to an end.

Since