(Moderator’s Note: This story briefly mentions rape.)
I was an intern at Teen Mania’s Honor Academy over ten years ago. To this day, I know I have blocked out many of the situations that occurred there. I loved and hated that year and still do. I find it so sad that for each beautiful memory I have, it is tainted with one of pure pain.
While being an intern, I confessed to a woman in leadership that I had been nearly raped when I was 17. I was told that my impure thoughts had made it happen. I also confessed that I had masturbated on and off through my high school years and this woman in leadership told me that because of my doing that to my own body, that I had caused this man twice my age to attempt to rape me. She told me that I might always be sexually scarred and never be able to have a healthy relationship with a man unless I continually asked God to forgive me for touching myself and for making a grown man touch me.
I had not thought of this moment for so many years, but as I remembered it, I felt myself going back to that place as if it were yesterday. The yearning for acceptance, for someone to hear me and understand and for them to help me. It didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped it would. Looking back, I cannot believe I believed her, but I did. I am thankful though, that I don’t believe her anymore.
