And while at the beginning I felt like I had the upper hand in the situation-I was the one who was out and comfortable in my sexuality, right?-after each time we met became more secretive and more dirty, I began to feel secretive, dirty, and most of all shameful.
We’d meet surreptitiously in dark and make out in the cold British weather on a park bench before venturing back to his place to have sex. I didn’t tell him that I’d never had sex with someone before instead, saturated with vodka and inflated by nerves, I was swept up in the motions.įor the next year, we’d hook-up on and off, usually at 3 a.m. All I know is that one moment we were talking and the next minute, well. The minutiae of exactly how things developed from us being together in that room to us having slightly unsuccessful sex in a bathroom in a different corridor have since escaped me. He was clearly intoxicated, but it was a party after all and who was I, quite drunk myself, to judge. It was late (or early, depending on your outlook on the world) when I was joined by the boy who was living in the room next to mine, way back on the other side of the building. I can remember, although I'd had some drinks, sitting alone in my friend’s room on a single bed, the mattress overly springy and with a coarse plastic coating, attempting to stream a song over our dorm’s spotty Internet connection. The whole thing went down near the end of my freshman year at a party, at which people from the whole dorm floor were drunk and celebrating, carelessly streaming in and out of each other’s rooms, following the various different pop songs until one room took their fancy. I was at college, living in dorms, and the experience-aside from the usual horrifying awkwardness and somewhat spontaneity of the occasion-was completely and utterly unremarkable aside from one thing: the guy I slept with identified as straight. “We hope the sentence today provides the opportunity for the victim and her family, who have remained so composed and dignified throughout the legal process, to start to look forward.I was 19 when I first had full-on sex with another man. Police praised the victim and her family for their “remarkable courage and strength”.ĭet Insp Steve Davies, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said: “Understandably, this case has had an impact on everyone involved, including my investigation team, most of whom are parents themselves. “He feels very clearly remorseful for the hurt that he has caused, not just to the girl but her family,” Richard Smith said. Jurors could not reach a verdict on the rape charge, which the boy admitted on the first day of his re-trial in July.Ī defence lawyer said the boy, who has autism, had an “extraordinarily difficult” childhood and had acted “impulsively”.
He was initially charged with attempted murder, but acquitted by a jury at his first trial in March. “You used a great deal of force on her and you were aware of the impact of your actions.” “You took steps to inflict the most damage you could on a young person much smaller than you,” she told the boy. Independent Minds Events: get involved in the news agenda