It was New Year’s Eve 2012 and I had been through a difficult year. My father had died, my marriage had broken down and I had been ill for a week. I was feeling very sorry for myself. I had drunk a bottle of wine and then I suddenly thought, ‘This isn’t you Juliet’.
Back then I was big, strong and the life of the party. I was working as a teaching assistant and a swimming instructor. I loved my work. I loved my life. So I texted a friend and we agreed to meet at a club in Manchester, but then she changed her mind so I decided to go on alone because it was a club I’d been to many times and somewhere I felt safe.
I remember sitting at the bar drinking and I remember being given a shot, but I don’t know who bought it for me. After this, I can’t remember very much. My memory is blank for the next two hours. All I know is that I was chucked out of the club – I had never been ejected from a club before – and the CCTV footage I have seen since showed me collapsed, unconscious, outside on the floor. The doormen just picked me up and moved me out of the way. I still feel very angry with them. I wish they had called the police or an ambulance. I would rather have spent a night in a cell accused of being drunk and disorderly than being raped in a dirty, filthy alleyway.
The next thing I remember is waking up at home feeling very dazed. I didn’t know how I’d got there. As the day went on I started remembering things. I recall a woman and two men I had been talking to in the club finding me outside and getting a taxi to take me home. I kept on getting horrible flashbacks. As the day went on I began to start aching all over my body. The back of my head hurt where my hair had been pulled and I had a lot of pain in my chest, between my legs and my arms and inner thighs were very bruised. I was crying and really freaking out. I didn’t know why I was hurting so much. I ended up calling the police. I said I thought I’d been robbed and possibly sexually assaulted.
From the moment I called them, I was believed. No one questioned my account or made me feel bad for being drunk. No one at any point from either the police or the St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Manchester, where I was sent to have a forensic medical exam, ever doubted me. After I had swabs taken at St Mary’s I was interviewed by the police.
In the end, the DNA taken from my swabs matched with a man on the national DNA database. He was taken to court for rape. My video interview was played and I was questioned from behind a screen. I thought it would be traumatic, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d imagined. There wasn’t much I could say due to my lack of remembering anything. He was found guilty and sentenced to seven years and nine months. I was told outside the court and I was overwhelmed with relief. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d been found not guilty. The weird thing was when I later saw a picture of the man who raped me I didn’t feel a thing. He was a stranger to me.
I have had different reactions from everyone. The police and the staff at St Mary’s were supportive and sympathetic. However I have had friends and family who are angry about what happened. I think they are upset, wondering why I went out on my own. They ask how I got in to that state but I can’t explain it. There is no doubt in my mind that my drink was spiked. It happens all the time and the evidence leaves the body very quickly.
The reason I have gone public with my story is because I want people to know the reality of what happens to women who are raped. I was a 39-year-old woman who went out on New Year’s Eve. I did nothing wrong. I did not deserve to be dragged down a dirty alley and raped, yet what happened to me has changed my life. I am not the woman I was. I don’t need to feel ashamed or hide my face, and neither do other women who have been victims of rape. I want people to hear my story, even though I know some will judge me. But a drugged, unconscious woman is not a consenting one.
Now, I have two choices: to be a long-term victim, or learn to live with it. Outside I am the same Juliet, but inside I am a completely altered person. I have had to fight to get a sense of normality back in to my life and I want to help spread the message that if you are the victim of rape you will be believed.