My Rapist “Friended” Me on Facebook

Trigger Warning
The title is pretty much exactly how it sounds. It’s ridiculous. It’s horrible. It’s scary. And now I’m just…I don’t know.
Some quick background: I was raped 9 years ago by this guy. I guess one could call it date rape. He was a guy I knew; I liked him at the time. It was just oral that he forced me to do (as if that makes it better somehow). It took me a while to realize it was rape. I never reported it or told many people about it until much later, like several years later.
But it doesn’t really matter exactly how the rape happened or anything because the point is he raped me. He’s a rapist. It happened.
And he knows it. I confronted him about it several years ago. He still thought he had done nothing wrong and I was “overreacting” and “being a bitch.” It didn’t matter. I wasn’t scared of him anymore, I just hated him. I guess in my mind my hate made me strong, that’s why I wasn’t afraid. And I wanted him to know that I knew what he had done to me. I knew. In my mind that was important for him to know. Like he didn’t have power over me anymore because I knew what he was: a rapist.

Over the years I had moved back to the area of the rape (back to my hometown) and unfortunately my rapist was still living here as well. Like I said, I wasn’t scared of him (I knew he wouldn’t try to find me or anything, he hadn’t tried to contact me for 4 years). Plus it was not as if he knew where I lived. I just hoped he would somehow go away. It would just help me be a little more at peace with my home, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, finally I heard good news. He just packed up his stuff randomly one day and moved to Colorado. I don’t know why he did it, and I didn’t care why. But he was gone. That’s what mattered. My home was my own again. I felt free. This was about a month ago.
Then he did it. I got the Facebook request. “Your Rapist would like to be added as one of your friends. Confirm? Ignore?” I got the email notification while I was at work, and I almost fainted. He had never tried to contact me in any way before and now this. I felt suddenly like he was right there watching me. I didn’t feel safe, and this wasn’t even a problem when he still lived in my town! I wanted to throw up. I felt like crying. My hands were shaking. I immediately closed the email and decided I couldn’t even look at it then. It was too much. Seeming his name printed there right in front of me, with his little picture icon smiling at me, like he was taunting me, made me ill.
Finally today I got up the guts to sign into Facebook and ignore his request, but I still feel vulnerable in a way that I haven’t felt since I realized I was raped. I hate it. I feel like he has to be doing this to exert some form of control over me. He knows he raped me. I told him so. Why would he be doing this? He can’t honestly think we’re “friends.” The only reason he could be doing this would be to torment me in some way. He moved away and so he still needs some way to get at me. And it’s working. There’s really nothing I can do. I thought about sending him a scathing message saying something along the lines of “how dare you” but what would be the point? I think he’d actually get off on that. I know it’s best to just ignore it and make him think I don’t even care about him at all anymore. He’s not enough of a concern to illicit a response from me.
But I’m still feeling scared. I feel like he’s watching me yet he’s hundreds of miles away. I feel unsafe. And I’m just upset too because he made me start thinking about all this all over again and while I know that I’ll never get over the rape it’s always nice when I can just go a little while without it effecting every aspect of my world. But now it’s crept back in. Now it’s very much present again.
I was raped 9 years ago, but it feels like it happened just the other day…