You Are Not a Breakable Thing: A True Story of Rape & Rebellion

By Marie Mortimer

In a new city, oceans away from home, I was soft-spoken and starry-eyed. The blush of youth was still fresh on my cheeks. Underneath that tender surface was an impenetrably strong strata of myself that would soon be unearthed.

 

A gruelling journey took me from a violent loss of innocence in August 1992 to more horror than I will ever comprehend on a summer night six years later. When you climb out of the rubble of human-made catastrophe, it can feel like everything you once were is gone. That is not correct, though it takes some time to learn this. I lost my framework for believing in a safe world, but I found my character, something beyond the reach of anyone else's control. There was rebuilding to be done, but with wise guidance, I would do it.

 

The attack was led by a man who I considered a friend. A bomb went off in my life that evening, and the city around me was razed. My belief in a world where justice and compassion prevailed was gone. My sense of my future was obliterated.  In the hours and days after the attack, my body was a marionette with instinct tugging the strings.

My flesh lingered, but my spirit felt gone; its space surrendered to scorching pain and shame. The only escape I could conceive of was death.

Conversation about sexual violence is not something most people are comfortable with, which places a heavy burden on those who have been abused. After my rape, I spoke gently and with great caution, but I spoke. Some people helped me. Some people harmed me. I kept speaking. I had rediscovered hope. I had a city to rebuild and I couldn't do it alone.

 

With the help of others, I regained trust and optimism. I reclaimed a sense of my own strength and worth. I recovered sufficient hope in my future safety to be able to function. I strengthened friendships that continue to be enriching beyond anything I had previously understood. I deepened my understanding of the diversity of human minds and motivations.

 

I laid my pained heart bare to help those I love understand me, and to assist others to be more understanding allies. There was hope and healing in speaking, and so I have continued on that path. I read the stories of other survivors and now I humbly offer you mine. My wish is to help survivors see themselves as victors, not victims. I hope that I can help survivors feel less alone.

 

I hope my words challenge you to contemplate a different world—a world in which victims of sexual abuse feel unafraid to speak, and are better understood and supported. A world in which more people believe in the transformative power of love to halt the cycles of trauma that tear the tapestry of human connection. With shared vision, I believe we can build something better.

***

"A harrowing memoir shot through with hope." -- JT Lawrence

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fire Finch Press
• Release date: Aug 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201400118

Book preview

Introduction

In a new city, oceans away from home, I was soft-spoken and starry-eyed. The blush of youth was still fresh on my cheeks. Underneath that tender surface was an impenetrably strong strata of myself that would soon be unearthed.

A gruelling journey took me from a violent loss of innocence in August 1992 to more horror than I will ever comprehend on a summer night six years later. When you climb out of the rubble of human-made catastrophe, it can feel like everything you once were is gone. That is not correct, though it takes some time to learn this. I lost my framework for believing in a safe world, but I found my character, something beyond the reach of anyone else’s control. There was rebuilding to be done, but with wise guidance, I would do it. My attackers’ control would be short-lived.

In 1992, I saw my myself as reflected in others’ eyes—the eyes of a man who attacked me for rejecting his advance; the eyes of the world around me that sought to overlook my pain and tacitly protect him. My sense of safety stolen and my self-worth crushed, I coped, but I did not begin healing until a crescendo of cruelty changed everything.

In 1998, in the usually magical space between two summer days, I was gang-raped.

The attack was led by a man who I considered a friend. A bomb went off in my life that evening, and the city around me was razed. My belief in a world where justice and compassion prevailed was gone. My sense of my future was obliterated.  In the hours and days after the attack, my body was a marionette with instinct tugging the strings. My attackers owned me. First, they ruthlessly took complete control of me. Afterwards, they threatened to continue their domination. In my overwhelming shock, I believed in their undefeatable power while having no sense of my own. My flesh lingered, but my spirit felt gone; its space surrendered to scorching pain and shame. The only escape I could conceive of was death.

My mind could barely function following the attack. Once my closest housemates learned what had taken place, they did their best to support me; gently persuading my mind to the possibility of a future. And so, the recovery began. In those initial days, I learned that the best route to survival was with the help of others. That meant humbly--often fearfully--speaking the truth, and asking for help.

Conversation about sexual violence is not something most people are comfortable with, which places a heavy burden on those who have been abused. After my rape, I spoke gently and with great caution, but I spoke. Some people helped me. Some people harmed me. I kept speaking. I had rediscovered hope. I had a city to rebuild and I couldn’t do it alone.

With the help of others, I regained trust and optimism. I reclaimed a sense of my own strength and worth. I recovered sufficient hope in my future safety to be able to function. I strengthened friendships that continue to be enriching beyond anything I had previously understood. I deepened my understanding of the diversity of human minds and motivations.

I laid my pained heart bare to help those I love understand me, and to assist others to be more understanding allies. There was hope and healing in speaking, so I have continued on that path. I read the stories of other survivors and now I humbly offer you mine. My wish is to help survivors see themselves as victors, not victims. I hope that I can help survivors feel less alone.

I hope my words challenge you to contemplate a different world—a world in which victims of sexual abuse feel unafraid to speak, and are better understood and supported. A world in which more people believe in the transformative power of love to halt the cycles of trauma that tear the tapestry of human connection. With shared vision, I believe we can build something better.

Chapter 1

Life Before the Volcano

"…every one of our body's atoms is traceable back to the

Big Bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces

within the high-mass stars that exploded more than

five billion years ago.

---

We are stardust brought to life,

then empowered by the universe to figure itself out

—and we have only just begun."

---

Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

W. W. Norton & Company 2017 p.20

Life first blessed me with a good mother and father—hardworking teachers who made their children their top priority. My parents gifted us richly with their time, less with material goods. They shared their knowledge of the world in conversations over dinner or as we performed chores together. I felt their love in their presence and engagement.

Life blessed me with a childhood spent in the Australian countryside.  We relocated a few times around country Victoria for my father's work or wanderlust.  My parents chose homes in the most wide-open rural spaces they could find.  As a young child, I learned the way home using ghost gums and the weed tangled skeletons of abandoned carts as markers.  The tranquillity of rural space seeped into my spirit. There was intrigue and magic in its rough and rusted edges. There was serenity and song in the wind-rustled grass. I could help Mum feed the abandoned calves, or walk the irrigation channels with my father, chatting as he checked for problems. I was a little girl who knew liberty. With a mind that was hungry and a heart that felt safe, I explored. In vast, quiet spaces, under the flicker of sunlight through leaves, I daydreamed.

Life blessed me with four younger siblings. I could play school and have a reasonably full classroom. I could care for them. I could play, negotiate, and squabble with them. I could test all my best and worst behaviours with companions who would always love me. It’s difficult for me to imagine a richer blessing than my siblings.

Life blessed me with good health, a capable mind, a loving heart, and the sense that these were all gifts not just for me but the world at large. At seven years old, I first became aware that my father thought I possessed something unique and necessary for the world. He delivered that message less through praise, and more through his high expectations of me, making it very clear that the world needed my best. He gave the goodness of my heart primary importance in his assessment of me, and urged me to hone my talents to carry out its work.  A devout Catholic, he bought me a steady stream of books about saints; he told me stories about the moral courage of some family members in Belgium through the World Wars. It expressed his faith in my intellect and integrity to discern and strive for what's ethical, even when it's not easy. He passed that faith on to me.

Life blessed me with true friends. I was a shy child. I was never surrounded by a large network of friends, but I always seemed to have a true companion to double life’s joys and turn to when in need. I tended to find pragmatic friends to offset my dreaminess, fierce friends to offset my timidity, and humorous friends to offset my seriousness. I encountered only very rare instances of duplicity, so I developed a whole-hearted faith in friendship that I’ve retained throughout my adulthood in spite of the later betrayals. My faith in friendship is an extraordinary asset in life, an asset that I wish no one was without.

Life blessed me with good food. My mother's enthusiasm for producing homegrown food was unwavering. She kept hens for fresh eggs, nurtured a home orchard for fruit, and kept rambling vegetable gardens in the various houses we lived in throughout my childhood. Shop-bought biscuits were a rare indulgence and in truth, a far inferior gift to the regular home-baked treats she spoiled us with. Mum loved us in many ways, but one key communication of her love was through food; abundant, fresh, home-grown and home-baked food. With stories and reflections that seemed abstract and unnecessary at the time, Dad encouraged us to love food and cherish it for the gift of nature and human hard work that it was. Mum taught us to love our bodies with food that nourishes. I didn’t realise it as a child, but these are important lessons.

I was gifted with good schooling, and my home education was outstanding. Dad didn’t contract his vocabulary when speaking to us or refrain from articulating difficult concepts to us. He repeated and rephrased until we understood. My father was philosophical, dreamy, idealistic, and brimming with good humour. He was an unconventional teacher, but an exceptionally good one.

Mum was a more conventional teacher. She was methodical and practical in her methods and she valued conscientiousness. My mother was passionate about history and literature and sometimes we caught the contagion. Mum was never blessed with as much time as Dad for long, winding conversations; the house could fall into ruins around Dad and he would have barely noticed. If you wanted to talk to Mum it was best to pick up a tea towel and help.

Dad taught me the value of daydreaming. Mum taught me the value of writing a list.

There was no crèche or kindergarten for me. There was only Mum, Dad, younger siblings, dogs, cats, cows, chickens, a few sheep and goats, and the wild and wonderful expanse of our farm to enjoy. I remember the sweet smell of the cattle, their deep lowing, and stroking their flanks. The abandoned calves slurping ravenously when we hand-fed them. I remember dipping our hats in the dam only to plant them on our head and enjoy the cool rush of water in the searing summer heat. My scattered memories are happy.

My primary school years were full of more cheerful exploration. For the greater part of those years we lived near a volcanic mountain. It erupted long before humans existed, but our thin understanding of the chronology of life and our untamed imaginations meant many a happy hour was spent with friends digging for old bits of china or coins—evidence of life before the volcano. Our house had two orchard paddocks so there were trees to climb and pruned branches to build tepees. We were free to ride our bikes to friends’ houses or the playground until dinner time. We made full use of that freedom. The days were long and life was good.

Life wasn’t perfect, however, and neither was I. I was trusting to a fault and quite unable to understand deception or ulterior motives. Sometimes my mother would send my younger sister, Ivy, out with me because she could trust her to be street-smart where I might well miss obvious cues of potential trouble. I knew how to be gentle, fair, kind, and cooperative, but I lacked the inclination or skill to assert myself verbally or physically. When I was harassed or ridiculed at school, I simply put my head down and waited for the abuse to stop. From a young age, I tended to assume I was powerless to defend myself. I’ll never fully know why.

School delivered some harsh lessons, but returning to a kind home made it bearable. In a tiny Catholic primary school, I began to understand that adults can be bullies, though no one seemed to call them such for victimising children. I watched one teacher mercilessly single out a boy with learning difficulties again, and again, and again. We all sat, little legs crossed on the floor, frozen in horror as she belted him with a leather strap and ridiculed his distress. Witnessing this society-tolerated cruelty—myself so young and powerless—taught me lessons that took years to interpret. Lessons about power, privilege, and abuse; lessons that will never leave me.

As I entered my early adolescent years, friendships became intense and sometimes carried the condition of the exclusion of others. It felt perplexing and dangerous to navigate, but ultimately I found beautiful friends who stuck with me through thick and thin. We went into junior high school together—a proud Catholic school that catered to different talents. These were the last of the truly joyful years of my childhood. In those years it began to dawn on me that my appearance mattered a great deal to the outside world. But in the safety of that school, it felt like a problem to be put off for later. I knew I wasn’t quite what the world wanted, but in the community around me, I felt enough.

A kind reception felt dependable at my junior high school.  Bullying occurred, but I didn’t find it so readily tolerated by either students or staff.  I saw that social inclusivity and a culture of kindness is possible, and when we settle for less we are all selling ourselves short. The lesson would help sustain me through years in a more hostile environment.

When I was thirteen, we moved to a little satellite town outside Melbourne. The town was midway between two cities. People who had never lived much more than an hour’s drive from the city told me I’d love this place because it’s so country. Except it wasn’t. There had been an intricate social interconnection in the country towns I had lived, which had given me a sense of security. There was a slow pace and a naïveté in the country that I didn’t find in the city or near it.

Taking a train into the city centre and milling around shopping malls with my friends replaced riding our bicycles to the lake to have picnics. The main street of the town was a thoroughfare connecting two cities, so the town buzzed with unknown faces that came and went—faces veiled with anonymity that could lean out of cars and scream degrading comments at girls walking home from school. The riches and speed of the city gave people a competitive drive that was new to me. And there, appearance mattered more than ever.

There was no avoiding it. And it wasn’t just the face and body that I wore each day, but also whether I had a boyfriend, wore the latest trends, talked with the prescribed level of attitude—it was the whole façade that mattered. Intellect and character received far less attention from both peers and adults. I was destined to fail.

Initially, I tried to meet the social standards by agreeing to have a boyfriend. He was a nice enough boy, but I simply had no inclination toward this kind of relationship yet. My cowardice was quickly apparent in my dodging any interaction with him. He deserved better than my inexplicable avoidance, and I knew it. I tried to talk tough and act edgy, yet I quickly realised this was empty and unsustainable. I was out of the race. I chose to be me, despite the ridicule that inevitably came. It was lonely and demoralising, but easier to bear than becoming someone I never felt destined to be.

I felt unsafe at school. I didn’t know how to grapple with others’ derision of my appearance—too skinny, too flat-chested, ugly. My speech sound disorder—stumbling on ch and j sounds—and extreme shyness amplified my discomfort. I struggled to assert myself. I avoided school events or parties where I might be pressured into kissing or sexual activity. A few boys who possibly never disliked me jostled for rank in the group by mocking me for being frigid. The jeering didn’t change my mind.

Unfortunately, one of the leaders of this line of bullying, Milo, learned that I had been coerced into a kiss by a teen four years older than me. One morning, I arrived at school to discover Marie sucks face scrawled on our locker room wall. Milo watched my face for any suggestion of pain, savouring the harm he did to me. I interpreted it as a call to his peers to increase their harassment of me. I braced myself for worse. Curiously, it didn’t work; Milo’s allies were unusually quiet. One of his friends, who only ever stood on the sidelines chuckling as Milo harassed me, watched me walk past his bus window with a lingering gaze and one of the saddest smiles I’ve seen. Bullies oppress their allies with fear, just as they do their victims.

Girls who had never spoken to me before cautiously looked me in the eye to silently convey their sympathy. A few had the courage to speak it. Just like the little children sitting in horror on my primary school floor, I knew there were others who watched on, fearful to show dissent. Just knowing they existed was some comfort to me. I didn’t ask for help; I had seen enough to know that such a request would be pointless.

I asked for very little, but in those years, it felt like the basic things I yearned for were invariably too much: to have a school that felt safe, for my body to be treated as my own, to be listened to, to be appreciated for my mind and my character. In time, a solid meal also felt too much. My handwriting reduced to tiny, spidery strokes. My body became too thin. I was enough to exist, but little more. Outside my home, I barely used my voice beyond the safety of my small circle of close friends who were my survival.

All through my life I have been blessed with girlfriends who are the fiercest allies imaginable. Sometimes I hear it said that women are typically mean to one another, but in my more than forty years I have rarely encountered cruelty or exclusion by girls or women, and what I have has been vastly outweighed by the joy and sanctuary they more commonly provide. I have seen my girlfriends plunge themselves into danger to try to lift me out of it. My girlfriends have always been dependable, supportive, fun, fierce, and whole-heartedly loving. They have stood with me through sadness and celebrated my joys like they are their own.

The last two years of school saw an upward swing in my happiness, but not my weight or the space, figuratively speaking, that I took up in the world. I remained quiet and cautious, with a growing optimism that better times lay ahead. With the exception of one, the boys who harassed me left the school by Grade 11 or 12. What a difference it made to feel safe! I could concentrate in class, enjoy socialising, and allow myself to be more visible. I had teachers who offered encouragement and praise. I was beginning to feel whole again.

Like a blossom riding the wind, I was carried into adulthood—undeniably fragile; a fresh beginning of an optimistic story. I hadn’t the vaguest clue what 9-to-5 job I should navigate toward, but I knew that I loved the written word and philosophical thought, so I undertook a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Humanities. Study had never been so exhilarating. I could lose afternoons in reading literature that made my heart sing. Having a career plan was another of those matters that I knew was important and put off for later. With my entry into university life, I felt as free as I had in my early childhood, with vast new expanses to explore.

Chapter 2

The Danger of Asking for Help

"…the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor

is the mind of the oppressed."

---

Steve Biko, I Write What I Like

Picador Africa 2004 p.74

In most of my relationships as a child I could clearly see reciprocity. I was kind to my friend; she was kind to me. I was courteous and polite to my teacher; she was courteous and polite to me. In most things, this was how relationships worked. It was a simple and dependable formula.

The expression of romantic or sexual interest between boys and girls was something entirely new. I didn’t see the reciprocity I was used to. Boys and girls were assigned contrasting expectations in the pursuit of romantic or sexual relationships—assertiveness for boys, passivity for girls. I have no doubt it hurts both genders. I found that assertiveness often devolved into aggression. I opened conversations with words like I loved hearing your thoughts in class yesterday… while boys were direct and unsubtle about their interest in