Alex Feis-Bryce had 18 years when he was raped by a stranger at a party.
He had just come out as gay and moved from his small town to Manchester, England, to study.
“I think it was the second time I went to a gay bar or pub. My friend and I ran into some people who invited us to a party at a house, “he says.
” I was desperately naive and wanted to make friends and be open with people. I accepted, but my friend changed his mind at the last minute. ”
Alex was taken to a property where he thinks he was drugged.
“The owner of the house poured me a drink and I started to feel drowsy. He took me into a bedroom and shortly after he came there and raped me. I felt like I was nailed to the bed. ”
The next day,“ the survival instinct kicked in. ”
Alex agreed to let the man take him back to college and tried to bury what had happened.
“Actually, I thought rape is not something that happens to men, so maybe it wasn’t something that happened to me. ”
“ I was programmed to think that It happens to women, and that made it much more difficult to prosecute or report to the police, because I didn’t think they would believe me, “he says.
No representation
Alex is now CEO of Survivors UK, a charity that provides support to men, boys and non-binary people who have been raped, sexually assaulted or abused.
While victims of sexual violence are much more likely to be women, the England and Wales Crime Survey estimates that one in 100 mens experienced any form of sexual assault or attempted assault in the year through March of 2020.
Last year, Reynhard Sinaga, “the most prolific rapist in British legal history”, was found guilty of luring to 73 men out of Manchester clubs to his apartment, not far from the bar where Alex was approached.
Sinaga drugged and assaulted the men, filming the attacks .
Survivors UK research suggests that gay and bisexual men may be more likely to be sexually assaulted than the general population male in general.
In your survey with 505 gay and bisexual men, the 47% said they had experienced a sexual assault, and more than a third said they felt they couldn’t talk to anyone about what had happened.
It is important to recognize that most sexual assaults “they occur within the sexual life that we have” , points out Alex.
“We don’t want to feed the homophobic stereotype that men homosexuals and bisexuals are more promiscuous or predatory, but we want to be aware of the ‘queer’ spaces where people have consensual sex but where limits are crossed: gay bars, saunas, sex with drugs ”.
“That is the challenging but important part of the investigation, (record that) without stigmatizing specific sexual practices.”
All victims
Only one in seven participants in the survey, conducted last August, had reported an incident of sexual assault to the police. Of those who did, approximately a quarter did not feel believed or felt that their complaint was not taken seriously.
“It’s about consent. Sex with drugs, for example, or any sex that is not heteronormative or conventional; sex with more than one partner (for example) can be extremely stigmatized ”, says Alex.
“ So if someone experiences sexual violence In circumstances like that, they will be less likely to talk to the police. ”
The LGBT + abuse charity Galop also supports people who have suffered sexual abuse or violence
“Gay and bisexual men often do not see themselves and their experiences represented in the way sexual violence is discussed , and there are very few support services available to help them, “says Executive Director Leni Morris.
” From our research we know that many never they will come forward to the police, and they will be addressing what happened to them without professional support, “says Morris.
” We must ensure that the public narrative on sexual assault include all victims , and that each survived sexual violence entity is able to access the assistance it needs. ”
Lee (not his real name) had 15 years when he was admitted to the hospital after self-harm while struggling to accept his sexuality.
There he was sexually abused by a male counselor for over a year, an experience that, according to him, led to many years of trauma.
“For a good decade, that experience permeated other levels of my functioning. The sexual assault or violence felt normalized and I didn’t take good care of myself ”, he says.
“ I needed to escape from myself head, but the cure turned into chaos and I created another problem for myself, abusing drugs and sex to deal with deep-seated discomfort and discomfort and to face what I was feeling. ”
When he finally asked for support, he also did not know if what had happened to him constituted a sexual assault.
“Perhaps I wrongly saw that what he did to me was not violent: he did not hit or kick me, he did not rape me and with that I deduced that he could continue.”
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