DARVO--what you need to know...

The acronym DARVO stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender” and perfectly describes how a narcissist behaves when caught and held to account. Never having come across it before, I was gobsmacked when I read up on it and realized just how well it describes the primary narcissist in my life, my (thankfully now-deceased) mother.

Dr. Jennifer J. Freyd, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University coined the term in 1997 and in 2019 published a paper entitled “What is DARVO?” Freyd defines DARVO as “…a reaction perpetrators of wrong doing…may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior… The perpetrator or offender may Deny the behavior, Attack the individual doing the confronting, and Reverse the roles of Victim and Offender such that the perpetrator assumes the victim role and turns the true victim…into an alleged offender. This occurs, for instance, when an actually guilty perpetrator assumes the role of ‘falsely accused’ and attacks the accuser's credibility and blames the accuser of being the perpetrator of a false accusation.”^[1]

It is no accident that a narcissistic parent uses this tactic. In 2017 Freyd participated in a peer-reviewed research study that reported that, ‘…DARVO was commonly used by individuals who were confronted…and higher levels of exposure to DARVO during a confrontation were associated with increased perceptions of self-blame among the confronters. These results provide evidence for the existence of DARVO as a perpetrator strategy and establish a relationship between DARVO exposure and feelings of self-blame. Exploring DARVO aids in understanding how perpetrators are able to enforce victims’ silence through the mechanism of self-blame.’^[2]

Broken down into plain English, this means that DARVO is a common ploy used by those who hurt us, a ploy used to throw blame onto us rather accept responsibility for the results of their actions. It also means that it works best on people who have been conditioned to feel responsible for things they aren’t really responsible for, people who suffer from toxic guilt, like many of us.

Interestingly, Freyd and a colleague, Sarah Harsey, in a new project (which is still under review) have discovered that the DARVO phenomenon goes further than just between the offender and victim. When they told the study participants stories of abuse and followed the story with a DARVO response, they found the participants less willing to believe the victim than people who told the same story but not given a DARVO response: the DARVO strategy actually works to discredit victims! Even more interesting, however, is that another study group was first educated about DARVO and when they were told a victim’s story followed by a DARVO response, the study participants found the victim more credible than the study participants who had not been previously educated about DARVO.^[3]

Education about DARVO, then, it important: it clues in the bystanders, be they flying monkeys or members of the justice system, to the ploy beforehand. For us, that means learning what DARVO is and educating ourselves as well as the people in our lives who are likely to hear DARVO responses from our narcissists.

Freyd’s paper does not mention the word “narcissist” but does specifically note that the DARVO response is a common tactic among sex offenders. The children of narcissists, however, will recognize the almost knee-jerk response of the narcissist to even the slightest hint of wrongdoing. The fragile ego of a narcissist cannot stand being wrong hence the narcissist’s rationalization and justification of everything she does. Narcissists, believing themselves perfect and infallible, cannot accept an accusation of wrongdoing—or even the possibility that she could do wrong—so she must justify and/or rationalize her beliefs and behaviours to make them appear right. One of the ways a narcissist does this is through DARVO: if something is the fault of someone else, then the narcissist is without responsibility.

Deny

The denial part of a DARVO attack may take more than one form: “It didn’t happen,” is one and, if the fact of the event cannot be denied, then “It wasn’t my fault” or “You weren’t really hurt.” My mother was the queen of DARVO attacks, attacks which, according to Dr. Freyd, “…can be violent and effectively abusive towards the accuser, with threats of legal action, attacks on credibility and so on.^[4]” At one point my mother actually said to me “If I don’t remember it, then it didn’t happen,” and nothing could budge her from that position. In situations she did remember, she would say “I don’t remember it that way,” or “You are remembering it wrong.”

Attack

The old adage “the best defence is a good offence” is at the core of a DARVO attack and it is not uncommon for the attack to have a third party involved^[5]. Narcissists will attempt to impress an observer of their innocence, especially an observer who the narcissist holds in high esteem or someone who has more power than the narcissist, like the police or a judge or a boss. An effective DARVO attack can see the narcissist’s victim up on charges and facing jail time, or professionally reprimanded. Or worse.

For the narcissist to effectively take the role of victim, it is most effective to name an alternative perpetrator. In a real-life case a male friend of mine met (in a restaurant so that there were witnesses) with a women he had broken up with a month earlier. From his descriptions of her, I guess her to be a narcissist and the last six months of their relationship was marked by frequent rows about her intransigent lying. She finally stepped over the line and he dumped her. But he had lent her a considerable sum of money during their year together and he wanted it back so he invited her to come to a busy coffee shop to discuss repayment of those loans.

During their meeting she continually shifted the subject from the money she owed to her personal travails, ending each of her pity-party monologs with a plea of poverty. He, well aware that she was trying to distract him from the subject of repayment and elicit pity for her dire straits such that he would forgive the loans, suggested she borrow the money from her current boyfriend. She responded by throwing a drink in his face. After she had calmed down, however, and thinking she was stranded three miles from home, he had the bad judgment to offer her a ride home, which she accepted. While in the car he continued to try to convince her to pay back the loans on her own, saving them the effort of Small Claims Court. But shortly before they arrived at her residence, she lost her temper again and physically attacked him. At the end of her tantrum he was bleeding from two deep scratches: one on his neck, the other on his hand as he shielded himself from her clawing at his face—she did succeed in shattering his glasses. She then began destroying the interior of his car, screaming invective and condemning men in general, ultimately ripping the rear view mirror from its mount and throwing it at his head. But the mirror was still attached to the car by its data cables and rather than impacting his head, it reached the end of its tether, bounced back, and hit the windscreen and breaking it.

He, of course, called the police and she admitted to the arresting office that she broke his glasses and damaged the car. She was arrested on the spot and spent two days in jail waiting for her bail hearing. After a few hours in jail she appealed to my friend to drop the charges so she could be released from jail but he refused unless she agreed to pay for the damages to his car and repay the loans. She refused and she spent two days in jail before she was finally granted bail and her freedom.

Reverse Victim and Offender

Imagine my friend’s surprise when, the day after his ex made bail, he was called by the police and told that a charge of rape had been lodged against him.

It was DARVO. When he got to the police station they told him the charge was actually sexual assault—or sexual harassment—they weren’t sure yet which. It was immediately apparent to him that his ex-girlfriend, unable to justify his wounds and the damage to his car any other way, had charged him with sexual assault. According to her, she threw the drink in his face because she was offended when he suggested she prostitute herself to get the money she owed him (her interpretation of his suggestion that she borrow it). The police declined to give specifics of the supposed sexual assault but, in mediation over the charge a few months later, she refused to withdraw the charges against him unless he forgave not only the loans he made to her, but the cost of repairs to his car which, because it was a German luxury brand, were not going to be cheap. She couldn’t say that the assault didn’t happen—he had the injuries (and a security video from the restaurant) to prove it did. She couldn’t say the damage to the car didn’t happen—the condition of the car and a hefty repair estimate proved it did—and she admitted it to the arresting officer. So, she reversed the victim and offender and made herself his victim, charging him with essentially molesting her in the privacy of the car en route to her residence and claiming that was the reason she injured him and damaged the car: she was attempting to escape a sexual assault.

Her accusations were so absurd that anyone who knew anything about DARVO would have been instantly suspicious. He said “…borrow the money from someone just like you borrowed it from me…”; she reported he said “…you can get the money by sleeping with other guys…” She said, in writing, “He wouldn’t stop the car so I broke the windscreen…and his spectacles.” Somehow the police found this reasonable and credible enough to file charges against him, somehow the prosecution found this reasonable and credible enough to set a trial date. And when he finally was able to get a copy of her written accusation, he found out that her “sexual assault” allegation consisted of “…he touched me on my thigh…”

Once the senior prosecution staff was shown the allegation, the charges were withdrawn, but not before untold damage was done to my friend, emotionally, financially, and even professionally. And despite having the charges withdraw by the prosecution as having no merit, she still tried to use the fact that he was arrested for sexually assaulting her as her justification for injuring him and damaging his car.

The victim of a narcissist may find DARVO to be difficult to grasp. Certainly my friend was baffled when, in the eyes of the police, he went from being the victim of an assault to the perpetrator of one in the blink of an eye. The police sided with his attacker because she was a woman recounting a sexual assault and nobody bothered to subject her story to the same critical examination they gave his. Ultimately the prosecution withdrew those charges, yes, but not until he had suffered, in his words, “five months of hell” that ultimately put him on anti-anxiety meds. The fact that he was the real victim did not stop the narcissistic ex from turning the tables on him and having the police and courts dance her merry tune for over five months until someone took a look at her accusations with fresh eyes—and without her there to whisper blandishments in his ears—and saw what was really going on.

Not all DARVO attacks are this dramatic but they can be if the narcissist perceives it to be worth it to her. But the fact is, narcissists use DARVO whenever it will suit their agenda. Being narcissists, they don’t care if the accusations they make are true or not, and they don’t care what kind of consequences you suffer, either…my friend’s ex would be happy if she was just exonerated and not convicted of assault and property damage—but if he went to jail for three years for sexual assault, she wouldn’t feel the least remorse. Instead, as a narcissist, she would feel vindicated and that he was getting just desserts for not giving her what she wanted. Most likely, however, the narcissist in your life will use DARVO to excuse a tantrum or a petty, spiteful action or to escape responsibility for some misdeed. My mother denied every ugly, mean, destructive, and cruel thing she ever did to me, telling me that even if my accusations of her maltreatment were true, I was only getting what I deserved. And that included stealing my children for her brother to adopt.

Just as that horrible woman accused my friend of sexual assault to give herself a plausible reason for assaulting him and destroying the interior of his car, with no care for the consequences he might suffer, including the loss of his professional career and his freedom, so do narcissists employ DARVO to exonerate themselves, with no sense of responsibility for the consequences you might face if they are believed. In fact, malicious malignant narcissists like my mother and my friend’s ex- actually find a sense of triumph and personal satisfaction in your suffering because they feel validated and that you are getting just payback for the wrongs they perceive you have perpetrated against them by not giving them what they wanted.

It’s called DARVO, it is effective, and it is devastating to its victims. Spread the awareness—and be prepared.

1.     Freyd, J.J. (2019). What is DARVO? Retrieved April 20, 2019 from http://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/defineDARVO.html

2.     Harsey, S., Zurbriggen, E., & Freyd, J.J. (2017—published Open Access). Perpetrator Responses to Victim Confrontation: DARVO and Victim Self-Blame. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, & Trauma, 26, 644-663.

3.     Freyd, op. cit.

4.     DARVO. Changingminds.org. Retrieved April 21, 2019 from http://changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/coping/darvo.htm.

5.     Ibid.

First Kiss

There was this boy at school…Kenny Woodruff…who liked her. Trouble was, she didn’t like him. Not even a little bit.

He was nice enough to play with when they were younger, and he lived in one of the big, older houses in the neighbourhood with a second story and old, big trees that were very cool for climbing. His front yard had a really big old pepper tree with a swing and a platform that could be accessed by climbing up slats of wood that had been nailed to the trunk and bigger branches like ladder rungs. You could sit up there alone like a princess in a tower and read or just daydream, hidden away from those mere mortals who congregated below to argue over whose turn it was to play on the swing.

The trouble was, he really liked her. In that kind of boy-girl way that really wasn’t hugely interesting to her. She actually liked his younger brother, Kevin, better. She and Kevin were the same age and Kenny was two years older, even though he was in her grade. He had been held back a year in elementary school and she had skipped a grade. He should be in the ninth grade, she should be in the seventh…they were both in the eighth, although they really didn’t have any classes together…they hadn’t since starting junior high. They’d been in the same fifth and sixth grade classrooms, but in junior high she was in the advanced classes and Kenny was not. But she saw him every day on the school bus and he took it upon himself to walk her to and from the bus every day, despite her attempts to discourage him. It was a blessing when Kevin got to junior high because now he joined them, despite Kenny’s attempts to discourage him. She was, it seemed, the object of Kenny’s romantic dreams, her own feelings notwithstanding.

This was one of those rare times when it was very useful to have a famously difficult mother. She could easily ditch Kenny at the front gate simply by saying that her mother would kill her if she let a boy in. It took him several months to wonder how her mother would know and when he suspiciously asked, she just shrugged. “The neighbours spy for my mother,” she said, nodding in the direction of the house directly across the street…the first house on the block to have a true plate glass picture window, and home of the most notorious gossip on the block, Carolyn Reede. “My mother plays pinochle with Mrs. Reede,” she told him. “And you know Mrs. Reede knows everything that goes on in the neighbourhood.” He had left with a closed, sullen face, but at least he left.

Kenny had grown a considerable amount in the past couple of years, and he was a taller, thicker, beefier version of his brother, Kevin. Nearly platinum blond and extremely fair skinned, when something bothered Kenny it was easy to tell…one merely looked for his face to suffuse with blood and turn beet red. He seemed a bit excitable to her…a bit like Brother, who was annoyingly fidgety and simply could not keep his hands off of anything that attracted his interest, no matter who it belonged to…and she found this unnerving at times. Kenny was not the cheerful, affable boy his brother was, and sometimes his hulking intensity scared her.

She was beginning to notice that some boys were cuter than others, even allowing that she might find it nice to actually kiss one or two of them. There was Nick Phillips, who liked to work out on the bars during lunch break…he was very cute and could do some amazing things on the bars…and he was very nice, too. But her friend Bernadette had her eye on him, was flirting with him, so she kept her interest to herself. But Kenny Woodruff? Kenny was hulking where Nick was muscular, Kenny was blunt and bumbling where Nick was respectful and well-mannered, and Kenny was, while not actually stupid, lacking in the kind of intelligence that would advance him either academically or socially. And his single-minded pursuit of her was more than just a little scary.

But she still went over to his house. She liked sitting on the platform up in the tree, above the rest of the world, remote, unseen, untouchable. Up on the platform, hidden in the long, feathery limbs of the pepper tree, she felt safe from the rest of the world. It was the closest thing she had to a sanctuary.

They weren’t supposed to go out after school, but she and Brother had come to an unspoken agreement…once their chores were done and Mommy had called and checked up on them, they would go out to play…and they would not tattle on each other. She had no idea where Brother went and presumed he had no idea where he might find her. But ten to fifteen minutes before Mommy was expected, they would each scramble home and take up their posts in their respective bedrooms, doing something suitably innocuous like reading or homework. Mommy did not allow them to watch TV, play outside, or have friends over to the house when she was not there. Theirs was a daily ritual.

On a warm spring afternoon she heard the creaking of the slats nailed to the tree trunk, an effective announcement of an impending visitor. Expecting Kevin, who like to read as well, she was disappointed to see Kenny’s blond crew cut appear. Without waiting to be invited…it was his tree, after all…he heaved himself up onto the platform and sat, cross legged, entirely too close to her. She wriggled away.

“Don’t you like me?” he said to her without preamble. “You’re always trying to avoid me.”

She didn’t know how to deal with this, and he was sitting too close again. She wriggled further away. “I don’t know what you mean, Kenny,” she temporized. “I like you fine.”

“Do you like me like a boyfriend?” he asked bluntly, moving closer again.

“Ummm…” she hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “No, Kenny, I’m sorry. I like you fine as a friend, but not like a boyfriend.”

She began to grow alarmed as she saw his face begin to colour. “But you like Kevin, don’t you?” he said, his voice tense, ugly. “Don’t you? You like my little brother but not me!”

She shook her head, edging toward the side of the platform where the slats were nailed. “He’s just my friend, Kenny. Like you…just my friend.”

He was beside her again, so close she could smell the soap his mother used to wash his shirt. She made a swift move for the edge of the platform but he blocked her and grabbed her with one hand behind her neck and other gripping her head. Then, horrifyingly, he pressed his mouth to hers. She struggled, beating against him and trying to twist away, oblivious that she was on a platform in a tree, fifteen feet above the ground. His lips were disgustingly slack, sloppy and wet, and he nearly sucked the breath from her before he thrust his repulsive tongue nearly down her throat. Flailing and gagging, she could not dislodge his superior weight and, desperate for air and freedom, she did the only thing that came to mind. She bit down on his tongue with as much force as she could muster.

He bellowed and thrust her away and before he could recover and renew his grasp, she scrambled down the slat ladder and sprinted home, dashing in the door and slamming it behind her. Panting for breath, she went to the bathroom to clean up…if Mommy saw her sweating and winded, there would be ten kinds of hell to pay. A few minutes later she heard Brother come home and, checking the mirror to make sure she looked as if nothing had happened, she left the bathroom, headed for her room.

It wasn’t Brother who had come in the door. Kenny Woodruff, his face glowing red with rage, was in the hallway outside her bedroom, advancing on her.

“You have to go, Kenny,” she said desperately. “My mother will be home any time and you can’t be here.”

Kenny said nothing but continued to slowly advance upon her, like a cat stalking a mouse. She remembered how strong he was when he had hold of her up on the platform, and her heart began to hammer as she edged toward the exit from the hallway that led to the living room…if she could get there, she could make the front door and run to one of the neighbours for help.

“You’ve got to leave,” she said again and looked quickly into Brother’s bedroom to try to distract him as she darted the other direction for the living room.

She almost made it. But he grabbed her by her long ponytail and dragged her to him. “Look what you did to me!” he roared at her, the veins in his eye gone red with his rage. “Look what you’ve done!”

Confused, terrified, she struggled to get free, but he had her ensnared by her long hair and with one had he was forcing her head down, to look at the floor. “Look what you did to me, you goddamned little tease!” His other hand had opened his trousers and in the brief moment before she squeezed her eyes shut, she saw only a mass of engorged, terrifyingly red flesh protruding from the open fly.

“Look at it!” he raged, shaking her head back and forth by her hair. “Look what you did! And now you have to take care of it!”

Attempting to control her feeble struggles had caused Kenny to move them into the living room, but now he started dragging her towards her bedroom. Keeping her eyes tightly squeezed shut, she tried to go limp, make a dead weight of herself, and alternately dig her heels into the cheap thin carpet. She was able only to slow his progress and he inexorably moved towards the bedroom, alternately cursing her and blaming her for his condition.

Then suddenly she was free. “Take your hands off my sister!” she heard and her eyes flew open in surprise. Brother! Her brother had a stick of some kind and he was whacking Kenny over the head and across the back and shouting at him to leave their house and never come back. She began to cry in relief. “Don’t ever touch her again!” she heard him roar to Kenny’s retreating back. “Don’t even talk to her!”

“Oh, thank you!” she sobbed, trying to hug Brother for his rescue, but he pushed her away.

“Go wash your face and comb your hair,” he said, taking the stick and heading towards his bedroom. “Mommy will be home pretty soon and I don’t want her asking a lot of questions that will make us both have to stay home in the afternoon.” He closed his bedroom door.

Besmirched

Nick Philby was the most popular boy in the eighth grade…probably in the whole school…and he liked her!

She couldn’t believe it when he asked if she would like to go for a Frostee after school. She couldn’t go, of course…she had to be right home after school or face Mommy’s wrath…but she was so careful how she phrased her decline of his offer so he wouldn’t think she was rejecting him, just this one specific meeting. They had different lunch periods, so she couldn’t have lunch with him…and besides, she always had lunch with Reenie…but she’d find a way!

She stepped out of her science class, her arms wrapped around a stack of books, only to find them snatched from her arms and cradled with Nick’s in his muscular grasp. Nick was a budding gymnastics star who could do absolutely amazing things on the rings and bars and had the physique to prove it. “Those are too heavy for a small girl like you,” he said, flashing his brilliant smile…his older brother was a dentist…“what’s your next class?”

“Mr. Shepherd,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “I have to stop by the restroom and wipe my lipstick off or he’ll make me spend the entire class period in the hallway.”

He shook his shock of sun-bleached hair. “I feel sorry for you. I’d hate to have a teacher who got on me for my clothes or something.”

She nodded, at a loss for something to say. What was Nick Philby doing walking her to her next class? Nick Philby was a jock, really, really cute, and really, really popular. The girls all batted their eyelashes at him in the hallways, the guys all wanted to hang out with him…what was he doing with her? She smiled weakly.

“Look,” he said, handing her back her books at the door to the girl’s room. “I know you have to go right home after school…how about I walk you home? Wait for me outside Shepherd’s class, OK?”

She nodded dumbly as he turned and dashed down the corridor towards his last class of the day. Who would have ever believed? Nick Philby and her?

Weeks later, Nick was still walking her home. He had come over on a weekend and had even managed to impress Mommy with his gentlemanly manners and deferential attitude, so much so, Mommy actually asked if he might have an older, unattached brother. She had shuddered at the thought, telling Mommy that his only brother was married. Mommy actually looked disappointed, especially when she drove by Nick’s house and realized that his family was one of the original land owners of West Beach and although they had sold off much of their acreage to housing developers, they still lived in a grand old Victorian, the grounds of which took up an entire city block. She was rather unimpressed with the house and grounds since Nana’s garden was even bigger and her house was just as venerable, but she did stand in awe of the priceless antiques…furnishings that were originals with the house…that were an everyday part of Nick’s life.

At first she didn’t think it was particularly odd that Nick brought her to his house when no one else was home. He was the only person she knew who had a maid, and when the maid was working, they stayed out in the little guest house, playing board games and kissing games. She was accorded entrance to the main house when there were only the two of them, and she found a kind of reverent delight in being able to actually touch furnishings of an age and quality that she had only ever seen before in museums. As much as she loved Nana, she had no illusions about Nana’s taste…pedestrian at best. This, she could just tell, was fine…very fine.

Nick liked to make out, not an unusual preoccupation for a teen-aged boy. She was not his first girlfriend, and he had considerable experience and, if she was any judge, talent. So when his mother went out one Saturday to spend the day as an exhibitor at the annual flower show in Cabrillo Park, Nick invited her over, ostensibly to play chess. Frank had taught her to play chess, and she didn’t mind that she was still a novice at it. Her games with Nick involved a forfeit of one kiss per captured piece, and quite often the game was forgotten halfway through as they found a great deal more pleasure in the forfeits. This particular Saturday Nick had set up the chess board in the parlour, an elegant room furnished in plush velvet settees, gleaming mahogany tables, delicate Dresden shepherdesses, and massive bay windows looking out into his mother’s beautiful cutting garden. The room was splendid…not overdone, but tasteful and serenely gracious. She loved it.

He gave her the seat on the settee that had the best view of the garden and, distracted by the beauty of her surroundings…and Nick’s flashing smile…it was not long before they were stretched out together on the settee. She had been having some difficulty with Nick’s tendency to have what the girls called “wandering hands” of late, and today was no exception. The kissing was lovely…exciting…and being in his arms made her breathless…but when one of his hands began inching itself around towards her breasts or down below her waist, she would find the spell broken and her passion quenched. It was really quite annoying.

Today, with the long, deep settee, they sprawled out and, lost in Nick’s kisses, she didn’t realize that something was amiss until she felt his hand fully cover her right breast. Snapped suddenly back to full awareness, she struggled to remove it, only to find herself pinned beneath him, her right arm trapped so that she could do nothing but flail it impotently against his back. “Stop it,” she hissed in his ear. “You’re crushing me…let me up!”

“Just relax,” he said in her ear, kissing her just beneath it where she usually found it titillating. Now she just found it alarming. “This feels so good,” he said with a kind of half moan, his hand tightening on her breast, his thumb brushing across the nipple. She felt a jolt of sensation that frightened her even more, and pushed at him again.

“I can’t breathe,” she said. “Let me up!”

He shifted his position a bit, just enough to ruck up her shirttail and bring her bra into view. “Stop!” she cried, truly alarmed now. “Stop it!” and she began to struggle in earnest. He groped her breast through the bra and began grinding his lower body against hers.

“Stop it!” she cried. "Stop it right now or I will scream!”

“There’s nobody here but us,” he breathed, rubbing his face against her bra cup. “So, you don’t stuff, do you?” he said, half to himself. “The guys in gym all thought these were fake.” He squeezed for emphasis, then shoved the cup upwards, revealing her entire breast.

She would have clawed him, but she had no nails…she would have hit him, but he had her hands pinioned. With sudden alarm she realized that he had carefully planned this…he had even asked her to wear a skirt today rather than her usual capris…dear God, what was he going to do? “If you don’t let me up this instant,” she hissed in his ear, “I will never speak to you again!”

“OK,” he said, closing his hand over her bare breast, his fingers and thumb pinching the nipple painfully. OK? she thought. Did he just say “OK”? Icy fingers of fear crept over her and she clenched her fists and pounded his back, wriggling back and forth to try to break his grasp. He laughed and pushed his pelvis harder against her. “I knew you’d like this,” he said with a chuckle and bent his head to put his mouth on her.

She screamed for him to stop, she struggled, she even started to cry, but all she succeeded in doing was encouraging him further. When he had her bra pushed up to her chin and both breasts bare and glistening with the moisture of his efforts, she began to realize that her skirt and slip were bunched up and nothing stood between them but her thin cotton panties and his chinos, which she suspected were not as securely buttoned and zipped as she would have ordinarily expected. When he moved one hand down towards her leg, freeing her hand, she lashed out with a stinging slap and bucked up against him, trying to throw him off. He just laughed.

“Shove up against me a few more times like that,” he chuckled, recapturing her hand. “I’ll show you how to do it right…”

As he bent his head to her breast again, she went absolutely rigid. “I will tell your mother,” she said.

“She won’t believe you,” he said, mouthing her nipple.

“I swear to you, before I leave here today, I will hide something in this house to prove I was here, and I will tell your mother. I will describe this room and the guest house and the kitchen and the dining room and I will tell her what you did to me unless you let me go right this minute!”

He went still, the grinding of his pelvis against her stopped, his mouth lifted from her now sore nipple, and he looked at her closely. She must have done a very good job of hiding her fear and projecting only her anger and determination, because finally he relented and let her up from the settee. She jumped up and turned her back to sort out her bra and shirt, then bolted for the kitchen door.

“Wait!” he called after her. “Wait a minute and I’ll walk you home!”


By Tuesday afternoon she knew something was wrong. She had refused to speak to Nick before school on Monday and ignored him when he showed up at her classroom doors or at her locker. “Don’t make me say something to embarrass you,” she finally said, just before lunch. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

He didn’t take it well. “You can’t break up with me!” he said to her in a low, angry voice. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

She raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “I can break up with you and I just did. And who do I think I am? Not your girlfriend anymore, that’s who!”

He stomped away, his face a study in fury, and she didn’t see him again. But by Tuesday afternoon she had had three boys she didn’t even know ask her for dates and many of the girls who usually ignored her were now pointing at her or nodding in her direction and whispering behind their hands. By lunchtime on Wednesday, a path parted when she walked through the halls, the girls stepping back as if afraid to get their fluffy felt poodle skirts soiled, the boys clearly appraising her. It was making her crazy…what was going on?

It was Reenie who provided the answer. As much as she wasn’t plugged in to the elite social groups of school society, Reenie was often an object of teasing and ridicule and Reenie’s friendship with her was well-known.

“What happened with you and Nick this weekend?” Reenie asked, happily swapping her pastrami sandwich for the nasty peanut butter which was the only thing Mommy bought these days for school lunches.

She shrugged, not wanting to go into embarrassing detail. “I broke up with him.”

“That’s not what’s going around school,” Reenie said, licking her lips over the peanut butter.

She went instantly cold. “What’s going around school?” she asked.

“Well, Nick says he dumped you because he finally got what he was after, and that’s why he was going with you all this time. It’s all over the school!”

“WHAT?” she shouted, dropping the pastrami in her lap. “He said WHAT?”

Reenie started to repeat herself…she could be a little dense and literal at times…so she held up her hand. “Nothing happened…he tried…he almost” here she leaned closer to Reenie and lowered her voice “he almost raped me.” She got up from the steps and excused herself. “There’s something I got to do.”

With Reenie hot on her heels, she stalked over to the circle of teenaged boys whom she knew would have Nick at their centre and shoved her way through the crowd.

“Hiya, baby!” Nick grinned. “Back for more?” The boys around him laughed appreciatively.

“You lying sack of dog turds,” she shouted at him, hands on hips. “I don’t know what kind of lies you are spreading around school about me, but I want it to stop.”

“Awww,” Nick smiled, “Feelings hurt because you weren’t good enough for me to want a return engagement?”

She stood there silently, rigid with rage. When the red haze finally cleared, she calmly looked around the circle of boys, the few girls, and at Nick.

“Ok,” she said. “Have it your way. I won’t tell them that you are such a terrible kisser that you had to hold me down against my will and force yourself on me. And I won’t tell them that you almost raped me. And I certainly won’t tell that that you ignored my threats to scream and my threats to break up with you…but when I threatened to tell your Mommy you let me up like a scared widdle kiddie. I also won’t tell them that I have refused to speak to you since then, and I most definitely won’t tell them that today after school, while you are hanging out at the Frostee shop, making eyes one of these girls and getting ready to pull the same stunt on her, I’m going to be over at your house having a nice little talk with your mother!” With that she turned on her heel and stalked back to her place on the steps, the crowd parting silently to let her pass, Reenie still at her heels.

“It won’t do any good,” Reenie said after they sat back down. “Your reputation will never be the same. Mud sticks, you know…and it dries hard.”

“I know,” she said disconsolately. “But it was worth it to set the record straight. Did you see the look on his face when I said I was going to tell his mother?” She smiled wanly.

One of the girls from the crowd sauntered over and took a rather dramatic pose, one hand on her jutting hip. “Nobody believes you, you know,” she said airily. “Nick doesn’t have to force a girl…especially a little nobody like you. We all knew the reason he was going with you was because you put out. And when he got it, he dumped you. We all knew you were nothing but a tramp…why else would someone like Nick Philby go out with you anyway?”

She looked over at Reenie and said in a loud stage whisper, "Well, if Nick doesn't have to force a girl, I guess we can assume that any girl who goes out with him puts out then, can't we?"

She then turned to the girl whose jaw was hanging open at her oblique insult. "Better get going," she said, nodding in Nick's direction. "There's a line of girls forming to put out for Nick...you don't want to lose your place now, do you?"