"I've never been strangled before. I don't know if he's going to stop. And I was so scared,” she told VICE World News. “It's like, whenever you think about being in that situation, you think you're going to fight back… But I'm telling you, you don't. Because if you fight back, what else is he going to do to you? He's a six foot three … champion kickboxer, for God’s sake.”
Tate then raped her, Amelia said. As he did, she said, he continued to choke her, saying things like “Who do you belong to?” even as she was unable to physically speak due to his hands constricting her throat.
“He's like, ‘Fucking say it bitch. You're not fucking saying my name, say my fucking name otherwise I’ll kill you,’” she said.
After assaulting her, Amelia said, Tate went to sleep with his arm around her, while she lay awake for hours, trying to process what had just happened. When she got home the next day, she recalls, she cried in the bathtub and called a friend, who helped spell out to her that what had happened to her was rape.
VICE World News has spoken to the friend, who confirmed the details of the conversation. We are not naming her to protect her and Amelia’s identities.
Amelia said that for a “very long time,” she was in denial about the alleged rape, feeling that acknowledging it had happened would negatively define her. To this day, she struggles to even use what she refers to as “the R word.”
This womans account is so real. Her putting her hand on his chest is probably what made him decide to do it. Sad.
I believe this fully because I lived this. The eyes changing. Not being able to use the "r" word when you recall it. I always to this day find ways around using that word. I dont know this is...and in all my therapy and therapy groups I'm far from the only one who struggles there. I'll say I was attacked because that's just easier.
Typing it on occasion but using the word "rape" when talking about myself is hard to this very day and I was 14 when it happened. I still say "attacked".
