humiliated in the schoolyard

[Deborah]

Hello,

My name is Deborah, i'm 30 yo. I'm a french girl, living in Paris. I'm an hostess in some events (professional or general public exhibitions, congresses, conferences, corporate, sporting, cultural events, ..). People also call me "La poupée" ("the doll" in french), a nickname that dates back to school (there were two Déborah in class, it was to differentiate us), but it wasn't because of my physical appearance that the boys had me called that, but because of the style of clothing I wore at the time, I still dressed like a doll.

A friend told me about this site because he knows my past. I also spoke with another girl here to explain what happened to me when I was a little girl, and they thought i can tell here my story, a true one. I apologize in advance for the poor quality of my English, if some terms are not the correct translation. I hope you’ll understand.

One day at school (i was 9 years old), while I was quietly playing hopscotch in the middle of the playground with a friend, a girl from my class approached us, she tried to take the arm of my friend who I was playing with, but she waved her arm to keep the other away, so she fell back on me saying "come with me Deborah", I followed her, she was holding me by the arm, between my elbow and my shoulder, we walked normally and she led me behind a building, a kind of dead end one meter wide where no one ever went, wedged between the back of the building and the outer school grounds, at the end of the 'narrow alley there was a tree and a bend, and it was after this bend, at the very end of the dead end, that 3 boys were waiting, 2 from my class and another from another class, whom I did not know not.

I still remember how I was dressed that day (if not for the shock of the attack, I would have forgotten, that's why I remember every detail): a white blouse with a round neck, a vest yellow, a plaid pleated skirt above the knees, white knee-highs, black shoes with a tab like doll's one. On my hairs, I was wearing two small discrete barrettes on each side, above my ears.

The girl placed me against the wall, so my back was against the wall, the 4 were in front of me and surrounded me, everything happened very quickly, I had no time to react... then a boy began to put his hands on my skirt, trying to undo my safety pin (which serves more as a decoration than an opening on a kilt) there, my hands rushed towards those of the boy to remove them, and the girl immediately swung my wrists at me like a forehand in tennis, telling me "Leave it to Deborah, we just want to see your panties", hearing that, I broke down and petrified, the girl lifted my skirt with a surprisingly easy and they started laughing and making comments.

They asked me if I was a fairy... (there was a little fairy motif on my panties), another said to me "your panties Deborah are beautiful" me, my arms were dangling, totally terrified, they didn't even need to block my wrists so I was unable to protect myself and even so, what could I have done alone against 4...
after one of the boys put his hands towards me saying “me, it's under his panties that I want to see“, i felt the fabric slipping down my thighs, i lowered my head, looked at my legs , I can still see his hands pulling the elastic of my panties, my white panties join my white knee-highs, I thought he would lower it all the way down, to my shoes which I can still see very well black tabs contrasting with the white of my knee highs, but it stopped at my knees, just above my knee highs, and as I had my head down, I heard "Look her slit!“, there I raised my head towards the one who had just said that, he alternated his gaze between my crotch and my eyes, he was smiling, the boy next to him had his eyes on my nudity and said " Your slit is beautiful, Déborah", I don't remember all their comments, they were talking so much; looking back, I am especially marked by their words and their radiant faces contrasting with my passivity;

While the boys were hypnotized by my crotch and commenting on what they were seeing, I turned my head slightly to avoid seeing their eyes on me, and there I crossed that of the girl (she was at my left holding the tail of my skirt high) and our eyes met, it was terrifying, her eyes smiling, mine undone and on the verge of tears, there she lowered her gaze to the top of my thighs and said 'You should come to school like this every day' they all burst out laughing and then I heard the voice of one of the boys asking the girl 'Show her buttocks'." Turn her over" !

So she made me turn around to see behind me, as I spun around I noticed that the girl i was playing with some minutes earlier, had come closer, at the level of the tree, no doubt intrigued by the girl who had come to me in the middle of the courtyard, and curious she must have followed us to the middle of the dead end... she stood at a distance but saw when even very well what was happening, no doubt relieved that it was not her in my place, but careful enough not to sink towards our height; I found myself facing the wall, I felt behind me a hand caressing the skin of one of my buttocks and the voice of a boy saying “she is very soft“

At that precise moment, the bell rang, and while I was facing the wall, my skirt fell down on its own, I turned around, they had disappeared, I remained dazed for long seconds, without moving, with no one left around me which surrounded me and prevented me from fleeing, my skirt lowered by itself but the panties still hampered at the level of my knees, all alone in the impasse, without doing anything, I put myself silently crying, and then very slowly, I started to pull up my panties, my tears were streaming down my cheeks, I sniffled discreetly, I adjusted the tails of my pleated skirt, making sure even more than she usually covered me well around me, I walked slowly towards the yard, with great apprehension, while my eyes were watering... then the girl and one of the three boys came back running towards me, I was afraid that they would start again, I backed up and the girl said to me in a threatening tone "if you tell the mistress or someone we will start again" and the boy smiled at me ironically and said kicking me on my leg, in fact he wanted to dirty one of my white knee-highs, which he managed to do.. (in France, the knee-highs are like high socks that go up below the knees but in polyamide, the same material as the tights, but not in wool, that's why we say knee-highs and not socks, the polyamide knee-highs are more feminine, finer, softer and even whiter than socks) so he said while kicking me "it was very beautiful, Deborah", then he put a hand into my hair and snatch down my barrette above my ear, undoing my neat hairstyle, there I burst into tears, they moved away laughing and humming "we saw the slit at Déborah-a, we saw the slit at Déborah-a.." and it ended, another life began for me from those 3/4 minutes...

I think about my assault at school every day for 20 years

My parents had called me Deborah because of the movie "once upon a time in America". The heroine is raped at the end of the film.. (and like her, I practiced classical dance when I was little)

In my real life, only few people know about my story : my shrink, my boyfriend, and a work colleague who told me that he regretted not having known me when I was a little girl.... On the net, it's easier to relate, because I'm anonymous. But it's really strange for me to discover this site (and generally ENF) and speak some people who was humiliated like me, in similar conditions, stripped naked in front of children her age.

Hello from across the ocean

Deborah

[ENFobsessed]

Wow, I'm sorry that happened to you. It must have been very scaring, a life altering event.

I had a few questions about what happened and the aftermath of you are comfortable answering them.

1) I'm a bit confused how the girl got you to go in that deserted area in the first place. Did she initially go after your friend? Did she just come up to you and grab your arm and you followed?

2) Did you see those kids afterwards? What was their reaction towards you, and what was your reaction towards them after the fact.

3) Did a lot of people know what happened right after it happened or did it stay a secret for a while

[Deborah]

Thank you for your message, chatting with people who don't know me will perhaps help me gain perspective.

1) The girl first tried to grab the arm of my friend with whom I was playing in the middle of the playground, but my friend had the good instinct not to accept. Then the other turned towards me and grabbed my arm. Since I'm nice, I didn't protest. I couldn't imagine what was going to happen to me, I probably thought she wanted to show me something. I followed her without really knowing where she was going. afterward, it was too late, I was trapped and everything happened too fast

2) I saw these schoolchildren again for the rest of the school year. Generally speaking, boys looked at me a lot, but these boys looked at me with a different look. I felt like I was still naked when they looked at me, and I was ashamed for months.
There was only one reference to this episode once during a drawing class, where the teacher asked us to draw a Disney character, a schoolboy said he didn't know any, the teacher was surprised. had asked him if he didn't know any elves, fairies, and there, one of the boys had shouted "ask Déborah" (he was referring to the fairy on my panties that I was wearing on the day of the attack) obviously noone understood, apart from him, the boy and the girl from the court, and me... I then turned red with shame, without the others understanding why.

3) They threatened to do it again if I spoke about it, but anyway, I remained silent, I was so ashamed. The following year I changed schools (for another reason) and that did me good.
But the fact that I kept it inside myself, without telling anyone, it was very hard. I felt guilty and began to develop thoughts of rape in my teens (when I imagine being raped, there are often 3 men, like the number of boys who attacked me that day). I went to see a psychologist around 20 years old. She then told me that I was developing "dissociation" (I don't know what the term is in English), it's a psychological disorder pushing traumatized women to reimagine their trauma to have the impression of take control ; the brain protects itself with adaptation mechanisms. So I often imagine this story, imagining (wrongly) that it happens differently, or that it happens to another girl than me, or that I'm just a spectator. Sometimes I wonder if it's easier or harder for a girl or a boy to go through such an ordeal. Perhaps this happened to other girls who managed not to experience it as a tragedy like me, or to boys who also experienced it very badly.

It's crazy to think how a few seconds spent in childhood can so change the trajectory of a life.

[CinnabarSunset]

Unfortunately, it does seem that events like this can warp a person's psyche in a lasting way. It might be the type of thing that you never exactly "cure", but instead learn to live and deal with it. And quite unfairly, I suspect that that girl and those boys just went on with life without feeling much guilt or trauma. I wonder what they'd think if they knew how that incident affected (and continues to affect) you.

So the girl and two of the boys were in your class that year. Did you know them to be friends with each other? This may be a bit beside the point, but I am curious whether the girl set you up as a favor for her male friends, or if that was her end of a deal that they'd made, etc. The way you tell it, it even seems possible that she was getting a cruel pleasure out of it... and maybe that was incentive enough for her.

Was it difficult going back to school each day, knowing that you'd be in a classroom for much of the day with three of the four assailants?

When you experience your imaginings, is that something you do voluntarily to try to mentally reframe the schoolyard event, or are they unpleasant and intrusive thoughts that you can't shake off? (Maybe even some of both?)

[Deborah]

I found it very difficult to return to school, with these attackers in the same classroom. It was like living on the same street as a man who raped me.

I don't know how friendly they were with each other. I never knew how they got to the point of saying “come on, let’s pull down a girl’s panties”. I also never knew why they didn't have fun with this girl rather than come and get another one who hadn't asked for anything. Was it her who had the idea? The boys ? I never knew.

Or why they had spotted me and my friend, perhaps because we were “model little girls”? (I don't know the term in English) I sometimes thought it was because of our outfits (the mean girl was in pants while me and my friend were dressed in a skirt). I later learned that skirts attracted a lot of attention from boys.

Did the girl bet with her male friends? it's certain that she got a cruel pleasure from it, I remember her satisfied look when I was already on the verge of tears and she kept my skirt up.

Concerning my imaginations, you are right, there are two scenarios: either voluntarily (even in my private moments), or without doing it on purpose, for example, when I walk in front of a school, or I see the children going out from school, I think back to myself when I was a little girl (even if children today are different from those 20 years ago).

My therapist told me that I could never forget, but that I must learn to live with it.

[CinnabarSunset]

No sympathy or secondhand embarrassment from that girl, I guess. And it sounds like she wasn't picky about which girl she brought with her - probably just looking for one who wouldn't fight back or make much noise, I reckon. Very unlucky for you.

I don't know how friendly they were with each other. I never knew how they got to the point of saying “come on, let’s pull down a girl’s panties”. I also never knew why they didn't have fun with this girl rather than come and get another one who hadn't asked for anything. Was it her who had the idea? The boys ? I never knew.

It all is very peculiar. And, again, I don't know whether it even matters to you exactly how that event came to be... but I can't help but wonder.

Despite the girl's initial insistence that "we just want to see your panties", I'm thinking they were always planning to go further than that. Do you agree?

Did their teasing over the fairy pattern affect you in any deep way? For example, did you start avoiding clothes or other objects featuring fairy themes because of a negative association (or even because of a desire not to be teased about it)?

In the ~20 years since that day (and especially after starting therapy), do you feel like you've made progress at coping with the event?

[Deborah]

I think you're right, they always planned to go further than that, even before coming to get me. The phrase they said to me "we just want to see your panties" was a way of confusing me, but I blame myself because 9 out of 10 girls would have understood and tried to escape or at least shout.

For the fairy, there was a coincidence because when I changed schools the following year, my new classmates started calling me "the doll", to differentiate me from another Déborah in the same classroom, but especially because of my very wise outfits (I dressed like a doll). Once I was a teenager I could have decided to change my look indeed but I was too feminine and flirtatious to want to change.

I don't think therapy really helped me... sometimes when talking to men online, I learn more than with my psychologist! that's also why I ended up telling my story here, and why I thank you because it makes me feel good. Probably because I buried this story too much and feeling alone when I was little.

[CinnabarSunset]

Sounds like this kind of talk is just what you were looking for, then? Glad to be of service. Though it's unfortunate that formal therapy doesn't seem to have done much for you. Makes me wonder whether therapy just isn't really for you, or if there's some way it could be different so as to actually help you.

Are there other things about the event and its aftermath that haven't come up yet, but which you'd like to talk about?

It's also occurring to me that your hopscotch friend witnessed some of the event, but it sounds like you never even talked with her about it. Did you continue playing with her at school, both of you knowing what had happened, but never actually mentioning it? Did anything feel different between you two after that? It just kind of seems like that would be a big and awkward secret to be hanging over the both of you.

[Deborah]

I didn't play in that schoolyard again after that, whether with the friend who had witnessed it or with another. During recess, I remained prostrate near the classroom door, completely afraid to walk into the middle of the playground. Luckily I changed schools the following year. But for the rest of the school year, I was sad and off. I remember once this friend had spoken to the group who had "raped" me (that's how I experienced it) and I felt betrayed. I don't know what they said, or if it was me they were talking about.

This story became a secret that I never revealed for years, before talking about it to my therapist, to my boyfriend, then on the internet.
I don't know if it will have influenced my life, 10%? at 80%? but what is certain is that it is with me every day, when I get dressed, when I undress.. specially when i put down my panty.. I live with that experience, whit that memory.

Among the consequences of the event, apart from my fear of people, is that I often imagine being raped. I have since learned that many imagine this, but I am different from other women who fantasize in the sense of "desiring", of being taken violently, of being desired WITH force, whereas I imagine being taken BY force, it's not the same, not the same psychological springs.

[LoveSexy]

Hi Deborah,
That’s a very interesting and touching story.
It seems you have been developing submissive fantasies after your public pantsing took place. After that, did you ever had the opportunity to be in a real situation where you had a submissive role?