The Time I Was Sexually Assaulted and Everybody Just Watched

Apparently, it’s my fault for not having been born a totally different person

Anthony Eichberger
13 min readOct 4, 2022
Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash

Growing up, everybody looked at me as “the oddball.” During a recent visit with my family, one of my aunts verbally recalled how I was “a weird kid” (and I told her she was right!). There were many reasons for this.

I had undiagnosed autism. I felt intense self-consciousness over my body image. I was a closeted gay boy. I simmered in constant anger over my family’s economically-poor status. I hated gym class — for a variety of reasons (some justified, some irrational).

That last one was probably what did me in.

The boy who would eventually become My Assailant probably picked up on a lot of these cues about me. He then proceeded to weaponize them against me, all at the same time, during a Physical Education class we had together as high school freshmen.

How It Started

He first moved to my hometown when we were in the Sixth Grade, around November or December. We both had Mr. Wester as our “core” teacher for most subjects in the morning.

I remember the first time I interacted with My (Future) Assailant. Our teacher wanted us to work in trios for an…

--

--

Anthony Eichberger

Gay. Millennial. Pagan/Polytheist. Disabled. Rural-Born. Politically-Independent. Fashion-Challenged. Rational Egoist. Survivor. #AgriWarrior (Deal With It!)