Warning: This story discusses gang rape, don’t read it if you don’t want to read about rape!
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Chelsea was walking back to her car when she saw four large Maori men walking towards her. The one in front was wearing a beanie and a ripped Tui t-shirt and the others were wearing similar clothes, things like hoodys, jeans and steel capped work boots. That sort of thing didn’t really scare her, she grew up in the least desirable suburb in town, it was comparable to south Auckland and everyone knows what that place is like.
As she approached them she smiled at them but then as she brushed past them she felt their hands on her elbows. She turned her head round to look at them and saw the lead guy had a weird smile on his face. Suddenly she felt them pulling her back the way she came and round a corner into an alleyway. Chelsea screamed, she couldn’t understand why no one was nearby to hear her. One of the men quickly drew his foot under her legs causing her to lose her balance and fall to the ground on her back. Once Chelsea had gotten over the initial shock of the blow she desperately started trying to kick them away. Two of the men were holding her arms and shoulders the lead man was standing over her and the final man was behind him. As her foot hit his shin the lead man swore and yelled for the two guys holding her arms to turn her over.
“We have to put a stop to this F****** kicking or there’s no way any of us are going to enjoy this!”
Chelsea was terrified and screaming for them to let her go. Why were they doing this to her? All she did was smile. Most men who lived in her area were relatively harmless despite their rather gruff look. Chelsea closed her eyes as tightly as she could knowing something painful was about to happen, and just as she did she felt the excruciating pain of a knife in her back. It was twisted around a little and as it was moved she felt her legs getting heavy. Suddenly she realised she couldn’t move them and that was when they turned her back over onto her back. The fourth man was holding a rope and he tied her wrists together above her head. He then tied her wrists to a pipe that was running along the bottom of the building. She could feel blood seeping out under her back and she didn’t want to move her back for fear that the pain would get worse.
The men were laughing as they cut off her pants and underwear leaving them lying torn under her body.
“You lot are going first, wet her up ready for me.”
One of the men that had been holding her arms down started unzipping his pants, standing between her legs.
“Wait a second, we can’t have her screaming much longer, someone might hear!”
The lead man pulled the torn knickers from under her and scrunched them up into a ball before stuffing them into her mouth. They then pulled off her shoes and socks and used the socks to gag her mouth so the knickers couldn’t get out. Each man then started raping her, their penises were huge and all Chelsea could do was hold her eyes closed and try not to think about what they were doing to her.
Tears were streaming down her face as they pulled her knickers out of her mouth and gave her a kick in the head before sauntering out of the alleyway and continued on their way. Chelsea could feel the underside of her shirt was wet with blood and there was a stone stuck just under her shoulder blade that was digging into her skin. She continued to cry as she laid there, the rope digging into her wrists. Her back was on fire and her legs lay there like lead, lead she couldn’t feel.
Chelsea didn’t know how long she’d been lying there, she was numb to all that was going on around her, and she didn’t hear when a tidy looking man in his thirties walked past.
“I’ve called an ambulance! Can you tell me your name? How long have you been here?”
Chelsea was too upset to answer him. All she could do was turn her head to the side and close her eyes as she continued to let the tears out. All the man could do was sit with her until the ambulance arrived. The ambulance officers were running towards her. One was a man and one was a woman. They were each holding a large bag.
“I can’t tell you much sorry, she’s refused to talk to me, and she won’t even look at me.”
Sensing she had been raped or something the woman bent over and whispered in her ear.
“It’s alright, your safe now.”
Chelsea whispered back “I was a virgin…” That was all she could manage before she had a fresh bout of tears running down her face.
The woman stood up and whispered into her partner’s ear.
“She was raped and she was a virgin.” Those two facts told him everything. He allowed the woman to take the lead.
“I need you to tell me, where do you hurt?”
“They stabbed me in the back to stop me kicking them, and they kicked me in the head before they left.”
“Ok, can you feel this?” The woman asked as she squeezed her toes.
“No.”
“Can you feel this?” She was asked as her thighs were squeezed.
“No.”
The lady continued to talk to her soothingly as she pulled equipment out of her bag, “I need you stay still for me, we’ll get you set up and to the hospital as soon as we can.”
Chelsea flinched as the guy paramedic took hold of her head. She closed her eyes again trying to block out the fact that he was touching her. The lady slipped a neck brace under her and pulled the front round under her chin. Once she pulled the straps through and did them up the man took his hands away from her head. Chelsea found she couldn’t move her head one inch. With the help of the man who’d found her they pulled her onto her side so they could look at her back. It was covered in blood and there was a hole in her bloodied shirt where the knife had gone in. All they could do was put a pad under where the wound was and rolled a bandage around her waist to hold it in place. They then gently rolled back onto her back and the man disappeared. He said something getting the stretcher.
When he came back the first thing they did was cover her naked legs with a blanket. They then rolled her on her side again and slipped a backboard under her. They pulled the straps over her to hold her rigid to the board and then lifted her up onto the stretcher. She’d lost a lot of blood by that point and she started fading out of consciousness. As they wheeled her out of the alleyway and loaded her into the ambulance she was barely aware of the people watching and whispering.
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“Today a young woman was found in an alleyway bleeding and almost unconscious. She had been beaten and raped by a group of men who left her to die. A man walking past found her bleeding and still tied to a pipe. He said the young woman was too upset to answer him, he didn’t realise until later that she was too scared to acknowledge him being in such a vulnerable state. She is now being transported to Wellington for emergency surgery to her spine and the Police are looking for four men of the following description…”
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Chelsea had been unconscious the whole way to the hospital. She was taken into the Emergency room where the staff cut off the rest of her bloody torn clothes and covered her with a hospital gown before rolling her over to better inspect the knife wound. It was a large hole from being twisted round and it got narrower but it went very deep. From the details the paramedics had given them they knew the knife had gone down as far as her spine and severed her spinal cord. Their surgical unit was not equipped to handle this sort of thing and they would have to transfer her to Wellington for emergency surgery. One nurse contacted the helicopters to arrange her to be flown to Wellington and another nurse stayed at her stretcher to keep an eye on her as the doctors dispersed to write out the paperwork to send with her.
Once it was all ready and the helicopter had landed waiting to pick Chelsea up they raised the sides of the stretcher and started rolling her out of the emergency room to the landing pad in the field next to the hospital. As they were going through the hallway towards the ER doors Chelsea started waking up only vaguely aware of the fact that she was moving. Several nurses and a doctor were pushing the bed she was on and another nurse was walking next to her with a blood unit and IV solution in her hands.
Chelsea reached her hand up to touch the pad on the side of her head as she said, “Wha..ah…where am I going?”
The nurse holding the blood and IV bent over pulling her hand away from her head injury and said to her, “The injuries you sustained were too great for us to fix here so we’re loading you onto a helicopter so you can get surgery in Wellington. Don’t worry, you’ll be there a lot faster than if you were driving and the pain medication in the IV should be dulling a lot of the pain your feeling.”
“So that’s why I can’t feel it…where is my clothes?”
Chelsea’s mutterings were a little hard to understand but at that point she was still very groggy from the effects of her beating she had received.
“Everything will be sorted for you, don’t worry.”
At that moment they exited the hospital and walked down the path towards the helicopter. The wind was cold and the sun was setting. The noise of the helicopter rotors got louder and louder as they got closer until they were met by the helicopter paramedics who positioned their stretcher next to hers and helped the staff transfer her over and cover her with blankets before loading her into the helicopter.
“She just woke up and she’s a little groggy and out of it, so please keep an eye on her. She was left in the alleyway for quite a while so she lost a lot of blood. Make sure she stays awake.”
The paramedics then got into the back of the helicopter and closed the doors as the helicopter took off.
“We should be in Wellington in an hour so you just relax and enjoy the ride. My name is Jack and this is Martin.”
Chelsea was stuck there with these men surrounding her. One bent over her as he hung up the IV and blood bags above her so they could continue to do their job. Chelsea tried her hardest not to treat these men badly as she knew they weren’t the same men that attacked her but she couldn’t help but feel uneasy with their presence and they knew it. The paramedics did their best to make her feel at home with them and didn’t make any sudden or threatening gestures. A couple of times on the trip when she thought about going back to sleep one of them bent over and tapped her on the cheek instructing her to stay with them.
“You’ll be able to have a nice long sleep once they get you into surgery.” They said to her as they kept her awake.
“So, have you ever been in a helicopter before?” One of them asked her, trying to keep her mind busy.
“No I haven’t, only time I ever flew anywhere was when I went to Fiji, but I loved it so much honestly I would have been happy if I simply flew to Fiji then flew back. I don’t know why other people complain about plane trips.”
“From what I’ve been told the long haul flights get you rather antsy as there’s nowhere for you to go in the twelve or so hours you’re stuck on that plane. But I guess for a newbie like us a twelve hour flight would be a thrill.”
“Yeah, I was easily amused with things like the little button to call the flight attendant but then I was several years younger then.”
As the flight wore on it bothered Chelsea that she couldn’t feel her legs. She knew a blanket was covering her and normally she enjoyed the feel of a blanket against her bare legs but she couldn’t. She wasn’t used to having needles taped to her hands either and she wasn’t really all that sure what to do with them. She kept her arms under the blanket worried that her feeling about would do something to pull the needles out.
The pilot yelled out to the paramedics in the back “We’re in Wellington and will be at the hospital in a few minutes. The radio says there’s a team waiting at the landing pad for us.”
They landed and the paramedics got out the side door and closed it. As they walked round to the back of the helicopter Chelsea was inside worried about what was outside. When they opened the back doors and pulled her out she could see it was now dark outside and she was on top of a building. She must have been. Wellington is too cramped to have wide open fields like in her home town. The paramedics wheeled her over to the people standing near a door and helped transfer her over to their stretcher. One of them took the stretcher back to the helicopter and the other handed over the IV and blood unit to one of the nurses. A nurse stepped forward to Chelsea with a needle in her hand and placed a hand on her shoulder.
“We need to get you into surgery straight away to stop the bleeding. This needle is something to start the anaesthetic process for the anaesthetist. It will sting for a little but then you should start feeling a little drowsy.”
Once the injection had been given the team of nurses started wheeling her into the door and towards an elevator that was in the hallway. They wheeled her into the elevator and pushed a button to go to whatever floor the surgical unit was on. She was then pushed out of the elevator and towards two heavy double doors where three nurses were waiting. They were all in blue scrubs and had their hair hidden away in surgical garb. Wordlessly they took her stretcher and wheeled her through the double doors and down a hallway. They turned into a large white room. A table was in the middle with bright lights over it. Chelsea was transferred onto a table and then an anaesthetist appeared over her head with a mask.
“I need you to start counting backwards from ten talking deep breaths in between for me. Don’t worry, once you wake up you will be in a nice comfortable bed all safe and sound.”
He then placed the mask over her mouth and nose and Chelsea started counting backwards. She got to five before she passed out.
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True to his word Chelsea woke up in a hospital bed in a small room. The neck brace had been taken off but she felt some stiff padding and bandaging around her waist and back keeping her now closed up wound in check. Her head didn’t have any bandages on it where the boot had kicked her but when she raised her hand to her head she felt stitches there. A button was sitting in her other hand and she figured it was a button to call a nurse or someone to let them know she was awake. She only had to wait a few seconds before a nurse appeared next to her bed.
“Hi Chelsea, I’m Jenny and I’m going to be one of your nurses here in the surgical unit until you get transferred to Christchurch for rehab. I know it is probably very tempting but please don’t try to sit up or move your body. We have you on painkillers but it would still hurt a great deal and we don’t want you ripping any of your stitches.”
The nurse was right; her torso did hurt a lot.
“What do you mean…rehab?”
At that the nurse looked into her eyes, Chelsea was a little uncomfortable at this intense exchange, and then the nurse said, “I’m so sorry. The knife permanently severed your spinal cord and did a lot of damage to the surrounding bone. The surgeon had to use some plates and screws to put your vertebrae back together where the knife had been twisted round. It left you a complete paraplegic and the only place you can go for rehab to recover is Christchurch.”
“I can’t walk? … I shouldn’t have tried to kick them…” Tears filled Chelsea’s eyes as she recalled the events that caused this all to happen.
“I am so sorry for what those assholes did to you. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking about what they did to you just to get a few kicks. The police want to talk to you as soon as possible if you feel up to it. They say the sooner they get their interview with you over and done with the sooner they can find those creeps and charge them.”
“I might as well get it all over and done with now while it still feels a little unreal.”
“That a girl! I’ll go bring them in now. Keep this button in your hand and call me if you need anything or things get a little too intense for you.”
The nurse disappeared out of the room then two officers came through the door. Fortunately they were both women.
Chelsea told them what happened and she tried to give them as many details she could remember, including descriptions of the men. It was hard and the longer things went on the more upset she became.
“It probably doesn’t mean much to you, most people don’t understand why, but I was a virgin. They stole my virginity. They didn’t care about what they were doing to me. I shouldn’t have smiled at them, most men in my suburb were harmless, and why did I assume these men were the same?”
Chelsea broke down into tears after that and the police thanked her for all she told them. They reassured her they would keep her apprised of what was going on. They then left the room and the nurse reappeared with a tissue for Chelsea to wipe her eyes. The IV was still in her hand and it felt weird having it there.
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“The police are continuing their investigation into the beating and rape attack done on a young girl yesterday. The girl gave them the following description of the men and the police request that anyone who knows these men or have seen them call 0800 POLICE. Any information on their whereabouts would be useful. The girl who was attacked was a virgin and has now been left a paraplegic. She is recovering from emergency surgery in Wellington before being moved to Christchurch for rehab…”
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