Last year, I suffered from a sexual violence, to be more specific, stealthing* (Non consensual condom removal) and STDs and PTSD from stealthing caused by a pro basketball player who played for B2 basketball league in Tokyo, Japan for the 2021-2022 season. I was given multiple sexually transmitted diseases as a result of his irresponsible, selfish and irrational action.
*Stealthing = Non-consensual condom removal, or "stealthing", is the practice of a man removing a condom during sexual intercourse without consent, when his sex partner has only consented to condom-protected sex. Victims are exposed to potential sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS, or unwanted pregnancies. (Reference: Wiki)
The reason why I'm writing this blog post is because I've had to undergo multiple treatments for multiple STDs (some of which were not covered by medical insurance in Japan) and although none of them was life-threatening, I had to pay 130,000 yen (About 1,500 USD) out of my pocket in total for testing, treatments and doctor visits. It was my first time contracting STDs, and I suffered a lot both physically and mentally. I never received any apologies for this and he never took accountability for it. With all the negative stigmas surrounding STDs, I felt ashamed and disgusted and wasn’t able to talk to anyone about it and had to deal with it all alone until I decided to talk to some of my closest friends and family members about it last year and they encouraged me to speak up about this event even if nobody sees this blog or even if it doesn’t mean anything. My hope is that this blog will somewhat help anybody who's been through similar situations and encourage them to speak up too instead of bearing it silently.
This event traumatized me to a point where every time I hear or see someone making jokes about stds on movies or the internet I get triggered and cry. I have tried many times to completely heal from this situation, I even started going to therapy but I still suffer from PTSD. My feelings and experience were completely invalidated by the perpetrator.
If I'm being completely honest, I never in a million years thought I would go through something like this. And to be completely honest I used to judge people who get or have STDs because I thought STDs meant you’re sleeping around with multiple people. I know it was really messed up for me to think that way but now I know that is not true for everyone. Some people are just victims to those irresponsible people like him. Because it only took one person and one unprotected sex to give me STDs. I never thought I would catch STDs because I had always practiced safe sex, and by the grace of God, all the guys I had dated before I met him were all respectful of my health and decision about always choosing to have protected sex. They never overstepped my boundaries, never forced anything or disrespected my decisions. But I had to learn the hard way this time, which is, by just being around certain types of people, your health can be put at risk at any given moment and your whole life can change for the worse in the blink of an eye. You need to be very careful of who you let into your life and who you surround yourself with because just like this person, not everyone has good intentions. But I’m not going to just be a victim and cry myself to sleep in silence.
It’s going to be a very long story if I share all the details of what happened so I will try to sum up and mainly focus on the incident.
I met him on a dating app in September 2021. He messaged me and I responded and that’s how everything started. He had just moved to Japan for basketball at the time and he had just finished his 14 days quarantine. He wasn’t the type of man I would usually date but because of the common backgrounds we had, I decided to respond and we started texting and talking on the phone almost everyday. If I remember correctly, we met in person for the first time towards the end of October 2021.
On February 4th 2022, I went to his apartment in Ota city to visit him as usual (this apartment was provided by his team). Every time we would have sex, I always made sure he was wearing a condom, I always asked him to wear one, always. He would ask me if we could do it unprotected every time but I always said no. With any men that I had ever been with before him too, I always asked them to wear a condom. That was just one of the boundaries I had always set for myself because of all the horrifying things about STDs I was taught growing up, I never wanted to even risk it and of course I didn’t want to risk getting pregnant.
And again by the grace of God, every man I dated before him was super respectful and never pressured me into doing it unprotected or anything I didn’t want to do. But he was different and this night changed everything for me. Feb 4th of 2022 was one of the worst days I’ve ever had in my life. As usual, I asked him to wear a condom and he agreed. Even though he asked me if we could do it unprotected like he always did, that night too I said "no". He begged but I said no again. So as we started to undress (the room was pitch dark) he started to put it in and he was already penetrating at this point (no type of foreplay btw and that says a lot about him too as a person or how he treated me), and I noticed it felt different I didn’t feel the condom so I asked him if he’s wearing a condom then he said no. And he said “please let me just keep going” or something along that line. And I said “I don’t wanna do it without protection” but he said “please” and he just kept going. He didn’t even ask me if we could do it without a condom. He didn’t ask my consent on that. And by the time I realized, he was already penetrating me. And at this point I was in disbelief and I had kind of given up at that point because it was already in and it was already happening. The only thing I could do was pray that he didn’t give me anything. He pulled out to ejaculate and he told me there’s no need for me to worry because he’s infertile and he doesn’t have any STDs. To be honest I was more scared of getting pregnant at the time because STD was so foreign subject to me and I never thought I would catch one so I was more so worried about getting pregnant. I didn’t know what to expect at all because that was my first time ever having unprotected sex.
And the next day I was already feeling a lot of discomfort in my private area. It was something I never felt before and I remember being super worried. I still have the text messages I sent to him in the next few days telling him that my down there feels weird. And his response was “in a good or bad way?” So I texted him “in a bad way”. I started searching all the symptoms on the internet. I remember I was crying a lot because I was so worried but my period came a few weeks later so pregnancy was out of the question, but the discomfort and pain continued so I started to get worried about STDs. So I decided to go get tested and right off the bat my doctor told me I had a yeast infection (I never had and never tested positive for yeast infection before this incident). And this was around the time I also began having excessive amount of discharge and this raised a concern for me because its color was something I never seen and I never had that much discharge before. I also got tested for a few more other STDs but I got those results a week later. But my doctor diagnosing me with yeast infection kind of relieved my worries and stress because that was something I had heard a lot of women have and it was less scary. My doctor gave me some antibiotics for yeast infection to take for 1 or 2 days. I remember going home feeling a huge sense of relief. Because I thought this person had given me more serious diseases. But everything changed a week later.
A week later I had an appointment with my dermatologist and I remember I was on my way there walking and I was about 10 mins away from my dermatologist and I got a call from my OBGYN telling me that the test came back positive for more serious STD (I’m not going to name it for privacy reason). I remember there was a park right next to the street I was walking and I went inside the park to sit and I broke down crying. I was very scared and worried and angry and ashamed, I was feeling all types of emotions. And I didn’t know what to do because I was so foreign to that subject.
I remember I cancelled my dermatologist appointment and I just sat and cried in the park for like an hour. And when I kind of accepted what I was just diagnosed with and kind of sorted out my feelings at the moment I decided to text him. I was very angry at him and I remember the first thing I asked was if he’s messing with other women and having unprotected sex with them. And he texted me back saying no. I mean no man would probably admit to a question like that but I knew he was lying. There are so many reasons why I knew he was lying but that will make a long paragraph so I’m going to skip the details. And he texted me saying things like his ex probably has given him the STDs so he’s gonna text his ex or something like that which I found very odd because why texting ex is his first priority? Like what? And he tried to flip it on me too as if I was messing with other guys. When he knows God knows I’m not that kind of person and I can swear to God I never ever messed with other guys while I was seeing him. If anything, I hadn’t seen anyone for 6 months when I started talking to this person. And I even swore on God and on everything but he couldn’t swear on anything yet he still tried to gaslight me. He came up with a bunch of excuses just trying to make me the bad guy and made me feel like I was the problem. His reaction and behavior seemed very nonchalant while I was losing my mind researching everything like symptoms, potential affects on my reproductive health, other people’s experiences with stds etc. I watched tons of videos about STDs and read tons of articles about STDs and I was just crying everyday because I was really scared.
I remember I texted him asking why he can be so nonchalant and he sent me a reel in which the guy in the video was saying something like when bad things happen to you, you can whine and cry about it for a few minutes but it already happened and you can’t change the past so you should just get over it after a few minutes and stfu. That’s the video he sent me while I was literally having a meltdown because of what he did to me. Basically he told me to stop b*tching and get over it. When the least he could have done was just apologize. The simplest thing. He can’t even take accountability and apologize. I still don’t understand, what was the point of him lying when he knew no matter what excuses he comes up with, no matter how much he lies and tries to cover up, at that point there was no going back. Because he put my health at risk. So why was he still trying to make himself look like a good man? He was doing the complete opposite of everything that a good man would do. There’s no coming back from that. He should’ve just admitted to what he did and apologize. Then maybe I wouldn’t have had this much trauma and resentment towards him. He was just a dirty person. No self control, no self respect, no self discipline, no morals, just dusty and dirty. And sadly when you’re naive and too nice, you’d be taken advantage of by people like him.
He told me he will keep me updated on his ex’s response but a few days went by and I never got an update from him so I texted him asking if he got any response from his ex and he said “I think she blocked me cause the text went green”. Bullshit. Again this is when I knew he’s never going to admit and take his accountability. He also told me he will send his test results by the following week but he never did (of course).
After that, I tried calling him or texting him trying to get him to apologize or just communicate since he refused to communicate about this incident like a grown adult but he always said “oh I can’t talk I’m in practice right now” “oh I can’t talk I’m talking to my brother right now” or “oh I can’t talk I’m about to go to sleep”. This is again when I realized I will never get an apology from this person and I needed to accept that. It was a hard pill to swallow but sometimes in life you don’t get an apology or closure for the awful things people put you through but you need to accept that and move on. I sometimes ask myself what if the STDs he gave me were life threatening or non curable.. and he couldn’t even take accountability for non-life threatening diseases. I can’t even fathom. He would still probably gaslight and guilt trip me.
Some people might not think std is that serious, but for me It IS that serious because it cost me my health. It is that serious because it changed my outlook on how I view intimacy and men in general. It is that serious because it affects men and women differently and women usually experience worse symptoms and outcomes. And I suffered and cried a lot. So that’s why I have every right to feel and react this way. But again this person over and over again made me feel like I was overreacting for reacting the way I did and invalidated my experience and feelings. The one good thing that came out of this is that this event made me have the utmost respect and gratitude for men who know how to take accountability and have respect for women unlike this person.
Another reason why I suffered from this incident for a long time is because after I got tested positive for STDs and took antibiotics for them, I was still feeling this discomfort and pain in my genital area, it continued for a while. But my test came back all negative after taking antibiotics and my doctor told me I'm was in the clear so I was very confused as to why I was still feeling discomfort and having discharge. I was always anxious and paranoid. My mental health was literally at its worst. I thought to myself I was just overthinking. But it never felt the same and I knew there was still something wrong. The only test I had taken at that point was just a general std test which is covered by Japanese medical insurance, so I decided to take a more in-depth std test which I had to pay out of my pocket since this one was not covered by the insurance. And on this test I found out I was positive for more. This was another soul crushing moment for me because I thought it couldn't get any worse. (I wasn't seeing anybody between those times I took the first and the second tests and he's the only person I ever had unprotected sex with). He gave me not just one but more than one STDs. And because I was paranoid I was taking tests and visiting my doctor every other month after that even though I was not sexually active at all. I was very drained mentally and this took a really heavy toll on my mental and physical health. And in the midst of all this, while I was going through one of the worst times in my life, he was somewhere nonchalant, still going to the clubs and bars, still entertaining bunch of girls, and gave a single f*ck about what he did to me or what I was going through because of his actions.
The thing I have hard time forgiving is the fact that this unprotected sex was not consented. I consented to having protected sex. He didn’t wear the condom when he said he would and he lied about it because the room was dark and I couldn’t see. And even after I asked him to stop and wear one, he continued without one. I would take some responsibility if I had consented to having unprotected sex because that would have meant I also consented to the risk of getting STDs and/or getting pregnant, but I never said yes to taking off the rubber, I never agreed to doing it unprotected. He had no respect for me, no self control and discipline and as a result, I had to suffer from STDs and mental and physical traumas. And again the worst part of it all is he never ever apologized. This happened all because he forced to doing it unprotected. It still baffles me until this day. I just never imagined something like this would happen to me.
He couldn’t care less about my feelings at all. At least if you’re going to be promiscuous, be mindful of others health. It’s not just about you anymore once you decide to mess with multiple people unprotected at the same time or different times but without getting tested in-between. It’s everyone’s health you have to think about if you’re going to do that. But clearly this person did not give a single f*ck about my health at all. If anything maybe he had always wished that this would happen to me and might have done it on purpose just to see me suffer. I don’t know but seeing how he was treating me the whole time I was seeing him, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was premeditated. I don’t wish nobody to experience something like this especially women but it’s sad that it cost my health for him to learn not to do something like this. Something that is so common sense. At my expense.
My doctor told me that it might be difficult for me to get pregnant in the future, and even now that I’m completely cured, my genital area still doesn’t feel the same as how it felt prior to meeting this person (I still suffer from on and off yeast infections I got as a result of contracting multiple STDs from this person, my ph balance was completely ruined by this dirty and dusty person and my genital area was more swollen than before as a result of inflammation and irritation caused by the infections given by this person and all the antibiotics I had to take to cure). Over the past year or so, I've been through a great deal of pain and sadness, but the man who’s responsible for this showed no remorse or regret and continued to go clubbing, bar hopping and hitting on girls like he couldn’t care less. And he will continue to portray himself as a good person because he fails to even see his wrongs and he truly believes he did nothing wrong.
I don’t want anything to do with this person. I want no type of association with this person. I wish I didn’t ignore my gut feelings and all the red flags this person showed me from the every beginning. I wish I can go back in time and not responded to this person on a dating app. I wish I can unmeet this person. But sadly I can’t change what’s happened. I still deal with PTSD from this person. This post is for my justice. My point of writing this blog was not to bring any negativity to him or to get my revenge, because karma will. But I just wanted to tell the truth even if it doesn’t mean anything. To women who have been cheated on, mistreated, abused, you are worthy. You deserve all the good things. And one day someone will prove that to you and will treat you like you’re the best thing that ever happened to them without even asking. Don't let anybody destroy your health and your happiness. And if you made it this far, thank you for reading.