Erica Van Driel sexually assaulted me.

*Note: This post was originally published as a Facebook post on my main Facebook page as a message to my friends and family on Friday, May 19th, 2023. I posted it to this blog on the 20th of May, and have re-posted it today (June 10, 2023) to correct some errors in SEO settings, as well as to add a few more clarifying details for those who are reading this outside of Facebook.  

Hey everyone. 

It seems like I’ve been making a lot of difficult posts lately. Unfortunately, this one – for me – will be the most difficult post I’ve made so far. This post will come with a lot of shame, embarrassment and I fear judgement. I fully expect that there are people who will pull away from me after this. And that’s ok. If it has to be that way, so be it.  

First off, a trigger warning for sexual assault and death.

As most of you know, Shawna (my partner of 14 years and wife of 9) and I are Polyamorous and ENM and have been since the start of our relationship. A little shy of 4 years ago, I became involved with a woman named Erica Van Driel who messaged me online through Plenty Of Fish and a relationship quickly developed. 

We met online in July of 2019, then in person in Vancouver on August 5th. Erica came to the Island to visit and we went on a couple of dates over the next 3 weeks, including an overnight stay at a hotel near Ladysmith and a van-camping trip to Port Renfew 10 days later. On September 5th, 2019, I was in a really bad E-bike accident that resulted in my having a broken pelvis, a displaced fracture of both my collarbone and a rib, and multiple greenstick fractures in several of my other ribs, as well as a lot of soft tissue damage.

In a remarkably tragic coincidence, my estranged father was killed in a motorcycle accident at the same time, on the same day.

My older brother called me to tell me, and Shawna answered my phone. My brother told her that my father had been killed in a deer vs. motorcycle crash that evening. I found out about my dad’s death while I was in the ER, and under the influence of copious amounts of morphine via an IV drip. I didn’t have any ability to process his death or what was happening until a few days later when I was at home convalescing.

At the time, Erica was living in Vancouver, and working (in part) as a sexual violence and trauma counselor at UBC (correction, SFU), and a week after my accident, she coordinated a “surprise” visit with my wife and came to Nanaimo to take care of me. Ostensibly, to give Shawna the opportunity to go camping with our two young boys and take a break from having to care for me 24/7. She hadn’t slept much in the days following my accident, because she’d have to wake up multiple times throughout the night and help me roll over, use a bedpan, get water, food or take my meds. I was bedridden and completely helpless and immobile. Shawna was my full time nurse for the week following my accident, as well as a single mother taking care of two small boys. (Then 7 and 9)

If I’m being totally honest, the timelines of those few days are a bit fuzzy. I was very high on prescribed Tramadol, and morphine for pain (I finally got copies of my medical records from that time) while bedridden, unable to move. I was literally using a bedpan because I couldn’t even roll over without someone picking up and moving my legs for me. 

It’s really important to note that Erica is a registered clinical counselor and therapist. (who since this incident has moved to Nanaimo and now has her own private practice in the South End). During the time she was here taking care of me that weekend, she put on her therapist/Counselor hat and started talking to me at great length about my dad, the incidences that ended our relationship, my childhood, his death, and what emotions I was feeling at the time and discussing childhood trauma. She helped me talk it through, and she listened to me cry, a lot. (Opioid narcotics leave a person pretty emotionally open, so, yeah, there was a lot of tears)

Erica made some really deep dives into my head, to a degree that to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever done before. She cuddled me, comforted me and held me. She also posed for photos with a teddy bear that had been given to me on the day of my birth and was the only thing I still own that physically connects me to my childhood. Like me, that teddy bear is a survivor. It is a deeply personal memento to me in ways that I can’t articulate, and watching her cuddle with it like that made me feel like I was being cared for in a deeply, deeply intimate, connected and SAFE way. The message was “I will care for you and the hurt little boy in you”.

I thought all of these actions were care and love. My guard was completely down. I was completely raw, open and vulnerable.

It’s also an important part of the story that at the time of my accident, I hadn’t spoken to my father in over a decade, as he was an incredibly physically and emotionally abusive man who I had kicked out of my life. There was a LOT of dad related trauma there. And in my mental state, Erica jumped right in and spent a couple days rooting around in my Tramadol clouded head.

While I was broken, while I was drugged, while I was in excruciating physical pain, while I was in excruciating mental pain, and while I was at an unprecedented level of vulnerability while dealing with my own accident and the death of my father – she also initiated sex with me.

The person who I was completely dependent on, and who was supposed to be taking care of me climbed on top of me while I was in my bed, my body full of broken bones, and she took what she wanted from me. She exerted control over me, physically, emotionally and mentally, and it gave her a ridiculous amount of power to do it. Erica got off on the idea that I apologized to her via text a couple days later for being in too much pain to go “all out”. She sent a reply back saying:

—
[2019-09-16 8:13 PM] (Erica Van Driel): It was supremely satisfying that you couldn’t go all out, actually. I doubt I’ll ever have that level of control over you again…. I don’t envision you lying there letting me do whatever I want to you all night very often in our future.
—

I’ve spoken to my (amazing) therapist, at length. I’ve spoken to my family doctor. I spoke to a psychiatrist at Brooks Landing this week. I’ve posted in support groups, polyam groups, and had deep conversations with friends. And they ALL – unanimously – say the same thing: In my emotional, physical and mental state, I was not in a place to to give consent to any kind of sexual activity.

Erica Van Driel sexually assaulted me.

Erica is a trained Registered Clinical Counselor who specifically works in the areas of sexual assault, violence and trauma. She has the training, knowledge and understanding of what consent is and when it can and cannot be given. She KNEW that I was not in a place where I could provide consent, and she KNEW she was committing an assault. Even if I had been enthusiastically eager and willing, she would have known that I was NOT in a position to consent, being under the influence of narcotics ALONE. 

Now, this is where the shame, embarrassment and fear of judgment comes in. I can hear you asking why I didn’t stop her, and why I waited so long to say anything or hold her accountable and why I stayed in a relationship with her for another 3 and a half years after that?

The answer is simple: I couldn’t have physically stopped her. I was physically dependent on her as it was, needing her help to do basic things like roll over in bed so I could pee into a bottle, eat, or even get water. I was broken, physically and mentally. I was drugged. I was in a deep state of emotional processing at just having lost my father to an accident, my mind and my body were both hurting and broken. I remember expressing worry that sex would hurt, having my broken bones moving as I moved, and she said she’d be gentle and “do all the work”.

In fact, it was during that day that I asked her to gently push on my chest because it made it easier to breathe, and she inadvertently and audibly set one of my broken ribs. THAT is how broken I was.

What I didn’t realize at the time, and what I couldn’t see for obvious reasons, was that I was being emotionally manipulated, gaslit and abused by a narcissist with an agenda. I was inside a toxic and dysfunctional connection, and I couldn’t see the forest through the trees. Someone who had a masters degree in messing with people’s heads and manipulating their emotions in order to open them up was messing with mine, and I was becoming trauma bonded with someone who was using me as her own personal dopamine dispenser, and would continue to do so for the next three and a half years, driving me to the point of suicidal ideation.

It’s complicated, it’s something I’m working on with my therapist, and now that I’m outside of it, and free of the cycle – I’m doing something about it. I am holding her accountable. I’ve begun the process of suing her for the assault, and I refuse to be silent because of stigma and shame.

Sexual assault can happen to men, too. I will NOT be shamed into silence. I will not carry on like nothing happened.

~ R