“What things were done to my body that left no mark?": the pain of not remembering being raped.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, please seek help with a qualified counsellor or by calling 1800 RESPECT.

The last thing Meg Minkley remembers is taking a bite of a quesadilla. She knows it was still daylight outside.

Meg had spent the day watching waterfalls in the “amazing jungle” of southern Mexico. She has blocked much of it out but she remembers following a group of backpackers through the greenery into a village to stay the night. She was looking forward to waking up in the jungle.

This was not Meg’s first time travelling alone. She grew up in Australia but had been living in Mexico, teaching at a university. She had travelled alone through Europe and India. She was a smart, seasoned traveller, a safe one.

When she saw the room where she was to spend the night in that remote jungle village, she had a strange feeling. The room “felt weird”. But she was also “so excited by the thought of being in bed by 7pm and not sharing a room with other people”. She took it.

“I walked away to try and find something else, but I couldn’t understand the logistics of this place. I couldn’t find food, either. I can’t describe it,” Meg told Mamamia. “I went back to the hostel. The guy who ran it was a man in his mid 40s. He spoke Spanish and I trusted him actually. I couldn’t see he was dangerous. But I did think it was rare that he had handed out the keys, served drinks and now was offering me food.”

Meg was speaking to him in Spanish. “It was one of those conversations you have when you’re new to a language. He told me he wasn’t married and he had no children. He had been working there for 20 years.”

When he offered her a beer, Meg declined. “Then he brought over a long neck, opened it in front of me, poured two glasses – one for him and one for me – and we both drank.”

After that, he left Meg alone. He was speaking to other tourists. There was music playing, travellers talking. And Meg was using her iPad to research where she’d travel to next.

When the  Spanish-speaking hostel-owner offered to cook Meg a quesadilla, she accepted. "It was something like ham and cheese," she said. "He gave me the quesadilla and sat down in front of me. The last thing I remember is taking a bite. It was around 6:30pm and still light out."

When Meg 'came to' it was because his hand was around her throat.

"I could see the roof of my room. All my clothes were off. He was on top of me having sex and his hand was pushing down on my throat," she said. "I was very aware that something was wrong - not because of what was happening - but because there was a bed head in my room that he'd pulled across the door. There was also a chair blocking the window."

"I don't remember if I talked or pushed him off me. I don't remember."

Later, Meg learned she had acted 'normally' after the first bite of her quesadilla. She had seen and spoken to a friend of hers at the hostel - a conversation of which she has no recollection. She doesn't remember him being there at all. She doesn't remember finishing her meal or going to her room or having her clothes stripped.

It's an experience shared by many rape survivors. Maybe, like Meg, they were drugged. Maybe they were drinking. Perhaps it's post-traumatic stress disorder. Whatever the cause, not remembering being raped can make its aftermath all the more complex. The questions are more potent. The imagination can run wild.

There are too many women who have woken up one morning, or late one night, and understood - without yet understanding at all - that something terrible has occurred.

There is the famous account of the Stanford rape victim, a woman who went to a Stanford University college party in the US with her sister. She woke up in the hospital and was told she had been "potentially penetrated by a stranger" and that she should get tested for HIV. Days later, she read the details of her rape in the newspaper.

"I read and learned for the first time about how I was found unconscious, with my hair dishevelled, long necklace wrapped around my neck, bra pulled out of my dress, dress pulled off over my shoulders and pulled up above my waist, that I was butt naked all the way down to my boots, legs spread apart, and had been penetrated by a foreign object by someone I did not recognise," her victim statement read.

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There is the anonymous account from a woman who was raped by a stranger and blamed for it by her boyfriend. She accepted drinks from this stranger while out one night for her birthday. He offered to drive her home.

"He grabbed the phone out of my hands, threw it to the floor and raped me violently in the back of the car. He then dumped me half-naked in town, where the police found me without trousers or pants on, and took me to my mum's," the woman, from Shropshire in the UK, wrote for The Guardian. "I have no memory of any of this - the alcohol and the trauma of what happened have wiped it out. Everything I know now has been pieced together from the police investigation, CCTV images and witness statements."

Her boyfriend told her she was "partly responsible" for the rape "I tried to stay sane, but I loathed myself for not being able to remember anything. I would cry myself to sleep and wake in a cold sweat, trembling violently," she wrote.

There is the story of Gabrielle Moss, who met a stranger at a bar down the street. She went home with him, before she blacked out.

"He put on a record, leaned in to kiss me, but the memory blacks out before he ever gets there, like the final scene of an old movie. My memory picks up a little while later, when I am clothed and crawling out of his front door on all fours, shoeless, the loose tiles in his stairwell slicing up my palms, because I was still too drunk to walk correctly but knew I had to leave right that second," she wrote for Bustle. 

"Those missing minutes have shaped my entire mental conversation about my assault: what happened in those moments, when my brain was separate from my body? What things were done to my body that left no mark? What does it mean to have things done to you that you can't remember? How were those things, those things I didn't remember, still somehow be a part of me, infecting my brain or influencing my actions?"

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When I ask Meg these questions - about how not remembering has affected her healing - she pauses.

"No one has ever asked me that before," she said. "You can go down a rabbit hole: What was I talking about that I cannot remember? Maybe I encouraged this guy to come into my room? But, if I did, why was the bed head across the door?"

"With the lack of knowledge there are these big black spots that are as scary as you want them to be. My imagination is a good imagination and, in my darkest moments, it's gone wild. It can be terrifying."

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When Meg woke up the next morning, she was excited to be spending a day in the jungle - even though she had woken during the rape, she had no recollection of the night before yet. She got up and went to dress. "I walked past a tiny little mirror and saw the bruises on my throat. The scratches on my thighs and evidence of his ejaculation. It was like pressing play on a montage. I thought 'fuck I've got to get out of here'."

Meg waited six hours for a bus to take her out of the jungle. While she waited she went to a chemist. "There was this comical back-and-forth when I asked for the morning after pill," she said. "They were saying 'stupid girl stupido' and laughing."

She spent a week in hospital because of the physical damage. There was scarring and stitches and bruising and scratches. Meg reported the incident to the police - an experience she describes as "almost more traumatic than the experience itself". And her mother came over to fly her back to Australia.

Upon arriving home, Meg researched and researched and researched. She was shocked to discover there was no support network for rape survivors: "I wanted like an 'Alcoholics Anonymous' for rape survivors". But there was none.

She would have panic attacks walking down Oxford Street in Sydney. If someone groped her she would "melt". As a way to cope, Meg began to draw. She called the project A Drawing A Day and vowed to draw something different every day for a year.

"It was my way of dealing with it. I had no words to express. I had no tools to cope. You can't prepare yourself for it." Meg has never been able to speak Spanish since.

Now, it's been four years since the night Meg can't remember.

She's had an exhibition of her drawings. She's collaborated with White Ribbon to raise awareness. She is launching a website with a fellow survivor called FemFound - it is the 'AA-like' support forum she needed after she was raped.

Four years has passed and she understands: "healing is forever but I have learned to rebuild".

Mamamia’s Survivors of Sexual Assault Week is about providing support for the one in five women Australian women who will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. To read more from Survivors of Sexual Assault Week, click here. If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, don't suffer in silence, contact 1800 RESPECT or visit www.1800respect.org.au