Teenage rape trauma changed my life, but now I'm healed, says Derbyshire mum

They arranged to go out for dinner one night.

“I got to his house, and he opened the door,” recalls Rachel, who was aged 19 at the time. “He sat me on the settee before going into the kitchen.

"The next thing I know, he has pulled me off the settee, raped me and pushed me out. I wasn’t there more than two minutes.

"Worse was to come because, six weeks later, I found out I was pregnant and had to have an abortion.”

It’s a horrific tale of a devastating attack that had a profound impact on Rachel Claire Farnsworth, shaping her life.

Now 53 and a mum of two, living in Shirebrook, she has divulged details of her ordeal in a new book, Me Too But Never Again.

The book, which is available on Amazon, is designed to help women recognise the signs of predators and learn how to recover from past sexual or violent abuse.

Rachel is one of 10 courageous women, described as “warriors”, who each contribute a chapter about the pain they suffered and their subsequent journey of healing.

Rachel’s journey has led her to the role of healer herself. She is now a trauma-releasing expert and has set up a successful business as an advanced hypnotherapist and transformational life-changer.

She works with people who suffer from health issues, including anxiety and chronic pain. And she uses her hypnotherapy methods to search their sub-conscious minds for the root cause of their problems, which is invariably a traumatic moment in their past, such as her rape. This releases blocked energy so they can live happy and healthy lives.

“The book means we don’t have to feel like victims forever,” says Rachel. “None of it was our fault.

“However, I do believe it is our responsibility to heal from it, so that the past doesn’t keep bleeding into the present and future.

“I talk about what happened to me at 19, how it affected my life and how my life is different now.”

The rape, which happened in Spalding, Lincolnshire, destroyed Rachel’s feelings of self-worth.

Compounding the misery was the fact her own mother doubted her.

“She said it must have been because of something I had done,” Rachel recalls. "And she told me not to tell my grandparents, because it would kill them.

“I couldn’t put myself through telling the police. I felt that if my own mum didn’t believe me, why would the police? I was hardly functioning at the time.”

Instead, Rachel buried away her ordeal and pretended it hadn’t happened.

“I put it in a box inside my head, marked do not disturb under any circumstances,” she says.

In fact, the next person Rachel told was her first husband, when she was 26. She recalls: “When he asked me to marry him, I said yes but told him: ‘I think you need to know that I was raped when I was 19’. It was a big deal, because I thought it might affect if we could have kids.

“He actually said he might have to re-think whether he wanted to marry me. But at the time, I felt he was justified because I was damaged goods. I was in shame.”

The couple still wed in 1996, and they had “two lovely children”, George, who is now 22, and Emily, who is 19.

But Rachel’s self-confidence remained low. “I gave power to everyone else, rather than think about what I needed,” she says.

“I worked in the local bank for 18 years because mum and dad said it was for the best. And I didn’t feel particularly valued in my marriage.”

Divorce was followed by a second husband in 2015. A long-time friend but an alcoholic who had threatened to kill himself. The marriage lasted only four years.

“Neither of my marriages was empowering,” says Rachel. Instead they were examples of her teenage scars holding her back. And when her children, unable to get on with her second husband, left the family home to live with their dad, things came to a head.

"I felt as if my heart had been ripped out,” she says. “But it gave me space to think for myself.”

A friend, who is a spiritual medium, suggested she try psychotherapy and, after overcoming initial scepticism, a course led her to hypnotherapy, which she fell in love with.

Soon fully qualified, she set up her business. And she used her techniques to work with her sub-conscious mind and release the rape trauma that had held her back for decades.

She says: “I was able to heal that younger version of me, letting go of the pain, blame, shame, guilt and helplessness that I had felt.

"So much so that I now feel indifferent to that time. It feels like it happened to someone else.”

Her business was driven by the success of her first client, her own daughter who had suffered from a chronic form of arthritis since she was a baby and had to take drugs with “horrid side-effects”.

One "amazing session” with Rachel left Emily drug free and pain free after realising what her sub-conscious mind was linking her condition to.

"The sub-conscious mind is so powerful,” says Rachel. “Anything from the past can make you feel bad about yourself, and you don’t realise you are holding on to it.”

Rachel is certainly not holding on to memories of that terrifying night in 1988. She has a new love in her life, 54-year-old Kevin from Warsop, a new home in Shirebrook and an online business which is attracting clients from across the globe, including the USA.

"This is the happiest period of my life,” she says. “But it could never have happened if I still had those old sub-conscious beliefs that I was damaged.”