This article is the third in a series examining the rape that was inflicted on Melissa Schuman by Nick Carter. Part 1 and Part 2 were written for the purpose of determining whether the disclosure published by Melissa Schuman met certain tests.
Does the account provide details that credibly reflect Melissa’s individual circumstances?
Does the account provide telling details of how Melissa experienced the event?
Does the account fit within the presentation presented by rape victims generally?
I applied those considerations to two key areas. The primary event in Part 1 focused on the assault. Part 2 focused on the presentation of the secondary damage.
The result of that combined analysis clearly shows that Melissa Schuman was absolutely raped and that she suffered severe secondary damage as a result.
In Part 2 I talked about what Melissa was reasonably expected to be dealing with in the general sense. I talked about how the specter of cognitive dissonance would have impacted on Melissa's life also in the general sense.
This is a vital consideration in the process. People need to understand why it is that victims of rape and other sexual assault seem to be unable to "move on". Why would a person suddenly become so vocal about what happened decades ago in many cases?
Caught in the trap of cognitive dissonance internally while being subjected to the ongoing external liabilities inflicted on the victim by others, the victim simply cannot escape.
Trapped as they are in this state of constant conflict the victim is unable to move past the event that caused this living hell in the first place.
The result of this hell is ever increasing PTSD symptomatology that pushes the victim into the nightmare zone. Flashbacks, panic attacks, rage and depression. These toxic forces all end up converging on one point in the victims psychological construct. Identity.
The mistake that most people make is that they consider the primary event as an isolated consideration. The truth is that the assault on a rape victim does not end when the physical assault concludes.
The "assault" on Melissa Schuman began the moment when Nick Carter forced her into non consensual sexual activity and has continued to this day. The assault has simply mutated in form.
A personal and important part of Melissa's person is still back at that house stripped naked and terrified. The young woman that Melissa saw in the mirror looking back at her is very much alive and she does not sleep.
Having explored the various considerations in the general sense it is evident that it is now time to start looking at the details. The transition from the general to the specific necessarily starts with a focus on a statement made by Melissa in her disclosure.
"I didn’t tell her. I didn’t want to even admit what happened was real to myself. Over the next few weeks I withdrew further and further from my friends and family and they noticed. I still didn’t tell anyone."
There are some who argue for Nick Carter that claim this aspect of Melissa's statement amounts to a lie because it is on public record that Melissa did in fact disclose incrementally to certain individuals before she disclosed publicly.
It is fact that Melissa did not tell her roommate what happened in the car. I will provide details on that later in this article but it is fact Melissa did not disclose on that day in the car.
It is fact that Melissa did not want to tell anyone and that she did not want to admit what happened was real to herself.
It is fact that Melissa adopted a general strategy of avoidance when it came to dealing with people and that those people did notice.
It is correct where Melissa says she did not tell anyone having regard for the context in which she is making a "stream of consciousness" statement in the general sense.
What the comment was intended to convey was that she was desperate to pretend it did not happen and she had an intense desire to embrace avoidance as her only tenable coping mechanism at that time.
People in the general sense noticed and that would have resulted in what would have been experienced as painful intrusions in the form of questions and attempts to make her feel better in the absence of any understanding.
Faced with all this Melissa still did not tell those people and here she is trying to describe the terrible conflict she was experiencing. On one hand she was suffering an overwhelming need to avoid general disclosure.
On the other she was forced to carry the increasing burden of having to fend off others well meaning attentions. Melissa is facing two doors.
Instead of a case of the lady or the tiger, Melissa faces two tigers and she has to decide which of those tigers she prefers even as her life was unraveling all around her.
Melissa is referring to her friends and family at a collective level and she is providing her response to that general consideration.
There are degrees of disclosure. There is limited disclosure, personal disclosure where people in the victims personal life are made aware and public disclosure.
Limited disclosure is where a victim tells a person but in doing so makes no material alteration to the social dynamic of the victim in question. For example telling a therapist or trusted individuals sworn to secrecy is limited disclosure.
No one else is aware so there is no material change. All that is happened is that the secret is now carried by another who is bound not to act.
Essentially the limited disclosures Melissa made in the initial weeks and months that followed in no way spared her from the secondary damage dynamic I described in Part 2.
Telling certain individuals did not spare Melissa from having to listen to her girlfriends talk about marriage knowing she was irrevocably changed and was now forced to pretend that what was once her dream was not now a taunt in the voice of Nick Carter in her new nightmare.
Melissa was not spared the terrible shock, pain and grief as she walked in a world that no longer made sense to her.
The fact is the young woman who entered Nick Carter's house was dead and this new woman, this stranger looking back at her from every mirror she has gone on to face, was now in her place and that woman was screaming.
To understand the impact of the initial shock and damage inflicted on Melissa it is necessary to consider the damage to her sense of identity. For those who are fortunate enough to have not been in Melissa's situation this is not always easy to understand.
To those people I ask you to consider how you would or did feel if your partner cheated on you. Even if you are one of those who has never been cheated on you will know someone who has.
A common issue expressed by those who have been cheated on is the fact they have been living a lie. What they thought and understood and made them feel safe was in fact a cruel illusion.
In many ways that is what Melissa was experiencing but in the case of a rape the shock is much harder, much more encompassing and the exposure to ongoing abuse much more brutal.
Then we take the fact that Melissa was an 18 year old whose only sexual experience was being raped and it is evident that Melissa had no experience of any relevant kind to help her cope with the situation.
Melissa confided in her roommate the next day and as a result of that disclosure Melissa was taken to her roommate's mother. The mother sat Melissa down and Melissa was given a pillow to hold as she recounted what happened. Melissa was extremely upset.
An important point here is that Melissa went to her roommate's mother instead of a member of her own family. It is here we see the avoidance Melissa spoke of in her statement when she states she did not tell anyone.
It is evident that Melissa needs to reach out but at the same time she is still trying to keep the rape away from her family and what was once her normal life. Telling the roommate and the mother made no material difference to Melissa's general situation.
There was discussion about going to the Police. Melissa decided that she did not want to go to the Police and not only was that her personal decision to make I doubt it would have led to anything good if she had.
Melissa has made a limited disclosure. She does not know who she is anymore. Nick Carter ripped out her identity and destroyed her beliefs. He took Melissa's virtue, her confidence and sense of security and deprived of her love of life.
Melissa is now living a nightmare. What once offered comfort was now cold and hostile. Her sleep is fitful at best and nightmares stalk her rest. Food tastes like ash in her mouth and there is no laughter in her.
There is only a deep and crippling shame and the humiliation of having been naked and exposed in front a bullying coward and being unable to stop what was happening.
She will be replaying what happened over and over in her mind. If only she had done this or not done that. How could she not have seen it coming? Was it her fault?
What is he saying about it to his friends? Is her shame going to end up online? What if she is pregnant? What if he was carrying an STD?
The rape eats away at every part of her. Her focus on the event is such the rest of the world starts to fade around her.
It does not matter for there is only pain there anyway some part of her may have whispered, a seductive call to surrender to the drowning sensation inside her.
Cognitive dissonance lashes her as she struggles to maintain a facade over what was once an open life.
The psychological strain intensifies. Melissa's body is now reacting to the severe stress and anxiety levels. The stress hormone cortisol is at chronically elevated levels in her body.
Melissa discloses to her therapist and another friend. Again these are limited disclosures that make no material difference to Melissa's general situation.
While it is evident that Melissa sought escape in avoidance it is equally evident that Melissa is not inherently designed to live the life of subterfuge that is required for avoidance to be successful.
Disclosure is its own horror and as I stated in Part 2 disclosure does not end the storm of cognitive dissonance. It simply changes the dynamic.
Each time Melissa disclosed to an individual she was forced to relive the experience of watching the reality of her life hit the lives of others like a train.
For example I vividly recall my own experience in the disclosure dynamic. The person I disclosed to in confidence had made my situation all about her and she mouthed off to some of my relatives who had relationships with the abuser in my case.
I became aware of this some years later and realized that most of my relatives were aware of what happened but were all keeping silent about it.
The key word to that is most. The daughter of the offender knew something was going on but not what and she ambushed me when I least expected it.
I was heading for my vehicle with my mind turned inwards and I looked up to see her standing next to me having followed me out. She told me that she knew something was going on in the family and she wanted to know what it was.
As it happened I did know what was going on and God help me I let my normal facial expression of inscrutable indifference slip for just a single second and she saw it. She seized upon it and one skill I wholly lack is to be able to lie convincingly.
First she rejected my denials and then she ignored me when I told her that she did not want to know. Forced into a corner I had no way out so we went off and had that discussion. I recall her face clearly.
She was all excited to learn the family secret and when I told her the light faded and died in her eyes in the space of moments.
I saw in vivid detail how everything that she thought and believed in was torn from her by my truth and whatever made her the person that she was died in front of me.
I know for true that she has never recovered from that day. She had come looking for answers and found herself trapped in my nightmare with no escape. There never is.
Therefore it is not hard for me to understand what went down for Melissa when she finally went to her father Jerry Schuman in a state of collapse and disclosed what had happened to her.
I have been told how that day went down for the both of them but I will not share the details here. I see no value in publishing such deeply painful and personal experiences in detail for the consumption of others.
What I can say is that the experience for them both was intensely painful and harrowing. Melissa was forced to repeat this process over and over again and the horror of that cannot be understated.
At an evidential level it is clear that the dynamic Melissa and her people have presented to me is the wholly expected experience of rape victims generally.
Each person who Melissa disclosed to is another witness to the devastation that was inflicted on Melissa's life and those of the people who care about her.
So what does all this mean? We see that Melissa has presented very credibly in her statements as they pertain to the primary event and the immediate aftermath.
We then extend the applied considerations to how Melissa presented in the months and years afterwards and it is very clear that Melissa graphically presents at every stage as a bona fide victim of rape.
Putting the evidence to one side we are expected to believe that for wholly inexplicable reasons, Melissa made the conscious decision to turn her back on everything she believed and held dear in life and the successes that life had brought to her and threw it all away to claim the "vaunted status" of being Nick Carters rape victim.
Having done this we are expected to believe that having willingly chosen to live a life of ongoing abuse and humiliation over a life of success and popularity, Melissa has gone on to allow all those who care about her to experience their own lifetimes of horror to support a lie that brings her nothing but pain.
Now lets put the consistent and prolific evidence that we have been considering back in play and once again put what we are expected to believe by Camp Carter to the test.
Test that evidence against the frankly ludicrous and self serving premise we are expected to accept as truth.
Based on the evidence so far I put it to all reasonable people that Melissa Schuman was forcibly raped and sexually abused by Nick Carter.
I point to the stark evidence presented by Melissa's statements, the witness accounts of the people she has told over the years and the fact that Nick Carter is being accused by an increasing and substantial number of women.
I then ask you all to weigh that evidence against the ludicrous premise we would have to accept as truth if we were to believe Nick Carter. It is very clear that all the arrows point to Melissa telling the truth.
To believe otherwise we are forced to deny the powerful truth Melissa presents in favor of the feeble and insulting lie Nick Carter is desperate for others to believe.
In earlier articles I have stated that I would address the employment matters. I intended on covering that off here but Melissa's story is large and complex and matters that need to addressed pop up as I write.
There is much more to be presented. At this point I see two more articles in need of writing.
I really want to thank all of you have taken the time to follow Melissa's journey. We are grateful for your patience and attention.