It began when I concluded going through a disturbing account of Virginia Giuffre's experiences. What happened next was an experience like a physical onslaught, an existential hold that led to days of intense anxiety so severe I was seized by uncontrollable shaking. This feeling of not mattering, a deep dread and dissolving into an all-encompassing nothingness impossible to escape. How many times during childhood, after being abused by a parent, had I felt this perception of obliteration?
Feeling that no matter what I achieved, how hard I tried to raise myself above adversity I would be rejected forever. This crisis lasted for several days. Perhaps it was Virginia’s story, elements of which appeared much like my own. Assaulted as a child, subsequently violated again, and then years of enduring violation by individuals participating in a criminal operation, subsequently being passed around to powerful and sadistic men to be abused repeatedly.
It might be it was understanding that despite long periods of advocating, educating the society about the effects of assault, the society refused to understand the extent of its aftermath. That once you are raped, when your physical self is violated forcibly, after you are violated and subjugated your body is no longer your own. You turn into a thing, what Virginia called a plaything, to be exploited and harmed and discarded.
Then the news outlets, echoing aggravating, uninformed notions: “Why didn’t she leave? No one was compelling her to stay. She might have left whenever she wanted. She was 16. Not a young child. It appeared she stayed for the benefits.” Yet ignorant of or perhaps unwilling to acknowledge that when you have been violated, self-worth and autonomy or even the notion that you and your body are worth saving, have been destroyed. That because you were made to separate from your body at the time of assault, you have effectively become a objectified thing no longer worthy of safety. You are lost, a living specter in a endless mist with no real ability to fight for yourself.
And when you have been raped you have a mark of damage, a label that until you have started to mend, persistently invites further exploiters who can sense your vulnerability and attempt to prey on it. It is clear in numerous findings that those involved held assessments with each individual to determine the extent of this brokenness and exploitability. Perhaps the episode was caused by residing in the United States, a society presently led by a leader, an adjudicated predator, a individual who publicly opposes females, existing in a zone stuck in a youth assault hold.
Extended times, including long durations of individuals courageously telling their narratives, seeking legal action, in hopes of obtaining accountability and redress and conversely being gaslit, humiliated, menaced and doubted. A realm committed for a long time to shielding an worldwide circle of prominent men, every one of them whether rapists or child abusers or willing to align with them indifferent or protest.
The onslaught on my being was still shocking. Now, at seventy-two, about many years post my personal abuse, despite years of work striving to mend through multiple approaches attempting to change my self from a violated state, an assaulted landscape a expanse of rubble. The numerous years of persistent effort and yet this assault lives in my being, existed in the cells of Virginia, in the shared cells of millions, truly a countless women victims who attempt to live each day, battling their way out of trauma.
Rape is deceit, invasion and robbery. It kills the vitality of the victim. As plutonium it ingrains permanently in the biology of the physical self
We have names for it, of course – post-traumatic stress disorder, repeated distress or various illness that typically makes survivors disturbed. But the fact is those affected can interpret the room. They can surmise from the shortage of support, accountability and fairness that their fear is grounded in actuality, a situation where not only is there no security or protection but where underground circles of sex trafficking appear each day.
So allow me to explain repeatedly to elucidate. Maybe you will open your hearts. Perhaps you will look inward into yourself to attempt to have compassion and comprehension. Violation is betrayal, intrusion and taking. It kills the vitality of the individual. As a toxic substance it ingrains permanently in the biology of the physical self. It robs us of sleep, confidence, our ability to be intimate. It shatters self-worth. It distorts our longing.
For nearly six decades years I have striven to comprehend what pleasure any man or woman could take in {ripping apart
