"I saved myself": Is it worth it for the victim to meet with the rapist again?
Since the moment when Diana Shurygin appeared on the First Channel, almost a year has passed. In December 2016, Sergei Semenov was sentenced to eight years for the rape of a minor Diana; the sentence was later commuted to three years and three months. According to Shurygin, Semenov raped her and used physical force - but he himself does not recognize the blame and says that what happened is sex by mutual consent. The story of Diana Shurygina shows how people in Russia treat the victims of violence in general: although some supported the girl, others condemned her for “inappropriate” behavior and “licentiousness” (Diana admitted that she drank alcohol that evening), said she was behaving not like the "must" victims (on the program she did not look unhappy, did not cry and sharply answered those present), or decided that she had falsely accused Semenov. As a result, Shurygin was subjected to massive harassment in social networks, and the situation itself was transferred to the plane of offensive memes.
In early January, Sergei Semenov ahead of schedule - just a year later - was released from prison, and the discussion of history went into a new round. Two programs devoted to her appeared on the air yesterday: Channel One invited Diana Shurygin, while Andrei Malakhov spoke with Sergei Semyonov and his sister on Russia-1. The meetings of the characters, which were hinted at in the announcements, did not happen - Diana said she was ready to see Semyonov only after a few years, when the hype around the matter had settled. Shurygina said that she was happily married (her husband, the cameraman they met on the set, also appeared in the studio), and Semyonov again refused to plead guilty and said that the only thing he learned from the situation was that “better watch your surroundings. "
True, there is every reason to think that the meeting will still happen in the near future - if only because Diana’s stories have been devoted to five issues of “Let Them Talk” and the television continues to follow developments. We decided to figure out how and why more victims decide to meet with those who hurt them — and what the consequences may be.
Contrary to stereotypes, a large part of rape is committed by those who were previously familiar with the victim. According to statistics from the Anna Center, only 10% of rapists are not familiar with the victims at all or almost do not know them. 40% of the criminals are close relatives of the victims, the remaining 50% are the neighbors or friends of the victims or their relatives. This means that many victims somehow have to interact with those who injured them, sometimes daily. Many meet with rapists in the courtroom if it comes to formal accusations.
Perhaps the biggest questions are cases where victims meet with those who raped them, outside the court - to talk about what happened, to express their anger, or just to finally see the person who caused them pain in their eyes. To many, this seems to be just as “suspicious” as the cases when the victim continues to be in a relationship with the abuser: if he caused her such an injury, why does she still want to communicate with him?
The results of the meeting with the perpetrator for the victim can be very different. Anna Kornienko, head of the Center for Addressing the Consequences of Aggression and Violence under MIGIP, notes that everything depends on how the victim dealt with her feelings and reactions after the rape: "If there was someone nearby who could listen to her, help express all fears , anger, to burn off what happened, it will be much easier for the victim to look into the eyes of the person who committed violence against her. I can not say that this meeting will be easy, but probably tolerable. " According to Kornienko, in cases where the victim is left alone with the experiences and fenced off from them, at the sight of the rapist "a wave of all the experiences that will jump out like a devil from a snuff box can flood it. Which one will be the first - fear, rage, accusation or hatred. " Victim-bleming plays a role when the victim is told that the cause of the violence is herself: “In this case, it is difficult for the victim to separate herself from the events that happened to her. When she meets the rapist, she can fall into the mystical feeling that she is his own pulled, she wanted it, or another self-accusation. "
“This does not mean that the rapist became a kind of savior for me - I saved myself without his participation. But those conversations definitely helped me survive what happened”
In 2013, a woman from the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh invited a man who, threatening with a knife, raped her, to her home, to discuss the possibility of settling the case outside the court - but instead, with the help of his brothers, doused him with kerosene and set fire to it .
Other stories have a much less dramatic ending - although for the victim the meeting will always be at least difficult. Carmen Aguirre, a Canadian of Chilean origin, experienced rape when she was thirteen years old: she was the victim of a serial criminal known as a "paper bag rapist." He forced women to cover their faces with paper bags or clothes that were on them at that moment so that they would not see him and could not recognize him. In the column for The Guardian, Carmen tells how she met the other victims of the perpetrator, what it gave her, and how she decided to talk to the one who caused her a serious injury. Together with another victim, a woman named Laura, she visited the rapist in prison. According to Carmen, Laura decided on this, "because she wanted to meet a man whose relationship she had been associated with all her life." Carmen herself said that she wanted to eliminate the inequality between them and to meet him on his own terms.
Experts warned Aguirre that situations when the abuser brings sincere apologies are very rare - in their case this did not happen either. The women asked the convict to apologize, but he replied that he could not do it - because he did not remember how he had raped Carmen and did not feel regret. Aguirre also had enough of this: according to her, this painful experience and rape taught her compassion.
Diana Shurygin in the program "Let them talk"
The fact that the conversation with the rapist - after years and already on his own terms - helped them cope with the injury, tell other victims. Maureen Shaw in the column for Quartz told how she decided to write on Facebook to the man who raped her when she was still a teenager - and he suddenly apologized. “I wasn’t ready for how good I would be after these words — perhaps because I didn’t wait for an answer. I felt that I was right, felt relieved and realized that I can finally leave that part of my life in the past,” she writes “This does not mean that the rapist became a kind of savior for me - I saved myself without his participation. But those conversations definitely helped me to survive what had happened."
Some victims, meeting with the rapist after years, and forgive him altogether. This happened, for example, with the British Katya Rosenberg - in 2006, when she was thirty-two years old, she was raped by a sixteen-year-old teenager. A few years later she decided to visit him in prison: according to her, she didn’t need an apology, but this meeting was important for her on the way to cope with her experiences. She saw that her abuser had changed, deeply regretted what had been done, and fully takes responsibility for the deed - perhaps this will help him get on the new path.
But, probably, the loudest story of the victim and the rapist, who met again years after the crime, happened to the Icelander Tordis Elva. When Tordis was sixteen, she was raped by eighteen-year-old Australian Tom Stranger, who was studying in Iceland for exchange. They met and went to the school ball together, where Tordis got drunk - Tom promised to take her home, but then he raped her. Tordis did not go to the police; it took her years to realize that what happened to her was rape - because he was committed by a person close to her in her own bed.
Tordis Elva emphasizes that her story is not a universal example of how to survive violence
Nine years later, during which she tried to cope with the injury, Tordis wrote a letter to Tom about what she had experienced - and was very surprised when he replied that she was very sorry for what had been done. For another eight years, they exchanged letters and discussed what happened, and then decided to meet in person. The result of several days of talking was a book that Tordis and Tom co-wrote, as well as a popular talk at the TED conference - in it they tell how rape affected each of them and how they openly talked about their experiences.
Tordis emphasizes that her story is not a universal example of how to live through violence. Instead, she hopes to draw attention to the problem, shift the blame from the victim to the rapist and stop “demonizing” the rapists - she believes that if society sees that ordinary people are behind the violence, it will help to see the real essence of the problem. Nevertheless, this situation causes polar reactions - not because Elva was able to forgive the rapist (after all, each victim copes with the injury in her own way, and there’s no “right” way here), but because the rapist didn’t just part of her story, and tells her along with her.
“Stop applauding a rapist for raping someone,” “No, I don’t want to look at how the victim reconciles with the rapist” - columns with such headlines came out after Tordis and Tom’s speech was scattered on social networks. Activists to prevent their joint performance at a conference in London - in their opinion, the fact that Tom gets the money and fame for rape, is unacceptable, even though he promised to donate part of the income to charity. Some experts dealing with the problem of violence fear that this example might inspire the criminals to contact the victims and re-engage with them. This is quite likely, especially if you consider that the aggressor can simply add a victim to friends on Facebook.
Tordis Elva and Tom Stranger at the TED Conference
Of course, it cannot be said that every person who has committed rape will want to contact his victim in order to hurt her again. The same Tom Stranger says that he did not immediately realize that what he did was a crime - although he felt that he had done wrong, and for many years tried to stifle his guilt. According to Tom, the meeting with Tordis helped him realize the guilt and take responsibility for the act: "I had the opportunity to truly recognize what I did - and I realized that my personality is more than one act," he said. The noise in my head has subsided. My self-pity lost the oxygen that fed it, and was replaced by the fresh air of acceptance — of accepting the fact that I had hurt this beautiful woman who stands next to me, of accepting that I am part of a huge and a frighteningly frequent group of men who us luyut their partners. "
Repenting a rapist (including public or in front of one victim) can take him to a new path and help him change. The only problem is that such a situation can occur only in a system where rape is clearly regarded as rape and, consequently, a crime - and the offender bears the full punishment for him; where the blame does not seek to pass on to the victim, and her sufferings do not devalue. Alas, the society is far from this (no matter how hard they tried to convince us that almost all rape cases are being revealed in Russia), which means that the last word should always be left to the victim of violence and how she herself can more easily cope with the experience. Is she ready for the meeting - or will she bring her another injury? Does she need repentance and will it help her - or is it not important at all in the light of what happened?
Farah Khan, who runs a program dedicated to the problem of sexual violence and support for its victims at a Canadian university (part of the University of Toronto), believes that women are taught not to resist aggression. “Women are told to put the situation in order,” she said. “We are taught to patch holes, fix our browsers and be friends with them.” Anna Kornienko believes that the situation when the victims are ready to forgive the rapists is special and therefore rarely occurs: “I think that the unwillingness to forgive the one who abused you, humiliated, caused pain is also a natural reaction. I cannot say that correctly and what is not. What matters is what the victim herself feels - whether she is ready for reconciliation or not. "
Cover: Diana Shurygin / Vkontakte
