Personal Safety for Survivors of Rape

Excerpts from a post by Marcella Chester at abyss2hope:

“[S]ome rape survivors unfortunately become repeat rape victims with different perpetrators. …. This is more than random bad luck. …. The trauma of rape can leave victims disoriented and defenseless.

…. My safety is a higher priority than some man’s hurt feelings. Any man who demands that I put his feelings above my safety is only reinforcing my reasons to distrust him. ….

Reliable allies don’t undermine a survivor’s hyper vigilance or ask to be exempted from those viewed with less trust than before a rape. ….

Because of the trauma rape victims have experienced and the muddiness that can come from that trauma many rape victims may question their perceptions. Their rapists have a clear motivation for trying to distort reality and they have the benefit of not being traumatized. ….

[A]fter my first rape … [s]everal men told me flat out that they wouldn’t touch me even if was consenting as long as I was jail bait. Some men didn’t have this level of ethical behavior and took my passivity which came with ineffective coping mechanisms as permission to use my body. …. Also I had learned that rape didn’t hurt as much if I didn’t try to fight it.

During my teenage years there was only one guy who required enthusiastic consent and verification with a clear opportunity for me to safely change my mind. Now I won’t settle for anyone less respectful or less ethical. ….

It is the vulnerability due to trauma which brings out so many predators. …. Because the rape survivor may still be lost in the trauma which follows rape, alcohol and overt violence may not be needed.

Quietly raping a sober survivor who barely knows which way is up is real violence."

Read the whole post: abyss2hope.blogspot.com/2008/03/advice-for-rape-survivors-personal.html (It’s worth it: these excerpts constitute only about 1/8th of the original.)

Surviving rape is difficult. Surviving it a second time around can be devastating not just because of the rape in itself but because it can make the victim wonder, on one hand, if there is something inherently wrong with her to cause her to have been raped, if she provoked the attack in some way, if she was to blame.
And on the other hand, the fact that the second rape may not have been as violent as the first because of her being relatively passive possibly due to being too disoriented or too frightened to fight back could, in a culture which treats only violent rape as rape, quite easily cause her to begin to question whether she’s making a mountain out of a molehill, whether she has been raped at all.