Questioned the victim- reactions

Victims of crime or violence behave not always according ” story”, which is mostly the story we've seen on film. The rapist does not always come screaming with torn clothes, nor does she close herself curled up around herself in a shower all the time, but may continue to function as usual.

Her comments about what has happened may not be what they expected. She can NOT even say that something has happened against her will. First. She may be surprised to laugh a little at what has happened, as if the whole thing is absurd. Then it can be turned against her, i rätten.

The reason may be total confusion. You do not believe in your own experience – first – because it is so unexpected and cross-border that it cannot be included, analyze it, understand that it has even occurred. Because it is so far from everything you think about yourself, what to be a part of, what can happen to one. Because it does not agree at all with one's own self-image. It can take a while before what has happened actually sinks into one's consciousness in such a way that one can receive it, realize that yes, this has actually happened, this has happened to ME.

We need to understand more about how victims react. And perhaps that how one reacts in part is gendered. Women and men are brought up so differently from being found to be boys or girls already at BB and are assigned such different emotional tasks in life that it seems quite obvious that women and men react differently to privacy violations and other things. Women have learned early on that it is possible and expected that their integrity will be violated. The little girl learns it already in preschool. Then it is obviously more difficult to find the anger, find where the line really goes for oneself – where you no longer want what is happening. It is embedded in women's education to relinquish one's integrity. The requirement also exists in motherhood. Det ingår , because it must – so that the children would otherwise be harmed – that the integrity of mothers is repeatedly denied. But it's not the children's fault. Children are children. It is the fault of the missing active fatherhood. So in most contexts ” included ” it as a kind of expectation of women / girls' privacy must be violated in order to maintain order. We do not even think about it. So that rape victims do not immediately react and sound the alarm and behave as we think rape victims should behave, is not strange. That is why it is so good that attention has begun to be paid to the gray zone, and that the perpetrator is in fact sometimes brought to justice and convicted, in cases where the woman / girl did not think it was possible. Not him either. The value of reporting, regardless of hope of action, is therefore extremely important.

It's so good we're starting to talk about these things. It's so good to see some results.

The crimes I have been subjected to are not of a physically violent nature. But the burden of proof is high. I managed to get the perpetrator prosecuted and convicted and sentenced to prison. I was allowed to speak in the District Court. I received the redress society can give by condemning and punishing the acts I have been subjected to.

It has made me think of just these endless cases of rape victims. How prohibitively difficult it must be to even report, especially with the knowledge that it so rarely leads anywhere. And how the violation continues to work within one of the fact that it has taken place and that it has taken place and that no one is being held accountable. It is deeply offensive and it requires an enormous amount of mental work for the victim to deal with this and continue to take on life.. Maybe a rape in itself does not always have the power to ruin a woman's life, but the repercussions have it – om inte annat. I can understand it from the energy core of pain that exists within one and threatens one all the time then one's person, even the existence of the root has been attacked, when one has been exposed to evil when another human being robs one of one's worth, crushes all ramparts of integrity and considers itself entitled to destroy one. If you do not get redress, if one should also be silent and ashamed of what has happened, that evil continues to eat its way through one behind the surface. And so a lot of women have it. Maybe you do well anyway – you probably do – because there is an inexhaustible survival force in most – but that hearth must then always be checked. These women need redress, at least from those closest to them.

When I finally went to the police and no longer carried everything alone, memories began to emerge. They could come forward just because I felt safer. These were events that I had totally suppressed. And not in a word had I mentioned them in my otherwise wordy diaries. They were too difficult to write down. If I had written them down, if I had let them get too close to my consciousness, I would not have been able to handle the situation. I did not remember them when I wrote the report, which took a week and when we were constantly discussing what had happened and I did not remember them when I was interrogated by the police.

I had suppressed them, or perhaps rather trivialized them. A little both. When I was safe, in a warm embrace, taken care of, anchored, they arrived and it became so astonishingly clear to me that one simply does not remember everything, you do not remember until you CAN remember it, until you have a little margin to cope with it. And when I noticed it in myself, I realized how fragile it is to be a victim when there is such a clear and definite picture of how victims behave. I thought of all those who are raped or sexually abused or abused… whatever it is… all who have been subjected to privacy violations…. and the notification situation and the generally confirmed ” mistrust ” against the rapist. If a woman comes several months after a reported rape or after an o- registered! and says; ”this also happened and I did not remember it when you interrogated”  so you can imagine how it is treated.

Alltså. It's so good we're starting to talk about these things. I'm trying to contribute, based on my experience, and that's why I'm writing my book. Reality is much more complex than the unconscious story we carry, as we have seen repeated time and time again and we must respect the complex reality.

But not even in a documentary book, as the one I write where I want to convey the complexity and the contradictions and the nuances and the dimensions – I can only simplify. Tyvärr. It would otherwise have become impenetrable to the reader. All reports on everything are to some extent simplifications.

But Reality – where people fall victim to other people's actions –  is much more complex and knowledge of how victims of abuse work needs to be deepened.