A rape survivor’s tale

Samantha no longer has the same zeal for life. She is also cautious about making friends. While the pretty smile is still there, her eyes do not reflect the joy that comes with it.

PETALING JAYA: She was the sort of person anyone would bill “a good girl”. Responsible, hard working and generous to a fault, Samantha (not her real name) never thought twice about helping anyone in need – if she could. The Kuala Lumpur-born lass is the kind of girl you would want as your best friend – kind, compassionate and who is great at keeping secrets.

“She was so full of life,” says her mother, “and would always be the one with the jokes. Everyone loved her.” Samantha’s sister adds, “She was always the positive one, and I think the most non-judgmental person I know. And when she smiled at you, you just had that feeling that all will be well.”

This has since changed. Samantha no longer has the same zeal for life. She is also cautious about making friends. While the pretty smile is still there, her eyes do not reflect the joy that comes with it. Ten years ago, Samantha was raped while she was pursuing her degree abroad. The ironic thing about this was that she used to work with women who had been beaten, raped and abused.

“I used to volunteer at a centre for rape and assault victims. I look them in the eyes, I listen to their stories, I hold them, I pray. I was always the strong one for them – it was a real privilege. Now, when I’m alone, I’m reminded of what happened to me. I rarely talk about it, but today seems to be the day and I’m glad for the opportunity to say something about it,” she says.

It was in 2000 when Samantha left to pursue her degree in Psychology. She admits to being very excited yet anxious about the whole journey, as it would be her very first time away from home.

The attack

“On the first anniversary of my being abroad, I decided to throw a party to celebrate ‘making it’ on my own. I had a party in the flat I lived in. I was 23. I invited everyone I knew and… it was just a wonderful night.

“I didn’t care if I knew the people who were coming – I just chalked it up as me being generous and it as an opportunity to open my home to the possibility of making some new friends. I’ll never forget how good it was. I felt like I finally belonged somewhere. I was always never much of a drinker and that night, I remember nursing only a glass of wine the entire night,” she says, smiling wryly at the memory.

Near the end of the party, a man asked Samantha if she could take him home. “I don’t remember inviting him and thought that he must have come with someone else I invited. I didn’t think it was polite to ask him who did he come with. Besides, he was drunk, I was tired and sleepy.”

The man who gave his name as Liam then asked if could he crash on her sofa. A few other friends had said they were staying and so Samantha agreed. “This kind of thing is quite common with college life. We tend to accommodate people – it’s a student thing, I guess. Besides, I didn’t want to feel guilty should he drive home in this state and get into an accident – then I would think this wouldn’t have happened if I only had allowed him to crash on my couch for a few hours. So I said yes.” She shakes her head and pulls her sweater tighter around her.

“I remember walking to my bedroom and wondering how nice it is that I don’t have to be up early for class the next morning. I remember lying on my bed, fully dressed, face on my arms, feeling very pleased at how the party went. I dozed off with these happy thoughts,” she says. A long pause ensues and with a deep breath, Samantha says in a shaky voice, “Then it happened.”

She was suddenly woken up with someone’s hands round her neck. Liam was raping her. “It happened so quickly. I must have been fast asleep and he used this to his advantage to undress me. Over and over it happened while I wondered why no one was alarmed at the sound of me screaming – I found out later they’d all left shortly after I went to my room to sleep,” she shares of this experience.

Liam had also hit her many times during the rape and the last punch he delivered blacked her out.

The aftermath

It was winter and the sky was still a blackish blue when Samantha came to and called a friend – screaming. She was taken to the hospital and met with a detective. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘Look, I don’t have a lot of time. I want to know, did this really happen or are you just angry because the guy had sex with you and left?’ I didn’t quite know how to react to what he said. But now, in hindsight, I wanted to scream at him,” she confesses.

After Samantha explained what happened, the detective said that description she provided wasn’t enough information for him to go on and that she “should know better than to allow a stranger into my house.” She adds that she knows this now, but wished for a little more compassion at the time.

“When a woman is raped, some authorities make them feel that they’re in the wrong. That they asked for it. No woman asks to be raped,” she says, with fists clenched.

Samantha was released from the hospital and a friend took her home. “It was so difficult stepping into the house, and the bedroom where it all happened. My friend helped me put together an identity-kit of sorts and the next day together with four other friends, pamphlets were handed out with the hope that someone would know who this man is. No one came forward to help. No one remembered him. No one but me.”

The days that followed

“The next few weeks was pure hell,” she states bluntly. Samantha didn’t want to stay home, neither did she feel brave enough to go outside. “What if he was lurking around the area waiting to attack me again? He knew where I lived, after all. I couldn’t tell my parents. They would be broken and worried to no end. But I had to in the end and they flew to meet me and bring me home,” she says while her mother grasps her hand in a show of support.

Today, Samantha has her own private psychology practice offering help to women just like her. “It has been 10 years since I was raped. Why am I telling you these memories? Why am I talking about this?” She asks, then offers a carefully thought out reply.

“When I hear people arbitrarily use the word rape so they can shock their friends and readers of their microblogs into paying attention to what they’re saying, or when I see people nonchalantly use the word rape so they can make people laugh, when I see people casually use the word rape for any reason, it burns something inside of me.

“There are some people who use the word rape to describe how ravenously hungry they are and I can only think, ‘I cut my arms open to get away from the pain after I was raped.’”

“I still can’t remember the first two years of my life after I was raped. That’s how bad it was. Then there are those who talk about rape like it’s a joke and I want to scream.

“Years later I still can’t sleep a full night without waking up screaming from the nightmares,” she admits.

Don’t erase me

When asks if she has problems with men, or if she hates them, Samantha offers, “Absolutely not. I know there are many good men in this world and it wouldn’t be fair to use this experience to generalise all them as being bad.

“I am currently seeing someone but it has taken me a long time to get here. It hasn’t been easy for him either – but he has been with me through it all and has helped tremendously with my road to recovery. But I’m still working at it, though,” she says, treating us to that elusive pretty smile.

Samantha adds that there are some people who argue with her to try and get her to understand that rape isn’t “just” being sexually assaulted – rape can be anything where one thing is taken from another person by force.

“When a person talks about it like it’s nothing, I want them to know, they talk about me and other rape survivors like we are nothing. They talk about us like we are alone. They talk about me like I am not a sister to the millions of other survivors of rape, sexual assault, and violence around the world. I want these people and the survivors to know we are not alone. We are not garbage to be taken out and thrown away… or forgotten,” she stresses.

Samantha also wants people to know that every time we use the word rape to refer to anything that is not rape – no matter how serious that other thing is – we are minimising and erasing people who have, literally, fought to bring themselves back from the brink of horror – a terror so large and overpowering that many never come back from it.

Many victims of rape succumb to this evil and commit suicide, she says, and find themselves addicted to drugs and alcohol, or end up in a situation where they are raped again.

“None of us will ever be who we were – whole lives decimated after the act of a soulless monster who chose to use us to make himself feel better about his lack of power. Most of us will never be able to recover those parts of ourselves we lost in the battle, either. We don’t laugh the same, we don’t dance the same, we’ll never be able to do mundane daily tasks without wondering if we’re safe.

“Some of us will wake up in the middle of the night for the rest of our lives, covered in sweat and screaming – feeling like we’re dying and the rape is still happening, until we realise it was just a nightmare. Then we’ll cry ourselves back to sleep. I have done these things,” she divulges.

As the interview comes to a close, Samantha asks if she could add one other thought on behalf of rape survivors. “If I could ask something of the world, it would be this: Do not erase me. Do not erase us. Do not erase our victory over something that could have taken us – as it has so many others – away from this world permanently. Do not take away from us what we have given everything to achieve: Survival. Do not victimise us again. We are survivors.”