Sober thoughts

There have been reports that a student from Rhodes was raped a week or two ago. I'm not really sure what the full story was. The Grocotts story about it was beyond awful and the Rhodes official statements are always a bit thin on actual information. Which is reasonable, I think, if the people involved want to keep the information private.

Anyway, I don't know much about it. But rape is a scary thing. Perhaps other women are different, but reports of rape often make me jittery. Not for any rational reason. But something in me just gets scared.

A few years ago one of my friends was raped. And I remember a couple of days afterwards, getting onto the lift in a building on campus. And a man got in with me, someone I didn't know. And the doors closed and we started going up. And suddenly I was completely irrationally afraid to be in this enclosed space with this man I didn't know.

Of course I got to my floor and got out of the lift. And it was all fine. But for those few seconds in the lift I was filled with a crazy desire to cower in the corner.

I remembered the lift incident because a couple of day ago I was alone in my digs. There was a knock at the door and it was a young guy I know who had come to ask me for something. It was nearly lunch time so I made him taost and we sat and chatted in the lounge. And I had another mini-lift experience. Where I was suddenly aware that I was alone with this guy, and it made me afraid of him.

Which is crazy. I know him. In fact, those few moments of fear make me feel quite disloyal to him.

But rape is scary. And hearing reports of rape, it sortof gets into your mind. It becomes something to be afraid of. Horrible.

It is a sad thing that I know so many women who have been raped or molested. Some by strangers. Some by family members. So many.

People don't really talk so freely about rape. Because it is crime where the victim feels ashamed. How ridiculous that someone would be ashamed of something done to them - but that is the nature of this crime.

So because of that, rape sometimes feels distant. Something that happens to people in other neibourhoods, not yours. In other families, not yours. In other schools, on other campusses, in other social circles. Not yours.

But its not distant. It is just often hidden.

My friends who do pastoral work in my church tell me that in their experience one out of every three women have been sexually abused or raped.

Its not distant.