Self-blame

A month or so after I was raped, when I was liaising with a detective and various support lines, I was told upwards of ten times that it wasn’t my fault. I started cutting people off.

“I know it’s not. I know that.”

Later, I vented to my therapist,

“I get that it’s really common to blame yourself, but I just wish everyone would stop assuming that’s what I’m doing. I don’t feel ashamed. I know I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just angry. I hate him and I’m angry.”

Some months later, I returned to my therapist with a comprehensive theory of how my childhood had set off a number of cascading effects, which ultimately led to the rape.

“Huh, that’s interesting,” she said.

I explained that, because my mom had been volatile, I was accustomed to accepting relatively poor treatment. This meant that my danger detection was all out of whack. And so, I’d missed the signs.

“So, there were signs? That he was going to rape you?”

“Well, I mean, not specifically. But I knew he wasn’t very empathetic. And sometimes, he was kind of rude. And he wasn’t very caring.”

“Interesting, so if someone has lower empathy, and is sometimes kind of rude and not very caring, those are clear signs that they will eventually rape you?”

“I mean… that’s obviously extreme,”

“So what signs did you miss?”

“Well it’s less about signs, I guess. It’s just- he wasn’t even a good friend. He was self-absorbed. I wouldn’t have even been hanging out with him if it wasn’t for my childhood, I’m pretty sure. And then I wouldn’t have ever been at his house. I would have been safe at home. Maybe, I wouldn’t even have moved to Oxford, I don’t know. I basically did that on a whim.”

“So, people with nice parents and stable childhoods don’t move to Oxford¹ and they don’t get raped?”

“That’s obviously not what I mean,”

“You mean that you, specifically, were raped because of your childhood.”

“Maybe?”

“So what percent responsible is everyone for the rape?”

“What?”

“You’re saying your childhood is partly responsible, so let’s break down the responsibility for the rape.”

After a lot of closing my eyes and throwing out different hypotheses, I reached the following:

• My mom was at least 10% responsible (for traumatising me)

• I was at least 40% responsible (for being there at all, and for not fixing whatever trauma caused me to tolerate self-absorption and rudeness so readily, and for missing the signs that I couldn’t specifically name without making it sound like the world was composed of mostly rapists)

• The perpetrator’s parents were also at least 10% responsible (for clearly messing him up)

• Which meant he was 40% responsible

  • But then, he was pretty clearly struggling with substance abuse, which could increase impulsivity and lower empathy and grounding, especially given his particular substance, so that was at least 5% at fault. Which knocked him down to 35%.

“Huh, so you know it’s not your fault, but you also feel more responsible than anyone else.”

Great, so I’d been wrong. I’d tried to be not-like-other-victims, but I was ashamed. Deeply. Truth be told, I was literally drowning in shame and I felt like I didn’t deserve to ask for anything. And apparently, I was 5% more responsible for my rape than my rapist.

“You know Frances, you could be raped again,” my therapist said. Are therapists allowed to say that? Apparently.

“You could heal all your trauma, you could whittle your social circle down to exactly me and your partner and maybe three other women of your choice.² But unless you plan on permanently locking yourself in a vault, you could be raped again and there’s nothing you can do to change that fact.”

I love my therapist a lot. She’s careful and caring, but she isn’t afraid to get right to the heart of things. Tale as old as time, I was crafting elaborate pie charts of rape causation because I wanted to feel in control. And since I obviously had no say in what that man did, it worked better if I was a bit at fault. Not to mention, I was bone-deep exhausted. I could never do this again. Ever. The rape, the aftermath, the investigation, waking up shaking, nothing was fun anymore, everything was muted and far away, anything I managed to accomplish on any given day was by the very skin of my teeth. I’d never experienced something quite so acute and indescribable, and I never wanted to again. This had to be the only time. But if it wasn’t my fault, then how would I ever prevent it? You can be raped. You can be raped, again. Many people are.

Self-blame is a deeply logical emotional response to things that make you feel scared, dehumanised, and totally powerless. You need a sense of control back so badly that your brain is willing to trade it for other things. If it was partly your fault, then you can change. So what, if that means you were complicit in rape. Your very own, but nonetheless. If it was partly your fault, then in some sense, you deserved it. Fine, at least you can prevent it next time. In some sense, it is cosmically okay that it happened to you, since clearly you had it coming. You have more control, and a little tiny part of your humanity is exchanged for it, without you even realising. That’s no way to live. That’s no foundation for a loving, strong, good sense of self. That’s not the foundation you deserve. That’s not a world I can live in. That’s not the kind of world I want to wonder about, or dance in, or work for.

Victims are asked to carry so much. So many people ask them to. And I get it. If I committed a heinous crime that I had to live with for the rest of my life, that I had to process and grow from, wouldn’t it be nice to only be 35% responsible. Wouldn’t it be nice to make everything sound so inevitable, so blurred. Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to cut off my friend, who I like, who raped someone? Because after all, they’re 65% not responsible. So maybe, they’ll be 35% less my friend and that’s exactly right. If the victim can just take a bit, and so can circumstance and genetics and mental illness and parents and the lighting and the position of Mars, and whatever else, isn’t that more convenient for almost everyone involved?

It’s taken me over a year to put the blame where it belongs. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. There are many people who didn’t help me do it. But luckily, a very small handful wouldn’t tolerate anything less.

It’s strange, when you’re the victim of sexual assault. There are so many of us, and yet we get so obscured in our own experience. So debated. So blurred, like we weren’t even there. Like the only true reality of how it felt doesn’t exist entirely and exactly within us. It’s strange.

1. I suspect you could coherently argue that only those who are under some kind of duress choose to move to the UK

2. I’ve considered it!