Our story of rape and reconciliation

[This talk contains graphic language
and descriptions of sexual violence

View discretion is advised]

Tom Stanger: In 1996,

when I was 18 years old,

I had the golden opportunity to go
on an International exchange program.

[...] I'm an Australian who prefers
proper icy cold weather,

so I was both excited and tearful

when I got on a plane to Iceland

after just having farewelled
my parents and brothers goodbye.

I was walking into the home
of a beautiful Icelandic family

who took me hiking,

and helped me get a grasp
of the Nordic Icelandic language.

I struggled a bit with the initial
period of homesickness.

I snowboarded after school,

and I slept a lot.

Two hours of chemistry class in a language
that you don't yet fully understand

can be a pretty good sedative.

(Laughter)

My teacher recommended
I try out for the school play,

just to get me a bit more socially active.

It turns out I didn't end up
being part of the play,

but through it I met Thordis.

We shares a lovely teenage romance,

and we'd met a lunchtimes
to just hold hands

and walk around
all [of] downtown Reykjavic.

I met her welcoming family
and she met my friends.

We'd been in a budding relationship
for a bit over a month

when our schools Christmas ball was held.

Thordis Elva: I was 16
and in love for the first time.

Going together to the Christmas dance

was a public confirmation
of our relationship,

and I felt like the luckiest
girl in the world.

No longer a child but a young woman.

High on my newfound maturity,

I felt it was only natural to try drinking
rum for the first time that night, too.

That was a bad idea.

I became very ill,

drifting in and out of consciousness

in between spasms of convulsive vomiting,

and the security guards wanted
to call me an ambulance,

but Tom acted as my
knight in shining armor,

and told them he'd take me home.

It was like a fairy tale,

his strong arms around me,

laying me in the safety of my bed.

But the gratitude that I felt towards him
soon turned to horror

as he proceeded to take off my clothes

and get on top of me.

My head had cleared up,

but my body was still
too weak to fight back,

and the pain was blinding.

I thought I'd be severed in two.

In order to stay sane,

I silently counted the seconds
on my alarm clock.

And ever since that night,

I've known that there are 7,200
seconds in two hours.

Despite limping for days
and crying for weeks,

this incident didn't fit my ideas
about rape the way I had seen on TV.

Tom wasn't an armed lunatic,

he was my boyfriend.

And it didn't happen in a seedy alleyway,

it happened in my own bed.

By the time I could identify
what had happened to me as rape,

he had completed his exchange program,

and left for Australia.

So I told myself it was pointless
to address what had happened,

and besides,

it had to have been my fault, somehow.

I was raised in a world
where girls are taught

that they get taped for a reason.

Their skirt was too short,

their smile was too wide,

their breath smelled of alcohol.

And I was guilty of all of those things,

so the shame had to be mine.

It took me years to realize

that only one thing could have stopped me
from being raped that night,

and it wasn't my skirt,

it wasn't my smile,

it wasn't my childish trust.

The only thing that could've stopped me
from being raped that night

is the man who raped me.

Had he stopped himself.

TS: I have vague memories of the next day.

The aftereffects of drinking,

a certain hollowness
that I tried to stifle.

Nothing more.

But I didn't show up at Thordis' door.

It is important to now state that I didn't
see my deed for what it was.

The word rape didn't echo
around my mind as it should've,

and I wasn't crucifying myself
with memories of the night before.

It wasn't so much a conscious refusal,

it was more like an acknowledgement
of reality was forbidden.

My definition of my actions completely
refuted any recognition

of the immense trauma I caused Thordis.

To be honest,

I repudiated the entire act
in the days afterwards,

and when I was committing it.

I disavowed the truth by convincing
myself it was sex and not rape,

and this is lie I felt
spine-bending guilt for.

I broke up with Thordis
a couple of days later,

and then saw her a number of times

during the remainder
of my year in Iceland,

feeling a sharp stab of heavy
heartedness each time.

Deep down, I knew I'd done something
immeasurably wrong,

but without planning it,

I sunk the memories deep,

and then I tied a rock to them.

What followed is a nine-year period

that can best be titled
as "Denial and Running."

When I got a chance to identify
the real torment that I caused,

I didn't stand still long enough to do so.

[....] distraction,

substance use,

thrill-seeking,

scrupulous policing of my inner speak,

I refused to be static and silent.

And with this noise,

I also drew heavily
on other parts of my life

to construct a picture of who I was.

I was a surfer,

a social science student,

a friend to good people.

A loved brother and son.

An outdoor recreation guide,

and eventually a youth worker.

I grew tied to the simple notion
that I wasn't a bad person.

I didn't think I had this in my bones.

I thought I was made up of something else.

... my nurtured upbringing,

my loving extended family and role models.

People close to me were warm
and genuine

in their [...] toward women.

It took me a long time to stare down
this dark corner of myself,

and to ask it questions.

TE: Nine years after the Christmas dance,

I was 25 years old,

and headed straight
for a nervous breakdown.

My self worth was buried under
a soul-crushing load of silence

that isolated me from everyone
that I cared about.

And I was consumed
with misplaced hatred and anger

that I took out on myself.

One day I stormed out of the door in tears
after a fight with a loved one,

and I wandered into a café,

where I asked the waitress for a pen.

I always had a notebook with me,

claiming that it was to jot down ideas
and moments of inspiration,

but the truth was that I needed
to be constantly fidgeting,

because in moments of stillness,

I found myself counting seconds again.

But that day I watched in wonder
as the words streamed out of my pen

forming the most pivotal letter
I've ever written,

addressed to Tom.

Along with an account of the violence
that he subjected me to,

the words, "I want to find forgiveness"
stared back at me,

surprising nobody more than myself.

But deep down I realized that this
was my way out of my suffering,

because regardless of whether or not
he deserved my forgiveness,

I deserved peace.

My era of shame was over.

Before sending the letter,

I prepared myself for all kinds
of negative responses,

or what I found likeliest:

no response whatsoever.

The only outcome that I didn't prepare
myself for was the one that I then got.

A typed confession from Tom,

full of disarming regret.

As it turns out,

he too had been imprisoned by silence.

And this marked the start
of an eight-year-long correspondance

that God knows was never easy,

but always honest.

I relieved myself of the burdens
that I'd wrongfully shouldered,

and he in turn, wholeheartedly
owned up to what he'd done.

Our written exchanges became a platform
to dissect the condequences of that night,

and they were everything
from gut-wrenching

to healing beyond words.

And yet it didn't bring about
closure for me.

Perhaps because the email format
didn't feel personal enough,

perhaps because it's easy to be brave

when you're hiding behind a computer
screen on the other side of the planet,

but we began a dialogue
that I thought was necessary

to explore to it's fullest.

So after eight years of writing,

and nearly 16 years after that dire night,

I mustered the courage
to propose a wild idea.

That we'd meet up in person

and face out past once and for all.

TS: Iceland and Australia
are geographically like this.

In the middle of the two is South Africa,

and we decided on the city of Cape Town,

and there we met for one week.

The city itself proved to be a stunningly
powerful environment

to focus on reconciliation
and forgiveness.

Nowhere else has healing and reproach
been tested like it has in South Africa.

As a nation,

South Africa sought to sit within
the truth of its past,

and to listen to the details
of its history.

Knowing this only magnified the effect
that Cape Town had on us.

Over the course of this week,

we literally spoke
our life stories to each other

from start to finish.

And this was about analyzing
our own history.

We followed a strict
policy of being honest,

and this also came
with a certain exposure,

an open-chested vulnerability.

We were gutting confessions,

and moments where we just
absolutely couldn't fathom

the other person's experience.

The seismic effects of sexual violence
were spoken aloud and felt,

face to face.

Other times though,

we found a soaring clarity,

and even some totally unexpected
but liberating laughter.

When it came down to it,

we did out best to listen
to each other intently.

And our individual realities were
aired with an unfilitered purity

that couldn't do any less
than lighten the soul.

TE: Wanting to take revenge
is a very human emotion.

Instinctual, even.

And all I wanted to do for years

was to hurt Tom back as deeply
as he had hurt me.

But had I not found a way
out of the hatred and anger,

I'm not sure I'd be standing here today.

That isn't to say that I didn't
have my doubts along the way.

When the plane bounced
on that landing strip in Cape Town,

I remember thinking,

"Why did I not just get myself a therapist
and a bottle of vodka

like a normal person would do?"

(Laughter)

At times,

our search for understanding in Cape Town
felt like an impossible quest,

and all I wanted to do was to give up

and go home to my loving husband,

and our son.

But despite our difficulties,

this journey did result
in a victorious feeling,

that light had triumphed over darkness.

That something constructive could
be built out of the ruins.

I read somewhere

that you should try and be the person
that you needed when you were younger,

and back when I was a teenager,

I would have needed to know
that the shame wasn't mine,

that there's hope after rape,

that you can even find happiness,

like I share with my husband today.

Which is why I started writing feverishly
upon my return from Cape Town,

resulting in a book co-authored by Tom

that we hope can be of use
to people from both ends

of the perpetrator-survivor scale.

If nothing else,

it's a story that we would've
needed to hear when we were younger.

Given the nature of our story,

I know the words
that inevitably accompany it.

Victim, rapist --

and labels are a way to organize concepts,

but they can also be dehumanizing
in their connotations.

Once someone's been deemed a victim,

it's that much easier to file them away
as someone damaged --

dishonored,

less than.

And likewise,

once someone's been branded a rapist,

it's that much easier to him a monster --

inhuman.

But how will we understand what it is
in human societies that produces violence,

if we refuse the recognize the humanity
of those who commit it?