When you suffer rape, your whole life changes, as does the life of those around you. But the worst of all is not knowing how to deal with it, sometimes leading to blaming the victim, even if it is unconsciously. One of the reasons why this distance is kept from the victim is so that the possibility of the same thing happening to you or those you love is remote or almost impossible.
If we think it was because she was wearing a neckline that was too open, we will reason that if we don’t wear this neckline, it will never happen to us. Our mind is clever and is very good at making these types of associations so that the possible uncertainty or our perception of security is not compromised.
This blaming, added to the physical and psychological consequences of rape, means that the victim can suffer twice as much . Not only does society point out her cleavage, but she does too, trying to find a circumstance that she can control, so that by mythologizing it, it doesn’t happen again.
Therefore, adequate psychological treatment is a very important variable in recovery and if this treatment can include the partner, and even the victim’s family, it would help in the process.
In this article we will reflect on the psychological consequences, both personal and social, suffered by victims of rape , whether they are adolescents or adults, with the aggressor unknown to the victim. When the victims are girls and/or the aggressor is a friend or family member, the psychological consequences can be much deeper.
“In murder, the victim has disappeared and does not have to face what happened. Relatives must do so, but not the victim. But rape is much worse. The victim has a lifetime to digest it, try to understand it, ask questions and, worst of all, know that the rapist is still alive and may one day escape or be released. Every hour of every day the victim thinks about the rape and asks endless questions. She relives it step by step, minute by minute, and it always hurts like the first time.”
-John Grisham-
Personal consequences of rape
When you suffer rape, everything changes, because your most private part has been stolen from you, your sexuality, that part of your being that you share with whoever you love. It can be an assault with a greater or lesser degree of violence, with penetration by a foreign object or by the rapist himself, all of this affects you in very different ways.
At first there is a phase of shock , so great that it can lead to the victim’s own depersonalization , because reality hurts so much that, in order to protect itself, the victim’s own mind creates an alter ego, a third person who suffers from the crime, and the victim even speaks about his or her own body in the third person. He or she may also not remember anything that happened immediately after the attack, and may be disoriented and very scared.
Then, as memories come back and medical tests continue, you begin to become aware of what happened, feel the physical pain and think about your own well-being. You think about possible sexually transmitted diseases , permanent damage to your reproductive organs and the possibility of pregnancy, even if you take emergency contraception, since these are not 100% effective.
Then, with the questions from the police and medical staff, who try to do their job as best as possible, the “re-victimization” begins , aggravated by the long judicial processes that rape victims face. This re-victimization consists of reliving everything that happened, if possible in as much detail as possible, so that the authorities can find the aggressor, but it means that the victim has to live through that horror again without being psychologically prepared for it.
Finally, these victims face what is known as post-traumatic stress disorder, which in this type of crime has its own characteristics:
- Victims vividly relive the assault through involuntary images or memories, technically called flashbacks, and perhaps nightmares, although these are less common than in war victims who suffer from this disorder.
- There is a large increase in activation, a continuous state of alert or anxiety as an adaptive response to rape occurring in a place considered safe for the victim, such as her own home, public transportation, etc.
- They tend to avoid situations or places associated with rape, even refusing to voluntarily discuss the crime.
- Changes such as irritability, lack of concentration, sleeping problems and even the so-called “psychic anesthesia” or inability to capture and express feelings of intimacy and tenderness appear.
All of this makes professional help to overcome rape essential, since if post-traumatic stress is not treated correctly from the beginning, it becomes a chronic problem that worsens and has serious consequences for the victim, ranging from isolation to suicide.
“Perhaps the worst of all crimes is the monstrous rape of a minor. When it happens to an adult woman, she has a good idea of why it happened. An animal full of hate, anger and violence. But a child? A ten-year-old girl? Put yourself in the place of the parents. Try to explain to your daughter why she has been raped. Try to explain to her why she will not be able to have children.”
– John Grisham-
Family and social consequences
The rape of a minor affects the entire family unit, leading to the complete breakdown of the family due to not knowing how to deal with this issue. Therefore, attending family therapy is usually the best option. In this therapy, all concerns are openly addressed, from the guilt of the parents for not having been able to protect their daughter from such an atrocious crime to that of the victim for having suffered a crime without being able to prevent it.
If the victim is the partner, it affects the entire relationship , not only the sexual part, but also the emotional one. It is very difficult to explain to your partner everything that the aggressor did to you because you see that he or she is going to suffer more than he or she is suffering now, but in this case communication is essential for understanding and overcoming the trauma.
Not in vain, one of the factors with the worst prognosis for the recovery of a rape victim is being married, due to the difficulties that this entails for the couple.
And finally, the label of being raped that society puts on you makes recovery more difficult. People may look at you strangely in the street, they may walk away and they may not understand. The worst thing is that they justify your assault because of how you were dressed or because you had been drinking, so that they don’t have to think that any of us could be victims, so that they don’t have to be afraid.
Factors that facilitate rape
It is often said that women are provocative with the way they dress or dance, that they become victims by drinking or walking home alone, but the truth is that the only factor that makes you a victim of rape is that you are a woman.
And that is something we cannot change, it is our gender that makes us victims and not anything we do , because nothing can change it. Instead of blaming the victims for how they are dressed or why they were walking alone on the street, what we must do is educate our children that whatever a woman does is not the property of a man’s whims.
Whatever a woman does, whether she has been drinking or not, does not make her an object and above all it does not change the meaning of words, because a NO WILL ALWAYS MEAN NO. And whatever a man does, drinking will not be an excuse to commit the crime, because drinking, just as it does not change the meaning of words, does not change the person, who remains responsible for his actions.