RAPED

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with emotion I don’t know what to do with it. Then I remember I might not be the only one feeling what I am feeling so why bottle it in? Just like now, I have a lump in my throat for no apparent reason, I cannot pin point the source of this anxiety. Or maybe, just maybe it’s because there are a lot of places I have been that have contributed to this.

I feel like it’s a culmination of disappointments, lies, hurts and rejections have all finally caught up with me. Today as I was going over the crime of RAPE. I came to the grim realisation that I like most women I know have been RAPED countless times without even being aware of it. Section 3 (b) of the Offence provides the following:

(b) Where the sexual act is committed under false pretences or by fraudulent means, including where (B) (woman) is led to believe that (A) (man) –

      i.        B (woman) is committing such a sexual act with a particular person who is in FACT a different person.

The act of sexual penetration must take place without the consent of B in order for it to constitute an offence of rape. Consent is defined as voluntarily and without coercion. Now back to the above mentioned section, how many of you were coerced or let’s make it sound less harsh, how many of you have been “convinced” to agree to penetration because someone fraudulently misrepresented themselves? How many of you were told he is this and woke up next to something completely different?

How many of you have been violated by the same person over and over again. I know the law means error in persona but I will apply it in the field we have come to familiar with and that is error in personality. Someone will tell you one thing while all the while knowing they are not that and never will be, all for what?  to steal your dignity over and over again that’s what.

Going to bed with a man who is compassionate, listens, opens your door and kisses you on the forehead and waking up next to an animal who doesn’t even want to bother to wake up and walk you to the door in the morning, will however not hold up in court. But it should hold up in your conscious. What  I have done is applied my studies to not only the situations I have found myself in but ones I know a lot of you will relate to.

There are a lot of rapists walking around out there. Just because they didn’t gag you or drag you kicking and screaming doesn’t really mean all that much. What does mean something is that they took what was yours under false pretences. They took what they knew you wouldn’t really give if you knew the real facts and even worse who they really are. They will never be bought to book and chances are they will do it again, but only if you let them. First time you’re a victim, second time you’re a volunteer.