Yinkore Angel
There are a few experiences that cut across all facets of our human existence irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, economic status, nationality, gender or sexual orientation. In fact, very few experiences resonate with all humans: we identify with birth, love, pain, happiness, death and for the context of my talk today, sexual abuse. While sexual abuse may not be considered as a universal phenomenon experienced by all, everyone in this room may very well know someone who is an abuser, victim or may even personally identify with abuse.
As soon as I mentioned sexual abuse, I could sense some hesitation and tension in the room. Why is that? Why is it that discussing sex in mainstream conversations can be exciting to many people but the mere inclusion of the concept of ‘abuse’ suddenly causes people to tense up and put up defence mechanisms. What is it about the topic of sexual abuse that erases the rush of dopamine to our brains and replaces it with anxiety and dread? Why does the topic of sexual abuse make you uncomfortable?
Centuries ago, rape was almost exclusively considered as a woman's affair. The early Europeans believed it was an act publicly punishable by death but in reality, the perpetrator usually paid a fine to the head of the victim’s family behind closed doors. The Greeks on the other hand considered sexual abuse to be somewhat normative as even gods like Zeus constantly raping.Meanwhile in the Roman empire, the term raptus referred to both elopement and rape, the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, ordered that a female who consented to the act of eloping,be burned alive with the accomplice and if she had not given consent, she would still be cut off from any family inheritance as a punishment because he believed that she could have screamed for help and saved herself. However, the romans deserve some recognition as one of the earliest civilizations to include males in the definition of rape by the 3rd century. The caveat to the roman laws was that only the rape of citizens was considered. This meant that the rape of slaves, prostitutes, and foreigners was legal and as such very common in the empire.
Great scholars also had interesting views on rape. Thomas Aquinas believed that while rape was a sin, it ranked much lower than masturbation or coitus interruptus - which we would refer to in present-day as “pull out game” because to him, rape still fulfilled the purpose of recreation, which was god's plan.
Considering the nature of evolution and passage of time, you would think humans would evolve in our thinking, such that we would be better off than our ancestors. Look around you: how much better have we become? The questions we ask victims of sexual abuse have not changed. Our dispositions towards victims remain the same. I often wonder why people do not feel the same anger and frustration I feel whenever an incidence of rape comes up in the news or my social media feed. I have come to the realization that it is difficult to feel anger over pain you have not experienced or fight experiences you don’t understand. So I have come here today with a mission; to lift the veil hiding the horrific impact of sexual trauma from the lens of society and our culture of unbelief and victim blaming.
A quick google search will reveal that rape is simply defined as unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus or mouth of another person with or without force by sex organ,other body parts or foreign objects without the consent of the victim. This definition seems pretty straightforward. You would even consider it to be quite self-explanatory, but the reality is that when we apply this definition to real-life scenarios, things become complicated and are hardly ever black and white. And due to the myriad of variables involved in each case of rape, different emotions are expressed by society. fear, anger, disgust and the most popular of all, disbelief. Why is the experience of rape approached with disdain instead of empathy? Why do we respond in disbelief instead of understanding? I'll tell you.
All humans possess what psychologists refer to as “scripts”. Scripts are the internalized ways in which we believe events of life occur. Let us consider this classic example: picture a boy and girl running in the rain. Boy accidentally hits girl, books fall down, brown eyes meet, electricity sparks fly across, and for a moment, everything stops, and just like that a magical love story is born. Now, while this sounds very romantic and has been reenacted a million times over by Hollywood, most people in this audience know that's usually not how the story goes. (Well, if you don’t know, I am sure you will find out eventually).
Rape scripts are often depicted in similar ways. Picture a dark, lonely road with 4 drunk guys hanging out in the shadows, and a pretty petite woman walking home from work. Suddenly, a flurry of activities too fast for the human eyes to capture occurs and the men run off in the dark leaving the woman crying as she lays on the ground with physical injuries and torn clothes. In my 2 years of working with over 50 rape survivors, I have only encountered one case that occurred like this.
Unfortunately, the scenario I just described is what most of us often picture when rape is discussed. In reality, this could not be farther from the truth. Rape typically occurs in places that we expect to be safe in. Rape happens in our homes, churches, mosques, schools, and places of work. It happens in places where we should be protected, respected, or loved. Rapists aren't monsters hiding in caves who come out on nights with a full moon to hunt their prey. Rapist are everyday people like you and me, with regular jobs, regular lives, and regular faces. Rapists are fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, teachers, religious leaders, welfare workers, neighbours, celebrities, and the list goes on.
We tend to not believe survivors because for some of us, the thought that people who assume these roles in our society are capable of such horror does not align with our beliefs. The more mundane the profile of a rapist is, the more disbelief we feel.
Because of the scripts we have internalized and our belief that everyday people around us cannot be capable of such vile acts, we are inclined to question the only person who has any memory of the event - the victim. So We continue to poke holes at their testimonies until we hear the version of their stories that we want to hear a version that our psyche can bear. When we accomplish this and continue to exist in ignorance, we've done so at the detriment of the victim. We shame victims and pass judgment on memories that we do not own. We sit back and watch victims wrestle internally with self-doubt and self-blame. We watch as they are forced to convince themselves that their experiences are not valid. Ideas like “maybe it didn't really happen”, “may be I asked for it”, “my dress was probably too short” are validated and when we hear these answers we reaffirm their guilt and encourage their silence.
 Now, some of you are probably thinking, “Angel, no! Not me.” “I don't do that, I would never shame a rape victim if they opened up to me. “If I ever encounter a rapist, I would report to the authorities”. Okay, let’s say I believe you...but when your friend tells a rape joke, do you call him to order? When you see a news report involving rape, do you think of questions like: “how can a man be raped?” or “why was she dressed like that?” If so, then allow me to be the first person to tell you that you have participated in subconsciously shaming victims of rape. When a society consciously and subconsciously shames its victims, we give the final and most fatal reason why we don't believe victims-We silence them. And believe me, there is no louder silence than the Nigerian silence.
The Nigerian silence is a phenomenon we've all experienced, witnessed and perpetrated. The Nigerian silence says “It's a family matter, don't get involved”, “He's a man of god, who are we to judge”, “God will see you through”, “do you want to disgrace the family”. And like carcass, the Nigerian silence looks away from her victims, and what happens after we do this? What happens after we bury our men, women and children 6-feet deep into the trauma that we fueled? We send them into a labyrinth of emotional, mental and physical horrors that cannot be explained by words, only by experience.
Research on brain neuroimaging shows that the same areas of the brain affected by war in veterans and survivors of natural disasters diagnosed with PTSD, are the same as victims of rape with PTSD. Affected areas include the amygdala which controls normal expression of emotions especially fear; the ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is involved in decision making and emotional processing; and the hippocampus which largely controls memory. If PTSD resulting from rape can have such a significant impact on mental functioning, why do we tell rape victims to just “get over it” when no one tells soldiers coming from Iraq or Afghanistan to simply “get over it”. We expect individuals whose rights to body autonomy and human dignity have been forcefully stripped away to simply heal without any scars but humans don't work like that and neither do our brains. There is no light switch for emotional trauma that we can decide to turn off or on at will.
It is rather thought-provoking how in the case of other crimes, we do not ask victims ludicrous questions. When a terrorist attack occurs, we don't ask survivors why they weren't wearing bomb-proof clothing. When a person is robbed, we don’t ask why they were walking around with cash. Instead, we ask why are people motivated to become terrorists, what systems created a robber. We know to question the perpetrator and not the victim. We know to vilify the crime and not the survivor. Somehow, this line of reasoning ceases to exist in the context of sexual abuse. Instead, we make survivors stand trial as victims and perpetrators of a traumatic event they had no control over.

I don’t know about you but I would like to live in a world where rape victim isn't synonymous with vagina and rapist isn't synonymous with a penis. A world where the context of rape is gender neutral until we assess the facts. A world where our immediate reaction is to empathize and not disbelieve a survivor. When you don't say or do anything, your silence is a form of consent. Martin Luther King once said “in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”. Today, I ask all of us here, what side of history would you like to stand on?
Thank you.