This Rape Victim And Her Rapist Got Together To Recollect What Happened That Night.

Iceland-based Thordis Elva and Australia-based Tom Stranger shared the Ted Talk stage to talk about an issue that we all know very well about- Rape. What’s unique here is that Elva is the survivor of the gruesome act that Tom Stranger perpetrated. 

The perpetrator and survivor reconciled to tell the world their story and show rape in a light that’s rather enlightening and insightful.

Elva was 18 years old when she first met Stranger, who had come to her college through an exchange program, in 1996. Love started budding between the two and they went to the Christmas Ball together.

Elva tried rum for the first time there. However, it took a toll on her and she fell sick. Stranger offered to drop her home safely. “It was like a fairy tale, his strong arms around me, laying me in the safety of my bed,” she recounted.

Little had Elva known of the impending horror. Soon after, Stranger penetrated her while she lay motionless in her bed within the safe confines of her home, unable to identify what was happening.

“My head had cleared up, but my body was still too weak to fight back, and the pain was blinding. I thought I’d been severed in two,” said Elva.

“I felt deserving of Thordis’ body,” said Tom while recounting the episode and lamenting his actions. 

He said, “I have vague memories of the next day. The after effects of drinking, a certain hollowness that I tried to stifle. Nothing more. But I didn’t show up at Thordis’s door. It is important to now state that I didn’t see my deed for what it was.”

“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 a lie I’ve felt spine-bending guilt for,” he added.

While speaking about the factors that form the basis of the existing rape culture, Elva said, “I was raised in a world where girls are told they get raped for a reason. Their skirt was too short, their smile was too wide, and their breath smelled of alcohol. And I was guilty of all of those things, so the shame had to be mine.”

The horrific night ended in a wide gap between them both. Stranger’s exchange programme had closed and he went back to Australia. However, the memories of the fateful night lingered on Elva and Stranger.

While Elva grew silent by the day, trying to deal with all the horrific visions in her head and yearning for a closure, Stranger had started to realize what he’d actually done. “It was only me in that room making choices, nobody else,” said Stranger while underlining the concept of consent.

Nine years later, Elva wrote a letter to Stranger. She got a response she didn’t expect to receive at all. He wrote back, confessing to raping her. 

Although they opened up through their mails to each other, Elva still felt the need to fill a certain void. “8 years of writing and nearly 16 years after that dire night I mustered the courage to propose a wild idea that we meet up in person and face our past once and for all,” she said.

“All I wanted to do for years is hurt Tom back as deeply as he had hurt me,” asserted Elva.She didn’t let her reservations grow on her and decided to meet Stranger. They met in South Africa’s Cape Town, which falls in the middle of their hometowns.

They talked it out, learned to seek and give forgiveness and also co-authored a book on their story titled South Of Forgiveness. 

Moreover, they brought out attention to a very significant part of a rape incident- the labelling of ‘victim’ and ‘rapist’. “Labels are a way of defining concepts but they can also be dehumanising in their connotations,” Elva said while pointing at the fact that these labels should not be used to refer to the people involved in a rape incident as they would only adversely affect a person.

In the end, Elva and Stranger certainly ended up in a better place than they were before by sorting it out and relieving themselves of the burden that they both had been carrying for long, which Elva’s statement proves- “Light had triumphed over darkness… Something constructive could be built out of the ruins.”

“It’s about time that we stop treating sexual violence as a women’s issue,” she concluded to a thunderous applause. 

Note: We are not saying that a perpetrator is always worthy of forgiveness, definitely not in cases like the Delhi gangrape of 2012. The thoughts and statements above are only that of the survivor and perpetrator and Being Indian does not necessarily hold the same views.

You can watch their conversation here.