by admin

Decades After a Campus Rape

It’s hard not to wonder now, from my perch of more than a quarter century later, staring at the pinched look on my face in the photos from that rainy graduation morning, why there hadn’t been a third option besides either pressing charges or doing nothing, neither of which felt like an appropriate reaction to what had happened to me in that bed. 

I did not want my date rapist to go to jail for what had happened between us. …I didn’t even want him not to graduate. I wanted to confront him in a safe place in front of others. I wanted him to understand that what he did to me — penetration against my will — was wrong, really wrong! I wanted him to express remorse for having crossed a moral and legal line, so that if and when he ever raised a son, he could teach him not to cross it.

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 From Deborah Copaken, “Entering the Mind of My Rapist: An Exercise in Extreme Empathy,” thenation.com, May 15, 2015.