Deserving?

http://www.change.org/petitions/scottish-government-stop-cutting-the-50-of-funding-to-rape-and-abuse-charities

Interview with a serial rapist...

Thanks to a dear dear friend the translation is pretty much complete - phew!

Me: Why did you rape?

Him: That's a really hard question.  It's a question I don't really ask myself.  I've got my explanation, but....

Me: No, but I think you've got to give your explanation.

Him: Well, I think all sorts of stuff comes into it.  The first thing is, given that it was something that was harassing me psychologically, that's to say, it was keeping me awake every night; well, I'd fall asleep and wake up at 2am, like, it was my conscience that woke me up;  I found myself thinking of these women, and then it would become painful for me,  it was incessant, in my head, and then I couldn't get back to sleep.  You try to think about it, but there's no answer.  I can talk about it a bit now, but then, I just couldn't, you see?  As there's no answer, you can't get your head around it.   You get no reply, so you have to stop, but you can't stop, you can't stop wondering.  Because it's always there, always there, always there, all the time.  And the mechanism is such that, I would say to myself, you've got to go ahead and do it, to get it out of your head.  In the end it was that, it was always that.  It was to free my mind;  it was pathetic/I was completely wrong in that,  (complètement caduc),  it did free me in that I passed on to a different context, that is, guilt;  it made me unhappy, so I was in some other sphere;  you tell yourself that you are bad through and through,  but it's true that I raped in order to free my mind, I mean, I had the impression that it would. 

After, when I'd done it, it's obvious that... er ... often the satisfaction lay in the preparation; so it made me .... er.... well  ... I was in a position of dominance;  I dominated everything:  time, ways into houses, all the preparation,  it's true that I always asked myself:  “why are you doing this?  OK, sure, it's making you feel good, but why are you doing it?”  And, effectively, it was to assault a woman.  Now, to go as far as rape, frankly I don't have a clue;  as I grew up, once I'd made love with women, when I went out with women and got to know them, I think that the aim was that.  The aim was to go and make love to a woman.  I say, to make love, but I mean rape, actually.  But, er, what was I about to say?  (Long pause.)  It was complicated, that's for sure.  

Was it about power, control, sex?...

Me: So, you were saying why you did it; you mentioned dominance;  was it to dominate, or for power, (or just for the sex)?

Him: It was to take what was not given to me, I think.  To take that love, too, that wasn't given to me.  There was that too.

Me: But it was never for the sex?

Him: No, the rape was because, ultimately, since I was a little kid, I had that desire, to touch a woman's breasts, and each time, I would masturbate.  So that formed part of the mechanism.  Each time that I thought about it, that it took over my mind at night, either I went out and... I didn't do it systematically, but the end result was masturbation – ejaculation.  And the pressure dropped.  So I could move on.  Ultimately, the whole point was that.  Luckily, for a lot of women, it stopped there;  I got to the foot of their bed, and I just masturbated;  with others, no.  There were so so so many times.  But the point was to masturbate, to ejaculate, to evacuate.  That's what it boiled down to.  Like for all men.

Me: You have done an enormous amount of harm to the women you have raped and assaulted what do you feel with regards to that?

Him: What I feel is that it's a waste, I feel... it's complicated; it's complicated too.  I'm unhappy, of course it makes me unhappy.  But then, I don't want to dwell on it.  I just can't.  I can't take pity on them

Because if I do, I can't go forward.  I can't ...yes, I've got to try to ... I know perfectly well what I've done, what I've committed, I hope they find a way out, I hope that they fight it and beat it.  But I can't go on and on thinking about it.  Otherwise I can't continue.  I wouldn't go forward, otherwise.    So, whether that pleases people or not, then well, either they accept, and accept to release us prisoners, or they cut off our heads, which doesn't bother me;  they can cut my head off and that's the end of it.  But if they don't cut it off, then we have to believe that we can start afresh, because if it's to harass us... We're still human beings, you know.  We can start over with the.... I feel hatred against myself, me I've enormous amounts of hatred against myself inside, that's for sure.

Me: What are your relationships with women like now?

Him: The same as I had before.  I always have a very good relationship with women. 

Me: But is it exactly the same, or is it...

Him: It the same, except... it's the same

Me: Except that, what, you're more honest?

Him: I'm more honest because I say where I've been, and I tell them what I've done.  So my relationship with women, when it's false, is very difficult.  As for me, my approach is still the same, but after it's really hard.  Obviously, it's really hard.  To tell things as they are, (d'annoncer la couleur), 

Me: So you can no longer hide?

Him: It's happened, at times, that...(long pause – he says he has forgotten what he wanted to say)

So you have deeper relationships now, then?

No, I've …TBC

Me: You said back there that you were trying to find a certain type of woman? 

Him: That's part of it.  Women from a socially privileged background.  Deep down, it was that?

Me: Why? 

Him: Well, I interpreted it like that.  I've spoken about it to my psychologist.  Discussing this with psychotherapists, the real reason is that my mum always spoke about money, work, success, rather than speaking about love.  We had to work all the time.  Since I was a little kid, since the age of seven, at home I worked;  the minute I got home from school, I had to work:  I had to feed the animals, or go and fetch such and such, in short, there was a bit of revenge in my behaviour, I was transposing something onto these women who had that class status;  I don't think about it, but that's it:  they have class but they don't look after their kids – it's completely wrong, I know that now;  it's deep-rooted;  I didn't realize it at the time;  but it was there, I felt it, that's for sure.  

Whao

Audre Lorde - Sister Outsider

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us...it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.

No more words

I hope you get something from this blog. Inevitably it will make you angry (I hope!), some of the statistics may shock you and some of the images may strike a cord or hopefully some will make you giggle but more than anything I hope it shows you the scope of the problem and that it makes you want to do something about it! There isn't exactly a flow to this blog so just peruse it a little at leisure. I created it to enable me to put all my research, thoughts and workings out in one place!

The labels allow you to see content based on subject, such as entries from my diary when I was going for counselling at the rape crisis centre in Edinburgh and many many Antonin Artaud quotes as he is practically my god (!) and the dates section allows you to explore by chronological order (obviously). Please feel free to comment on anything I have included here as I would really appreciate your thoughts and any feedback you may have.

As much as possible I will try to use images to express what I want to say due to Antonin Artaud's, in my opinion, very true statement that things should be;

A modern day devil...

Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group that is to blame for thousands of deaths and child abductions in Central Africa. He considers himself a spiritual medium and uses tactics from the ‘Holy Spirit’ to command his soldiers. Kony had stated, in a previous interview, that his goal was to cleanse the Acholi people and if they did not support him, then they must be killed. He supports this statement through biblical references.

For over 20 years, Kony has abducted thousands of children to become fighters or sex slaves to continue his campaign of terror (murder, rape, torture, or sexual enslavement). These abducted children are to be a part of the LRA rebel group and must follow strict rules and rituals or they will be killed. The LRA started abducting children and mutilating civilians in Uganda but have since been pushed out of Uganda and into the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan.

The International Criminal Court has charged Kony on 33 counts and 12 crimes against humanity in 2005. Uganda’s army has formed a campaign to find and kill Kony with the help of former LRA members and the advisory role of US special forces.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc&feature=share

news.stv.tv