The fact that he’s told his friends and family, and these people have made it their business to tell her that he’s SO sorry, is a big red flag to me. It sounds like he’s trying to come up with the “expected” reaction, which, coincidentally, is the reaction that will make her feel both loved (as per abusive situations) and guilty, thus mitigating any guilt he may percieve he “should” feel.

And Gina, you do come off sounding extremely condescending by “forgiving” people who not only haven’t significantly hurt you, but who haven’t asked for your forgiveness for their words on a page. But hey, I forgive you (and doesn’t that make it all better?).

When a lawyer says to her:

“So you forgave him?”

“Yes. Or No”

I assumed that when it was pointed out to him he’d made a mistake, he’d either acknowledge his mistake handsomely or disappear from the thread in embarrassment. The first would have been respectable behavior, the second would at least not have been awful.

What makes me rather hope that he disappears and never comes back to this blog is that, long after anyone not a rape apologist would have known to stop, PiaTor just continued to claim that the woman was at fault because without a safeword how could the rapist have been supposed to know that her begging him to stop, crying, screaming, and bleeding, plus a full year of refusal prior to the rape actually meant she didn’t want to have anal sex? No. PiaToR felt we should get his side of the story - after all, his victim could be lying! Altogether, thoroughly sickening.

If you can trust a guy that does that, you can ceratainly trust him to understand that no mean no - until otherwise spelled out. If you can’t trust a guy to know the latter, you certainly can’t trust one that repeatedly argues a hard “no” to listen to codewords that mean “no”.

Safewords would not have changed the outcome. Anyone that thinks that bondage is carte blance is going to do something bad eventually - safewords or not.

‘Cause after all - you can never be too careful. I mean seriously, if you actually think that using handcuffs autiomatically mean that yoou need special code words for “no� - just to be on the safe side - then it cetainly isn’t to extreme for me to stay way far away from someone making half the arguments you are - just to be on the safe side.

BDSM stuff can be somewhat mysterious to some folks, and it can seem a bit arcane. Most good sites for beginners will emphasize the needs for safewords, and many of them will ignore that a lot of scenes do not have any roleplay elements. So, a person read or hears “always have a safeword”, and can easily think that it’s a necessity.

It’s normal for folks to look at a horrible situation, and to do something akin to denial with it, where it could have been different, if the people involved had acted differently, especially when it seems like a standard, typical safety precaution was ignored.

And, it’s hard to back down when it feels like everyone’s already called you six kinds of evil beast, when you thought you had a valid point. Nothing PiaToR said was awful (at least, nothing I remember being said); it was pained, and attempting to make sense of a terrible and senseless situation, a way of expressing how hard it is to believe that someone could be that evil, over something so incredibly petty, and worse, after a three year relationship where he didn’t seem like an abusive enough person to do something like this.

I find it hard to believe myself… shouldn’t guys like that be, you know, dripping evil everywhere they walk? But, alas, I know that this kind of evil can be very carefully hidden.

I have no idea what he was thinking, but I’ll bet I can imagine what he told his family and friends: “Oh, it’s so horrible! Jane and I, you know how we do the tying-up thing sometimes? Well we were doing that, and decided to try anal sex, but she wasn’t really enjoying it as much as I was, and I didn’t realize till it was too late that I’d accidentally hurt her. And I was so careful, I used lube and tried to relax her first and everything! But she didn’t tell me she had scar tissue there and I thought she was just uncomfortable and I…oh God I’m such a horrible person…I was enjoying myself so much that I didn’t notice the blood at first. But as soon as I did I went and called 911! And now she won’t talk to me!”

That last little bit, with kicking himself for being an awful person, is very important–makes him look really penitent, dontcha know. And no mention of having gotten his rocks off before calling for help, natch.

Jeez.

Maybe a good lesson would be: when you RAPE SOMEONE, you are not entitled to her forgiveness. Instead, you have committed a crime and will be treated like a criminal.”

I would like to strongly second this.

And add: Phoenician: WTF?

I’ve certainly disagreed with you before, but you’ve never scared me before. The first comment was annoying enough, but your defense of it? Could I get a picture of you7 so I can run the other way if I see you irl?

‘Cause after all - you can never be too careful. I mean seriously, if you actually think that using handcuffs autiomatically mean that yoou need special code words for “no” - just to be on the safe side - then it cetainly isn’t to extreme for me to stay way far away from someone making half the arguments you are - just to be on the safe side.

I’ll confess to having some selfish motives in hoping she presses charges. In my view, the more rapists locked up, the safer things are for people outside of prison. It’s rather like if somone’s been burning down apartment buildings in the area where I live, and one of the neighbors is debating whether or not to press charges. Whether I think it will help the neighbor to get over their burned house or not, part of me is always going to be hoping the guy’s locked up before he burns down my house. And part of me is going to want him locked up so I don’t have more neighbors suffer a profound loss, and possible severe physical damage.

Now while I’m unlikely to get in a relationship with this particular guy (I date women), there’s a good chance he’s going to rape future girlfriends. This is especially likely if she both fails to press charges and grants the kind of forgiveness his friends and family seem to be pushing for (some sort of communication to him telling him he’s forgiven). I don’t beleive that he is both capable of committing such a brutal rape, and capable of such instant reform that the bare realization of what he’s done has caused the kind of permanent change that will cause him to never rape again if he doesn’t face outside consequences or the extra internal pressure and guilt. So I think there’s a public benefit to having him locked up out of society. I’m aware that’s a harsh thing to inflict on the prison population, but it’s not currently permissible to keep rapists in perpetual solitary confinement.

Pressing charges may hurt this woman. It may, in fact, help her. It’s possible that a clear recognition that he wronged her brutally, it’s entirely his fault, and she has a legal and moral right (which was violated) to not be treated that way can be a positive experience for her. And it would be a benefit to all other women he might encounter, and the people that care about them to render him at least temporarily incapable of future rape. And even an unsuccessful prosecution will do more to impress upon him the seriousness of his deed, and instill fear of negative consequences than facing no legal consequences at all. Forgiveness, if it’s best for her, benefits everyone by having her happier, healthier, and more capable of contributing to the world. If it doesn’t help her, it helps no one. So, while I certainly wouldn’t demand that rape victims report the crime and file charges against their assailants (which I’d consider an excessive case of helping society at the expense of the individual), I think there’s more ground for encouraging it than there is for encouraging forgiveness.

She asked “do I forgive him?� at the end of the story and that shows she’s contemplating forgiveness.

As others have pointed out, the contrast between forgiveness and leaving him to his guilt suggests that she was considering whether to communicate forgiveness to him. Now I can’t prove that this was the right interpretation of the letter, but it flows more logically from context. That was the kind of forgiveness that everyone is so down on, the kind that lets him off the hook. Had most of us thought the question was whether she should ever forgive him in her own mind, we would have answered differently.

That happens so often. People wonder why women don’t leave abusive men; well, sometimes even the woman’s own family advises her that she’s misinterpreting his actions, or that he’s sorry (which, apparently, they feel makes it all better), or that he has the right to violate her as he chooses (which is what I think all of the above attitudes boil down to).

That’s another reason I was wondering before what the rapists imagined he was doing while he raped this woman. Apparently, his family bought into his take on it - whatever that was - and I’d like to know what version of a rape scenario people are still finding acceptable in this day and age… so I can better rebutt them when I run into them.