“So the witnesses say they saw you thrusting inside a woman who was unconscious. And you say she gave consent” repeated Officer Jones in a flat voice.
The young man nodded.
“Anything else to add to your statement?”
“Not without an attorney present.”
“I see. Well, you’ve made your phone call, but since your
attorney didn’t pick up, I don’t expect to see him tonight, so I’m afraid
you’ll be staying with us. I’ll bring you to your cell now and introduce you to
your cellmates. They could teach you a few things about rape.”
For the first time, the young man’s confident façade
cracked, and he broke out into a cold sweat. “What? You can’t put me in a cell
with violent offenders! I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“You. Haven’t. Done. Anything. Wrong. She was unconscious. She
was disoriented when we did wake her up and ask her if she knew what had
happened. She was bleeding from places that shouldn’t be bleeding after
consensual sex. She was bruised in places no man should ever bruise a woman.
She was shocked to discover that her panties were missing. She began sobbing
uncontrollably once we finally could make her understand that witnesses found
her lying half naked with a man on top of her, thrusting inside her while she
was unconscious. And you haven’t done anything wrong. Tell your cellmates
that. They all tell me they haven’t done anything wrong either.”
“A friend of mine attends that school, you know. It could
have easily been her at that party tonight” added the officer, almost as an
aside.
Almost.
“Your cell is this way. You can walk on your own feet or you
can be... escorted there. Which do you prefer?”
The officer’s face, voice, and body language never changed,
perfectly level and calm throughout. But the base of the young man’s spine was ringing
frantic alarm bells, screaming that underneath that icy calm was a man who was
a breath away from committing a calm, passionless, and above all prolonged and
methodical murder.
“I’ll walk.”
“Good choice. First one you’ve made tonight, it would seem.”
As they walked down the corridor, the officer continued, in
the tone of someone discussing the weather or offering a neighbor advice on how
to grow roses, “I suggest you try not to upset Bubba. You’ll know which one he
is. Bubba tends to… stand out. It’s just that I have to process the paperwork
for your intake in my office, and I can’t hear anything that happens in your
cell on the other end of the hall. So try not to upset him, because it’ll be a
while before I get a chance to check on you.”
“No! You can’t put me in there. Put me in solitary! I wanna
go into solitary!” gasped the young man frantically.
“Oh, solitary is for people who are too dangerous to be in a
cell with other inmates. And you’re not a danger to anyone, right? You’ve done
nothing wrong, right? That’s what you said”, deadpanned Officer Jones as he
unlocked the cell door. Raising his voice, Officer Jones nodded at one of the
bigger men in the cell. “Hey, Bubba, this young man appears to be confused
about the difference between sex and rape. Perhaps you gentlemen could teach
him something about it while I’m gone.”
“Glad to, Officer Jones” leered the giant.
Officer Jones then locked the young man in the cell, turned
his back, and strode unhurriedly back down the long, long hallway.
Bubba was everything that fear, and rumor, and T.V., had led
the young man to expect in a prison cell. Easily 6 foot 6 and 300 pounds,
burly, hairy, sweaty, shaved head and giant arms covered in tattoos. There were
other, even bigger inmates in the cell; but even they were visibly giving Bubba
as much space as the cell allowed. Bubba turned upon the young man the
unblinking stare of a man who would kill, and kill, and kill again, and never stop
to think about the consequences.
“Boy”, drawled Bubba, “I’mma fuck you so far up your ass
you’re gon’ feel my dick in your mouth. An’ we’re all gon’ take turns,
ain’t we, boys? Fair’s fair, gotta share. Would you like that, boy?”
The boy was now pale, shaking, and could feel an unpleasant
trickle down his legs.
“I SAID, would you like that, boy?” Bubba’s voice sharpened
as he took a step closer.
Frozen with fear, the young man neither spoke nor moved as
Bubba took another step, and another.
“Ain’t you got nothin’ to say, boy? A smart college boy like
you?” growled Bubba, as he brought his face inches from the young man’s.
“Woo-ee, he’s a purty thing, ain’t he, Bubba? Looks to me
like someone who likes it rough!” catcalled one of the other inmates.
“What’sa matter, boy? Too drunk to say anythin’?” continued
Bubba. “Or maybe… (here the voice dropped to a whisper as Bubba grinned
unpleasantly) maybe too scared to say anythin’?”
Still no move, no sound, came from the young man who was
screaming inside.
“Well, then, I guess we’d better not do it. After all, we
don’t have your permission to touch you that way”, said Bubba in an entirely
different voice, with no menace in it. “If you haven’t explicitly said yes,
then the answer is no, and I have no right to put my hands – or indeed, any
other body part – on you. Ain’t that right, boys?” Bubba called to his
cellmates as he finally broke eye contact and took a step back.
“That’s right, Bubba” chorused the other inmates. “Just cuz
he didn’t say no, don’t mean it’s okay”, added one man with a flaming skull
tattooed on his face. “An’ just cuz we could force him or scare him into it,
that don’t make it right either”, chimed in another with biceps big enough to
have their own ZIP code. “And shit, if he’s still drunk, even if he DID say
yes, I wouldn’t consider that true consent, not till he’d sobered up enough to
make rational decisions”, continued a man with a beard big enough to hide a
colony of badgers. “Mind you, he’s a pretty little thing and I’d sure like to
ride him. But it ain’t right, not if he don’t say he wants it too”, intoned the
biggest man in the room.
Suddenly Bubba was an inch from the young man again.
“THAT’S the
difference, boy” hissed Bubba in the
boy’s ear, each word snapping like a whip lash. “THAT’S the difference between
sex and rape.”
Bubba then stepped back a few paces and sat on his bunk.
Gesturing toward another bunk, he quietly said “Sit down, son. There’s obviously
some things you need to learn, and you’re going to learn them now if it takes
all night” continued Bubba’s new voice - the tone of a teacher
patiently spelling out a basic concept to a pupil who should already have
understood by now.
“If she didn’t say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.
If she was too drunk to say no, that don’t mean the answer
is yes.
If she was too scared to say no, that don’t mean the answer
is yes.
If she was too young to say no, that don’t mean the answer
is yes.
If she said yes earlier then said she ain’t sure about it
now, that don’t mean the answer is yes.
If she’s got a physical or mental disability that makes her
unable to say no, that don’t mean the answer is yes.
If you pushed her into it, or tricked her into it, that
don’t mean the answer is yes.
If for any reason she can’t say no, that don’t mean the
answer is yes.
If she said yes last night, that don’t mean the answer is
yes tonight.
If you’re married to her, that don’t mean the answer is yes.
You know what means yes?
If she says yes.
Yes is yes. Anythin’ else is no.
And son, if you kept goin’ when there wasn’t a clear yes,
then the answer was no, and you committed rape.
And if you committed rape, son, then you forfeited your
humanity.
The moment you decided she wasn’t human like you, with
rights and needs like you, someone who deserves a choice just like you… the
moment you treated her like a thing to be used, and her body like something you could
take just because you wanted it, you denied her humanity. And by denyin’
someone else’s humanity, you forfeit your own.
Son, if she didn’t clearly say yes, then you lost your soul tonight.
I don’t care if you believe in a soul, or sin, or God, or
hell, or any of that… if you pushed your 'yes' on her and ignored her 'no', then
you lost the part of you that’s really you. And there’s only one way you can
get it back.
Confess your guilt. Don’t put the girl through hell tryin’
to prove beyond reasonable doubt to a bunch of strangers what you and she both
already know damn well is true. Admit what you did.
Admit that what you did wasn’t a mere mistake, and it wasn’t
something that can be blamed on alcohol, or the girl’s short skirt, or your bros
eggin’ you on, or anything or anyone but you. What you did was a crime, the one
unforgivable sin: treatin’ people like things. Worse in a way than murder -
though murder ain’t right either. But at least with murder, the victim’s
suffering ends when the crime does. With rape, THE VICTIM’S SUFFERING WILL
NEVER END. And you can’t never fix it. But you have a responsibility to do all
you can to make it as right as you can.
Beg her, NOT for forgiveness. You have no right to ask her
to give you anything, not after what you took from her. But beg her not to
allow your crime to define her. Beg her not to stop seeing herself as human
just because you failed to see her as human. Beg her never to forget that she
deserves to have her rights and boundaries respected. Beg her to get all the
help she can to heal from the trauma you inflicted on her. Ask her, if she will
accept it, to allow you to pay for any therapy she needs in order to feel some
peace an’ safety again. If she won’t accept it from you, then you must NOT push
her to take anything from you. Not again. Instead you must pay by donating to a
charity that helps women to recover from rape. And that still will not even the
score. Nothin’ ever will. But you will spend the rest of your life doing all you
can to make things as right as they can be made, because you owe her that.
You owe it to every other woman out there, and every other
man out there, to do all you can to teach young men not to do what you did
tonight.
Then, only then, will you be human again.
Only then will you have bought back your soul.”
There was silence for a full five minutes.
Then footsteps echoed down the hall, and Officer Jones
returned.
“Young man, it seems another cell just opened up without
anyone else in it. I’ll transfer you to that cell. Hope you boys had a nice
chat” he finished, with a nod to Bubba.
As they walked to the new cell, the young man finally found
his voice, and out of the many questions thronging his brain the topmost one
came out of his mouth. “Were all those guys in for rape?”
“Nope. Murder, every one of ‘em. Bubba killed three men with
his bare hands, all in the same night.
They’d raped his little girl, you see.
When he first came here, he swore he’d keep on killing every
rapist till the place was empty. But once he’d had some time to think, he
decided that killing wasn’t right either, and killing didn’t even the score. He
decided that just made the score ‘Inhumanity: 2; Humanity: Zero’. And he wanted
to make sure no one else went through what his little girl did. He decided
there was a better way to teach people not to commit rape.
Now I’ve brought you to this here cell because I can’t bring
a pen into the other cell, due to some things those men used to do with sharps
before they turned things around. And I thought you might want some time alone
to think, and maybe write some things down. No pressure, you don’t have to
write if you don’t want to, and you don’t have to go back to Bubba’s cell.
Though honest, you’d be as safe there as you will here alone. You’d be safer
there asleep in a bunk with Bubba in the next bunk, than most women are walking
down the street with their keys and pepper spray in their hands. You would have
been safe, even if I’d given Bubba the pen.
I’ve left you a clean pair of pants on the bunk, by the way.
People often need one, after meeting Bubba.”
As he was leaving, Officer Jones turned back to say,
“While you’re in here, I want you to consider one question:
Do you have anything you’d like to add to your original
statement?”
© John M. Munzer
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