by Olivia Ramsey

Created on: March 01, 2007   Last Updated: May 15, 2008

The world seems to believe that rape is all about a sexual violation of another person. I suppose that I used to believe that as well. One day in April of 1982, my perspective got skewed for me. It was on that day that I became the victim of a gang rape. The interesting thing about it is that I had been molested twice as a child, but never understood what had happened to me until I was raped.

The last twenty-five years of my life have been a recovery period. Last year, something that I never expected to happen did. I got up one morning and read in the local news that my rapist's son, living a good hour from where I live, had been shot at a party and was clinging to life in a local hospital. That was a very devastating event for me. I had prayed that my attackers would suffer merciless tragedy for more than twenty years, but when it happened in the form of watching their child dying I could only see my own children. I felt like I was the monster, more than them. It is a very strange feeling to realize that you do not want revenge anymore, with the cost so high. It was then that I could forgive them. I prayed for the boy, and he eventually was stabile enough to begin recovering from his injuries. They believe that he will walk again. I went to the hospital and sat quietly in a chair watching the boy's mother, step-father and other family and friends grieving and praying, and consoling each other.

I look back now and realize that society allows rape to take too much from us. We give it the power to change our lives in more ways than it should. When we do that, we give power to the rapist. What is the solution to that dilemma? We do many things now that help to empower the victims of violent crime. The most important is to talk about the subject openly. This gives all victims a language from which to speak. I remember a time when I didn't even know a word to describe having been molested. But when I went through therapy decades afterward, my sister said that I tried to tell her something about it when we were little. She didn't understand at the time, being a year younger than I. Removing these sorts of barriers is the single most important weapon that we have against victimization.

Another important tool is finding a way to remove misunderstandings about guilt and blame. First of all, if you recover from the incident you can become a stronger person. Not because of what they did to you, but what you do with it. If you become pregnant, there is an added burden and

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