A British woman has written a heart-wrenching letter to a man who attempted to rape her in Paris last year.
Sara Roebuck had not long moved to France for an internship, when she was horrifically attacked inside a nightclub- a location where she wasn’t alone and you would assume she would be relatively safe.
A year later after that terrible night, Sara penned a letter to help her come to terms with the horror she endured, as well as to help herself and others trying to cope with ‘the poisonous and violent reality of rape.’
In her letter, she described the huge emotional turmoil that she’d been through since the attack and the overwhelming emotions she felt as she faced the man in court, the Daily Mail reports.
She wrote:
Dear individual. I write to you on this cold December evening, almost one year after you tried to rape me, because it’s the first time that I’ve felt strong enough to put pen to paper
I write to you because this afternoon we met again, only the surroundings were not quite the same.
Your hands were cuffed behind your back, not sweatily gripped around my body.
Not because, after I managed to push you out from in between my legs, you twisted my body and pushed me onto the floor, pinning me and holding me down with the weight of yours.
Because it was not you that decided to stop. It was me who fought back. Your eyes were black and you looked straight into my soul and told me you didn’t give a f*** that I said no, that I had a tampon.
Whilst I kicked and screamed and cried, you grabbed and constrained and yanked and hurt every part of me that in no given universe would I have consented you to touch.
Brave Sara went onto describe how she wanted to address her attacker in the court room and stand up for every woman who has suffered from sexual attacks in the world no matter how tough it would be.
At that moment, I stood and spoke for every woman in the world who has suffered at the hands of men like you. I stood for every woman walks home with her keys clasped between her fingers.
I stood for every woman who has switched train carriages because of that one man who isn’t breaking eye contact.
I stood for every woman who has been groped, harassed, attacked, raped, filmed, photographed, followed, touched against her consent, suffered verbal vulgarities, obscene regards, disgusting gestures, and worse of all, within a society that allows it.
In some cases with other women who refuel the blame, and men around her who are supposed to be progressive and modern, but stay silent.
The young woman revealed why she wrote the powerful and emotional letter to the Daily Mail Australia, describing it as a way of unleashing the horrendous emotions, that she has had to carry around with her for a torturous year.
She explained:
After carrying the burden of the attack on my shoulders for almost a year, pushing it down, not thinking about it whatsoever and just getting on with my life, then I received the letter inviting me to attend the tribunal.
From this point on, all of my emotions and thoughts and ideas started to swirl around my head, which was fuelled by an entire year of avoiding the subject.
I thought that, if someone else reads this and feels just as empowered as I do right now, if it encourages someone to open up, to go through what’s happened to them, then I have a responsibility to those people, and I must publish it.
This is so awful, thoughts go out to her and anyone affected by sex attacks worldwide but well done to Sara for bravely speaking out about her terrible ordeal and sending out a powerful message.
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