Notre société sous-estime encore trop, je crois, les conséquences d’une agression sexuelle. J’entends autour de moi: «C’était il ya longtemps», «Il faut savoir passer à autre chose». C’était en effet il ya trente ans, Mais le traumatisme reste gravé dans mon esprit et dans ma chair, au coeur de ce qui fonde ma relation à l’autre et au monde.

This is Sarah Abitbol’s cry of pain, thirty years after she was raped. No, what has been done to her cannot be forgotten or forgiven. And, a few lines before, explaining why she decided to speak, even knowing that she would not have justice, Abitbol wrote that the one who raped her, her former coach, continued to train other girls.

Je repars chaque fois avec cette culpabilité dans le ventre, cette angoisse de savoir que, peut-être, vous avez les mêmes gestes avec elle set que, donc, mon silence me rend complice.

The victim who feels complicit because she was unable to stop the rapist. A few pages earlier Abitbol had written

«À quoi ça sert de parler du passé? Pense à l’avenir», me supplie Stéphane, mon ex-partenaire de glace et ex-compagnon. Mais comment porrai-je penser à l’avenir quand je sais que vous êtes resté pendant toutes ces années à la tête du club et de sa patinoire? Que vous été, que vous êtes potentiellement dangereux pour d’autres jeunes filles? Comment penser à l’avenir quand le passé me hante et que je n’arrive pas à vivre le présent?

For now I have only read about twenty pages, and they are painful pages. Not only is the victim’s life ruined, the victim feels coulpable for what happened, for what might happen. Years ago I read Lucky by Alice Sebold. Sebold was raped by a stranger, and the police told her that she was lucky because, not long ago, another girl had been raped in the same place and then killed. So is luck to survive? Sebold recognized the rapist, who habitually frequented that area, and managed to have him arrested and sentenced, but her life was equally marked by the episode.

For me there are no justifications not only for those who rape but also for those who try in some way to justify, belittle or cover up a rape, or who, being able to make different choices, associate themselves with a rapist.