To anyone reading, “destroyed permanently” refers to the murders and suicides, not the survivors. That is never the language we use for survivors, no matter how atrocious the particulars, because it reinforces the same purity culture that purveys (1) a great deal of the associated suffering, trauma, and stigma, and (2) the obsession with defilement that many rapists share.
To anyone reading, “destroyed permanently” refers to the murders and suicides, not the survivors. That is never the language we use for survivors, no matter how atrocious the particulars, because it reinforces the same purity culture that purveys (1) a great deal of the associated suffering, trauma, and stigma, and (2) the obsession with defilement that many rapists share.