I read somewhere that you should try and be the person that you needed when you were younger.And back when I was a teenager, I would have needed to know that the shame wasn't mine,that there's hope after rape, that you can even find happiness, like I share with my husband today.Which is why I started writing feverishly upon my return from Cape Town, resulting in a book co-authored by Tom,that we hope can be of use to people from both ends of the perpetrator-survivor scale.If nothing else, it's a story that we would've needed to hear when we were younger.Given the nature of our story, I know the words that inevitably accompany it -- victim, rapistand labels are a way to organize concepts, but they can also be dehumanizing in their connotations.Once someone's been deemed a victim, it's that much easier to file them away as someone damaged, dishonored, less than.And likewise, once someone has been branded a rapist, it's that much easier to call him a monster -- inhuman.But how will we understand what it is in human societies that produces violence if we refuse to recognize the humanity of those who commit it?And how -- And how can we empower survivors if we're making them feel less than?
