SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH HER RAPIST

HAD TO BRING THIS BACK FROM 2016.

  Chioma (not real name) is one of the toughest people I know. She’s successful, principled, opinionated and from a happy home. Sometimes when I visit their family home when she’s there, I marvel at the closeness and love between her parents. She’s in her early thirties now and I want to be her when I grow up or so I thought. There’s this dude, Nonso (not real name)

I’ve met a couple of times at her place. They look good together. He’s successful too. He’s in the papers every now and then, won a bunch of awards and loved by everyone that comes across him, he’s a natural charmer. Nope, he didn’t charm me.

   I met chioma two years ago when she was 30 and a virgin. Anyways, one day a couple of months after our initial meeting, I was in her area and I decided to pay her a surprise visit. (I never arrive unannounced at people’s places. I knew she was home.) I arrive at her place and it takes her a while to open the door. She had a huge shiner on her face. She dragged me in and locked the door fast behind me, she was scared. I asked her what was going on and that’s when she opened up.

  She met Nonso a year before me via a mutual friend and they got on like a house on fire. It was easy to talk to him. He was such a gentleman. They even had same interests in art and other things. It felt great to finally meet a guy that understood her and she could be herself with. She told him she was a virgin and he applauded her resolve to wait. She thought the universe had finally sent her a good man. She trusted him. Well, she’d been to his place a couple of times and they’d made out sans clothing.

  One night, they got down to heavy foreplay. Before the foreplay they’d had a discussion where she’d asked what they were doing and Nonso had said He wasn’t prepared for a relationship and begged if they could please take things slow. She said when they started kissing, she wasn’t worried because she felt safe with him, and he was like her best-friend. Fast-forward minutes later, she’s on her belly and he’s behind her, next, he’s on top of her, flat. He said he just wanted to lie on top of her, that he wasn’t going to go in. She said, she tried to move and realised she couldn’t move, his body held her in place and she tells him, ‘Nonso, hope you’re not going in? Don’t make any mistake and enter o.’ and he says again, ‘No, I’m not going in.’ Two seconds didn’t pass and she felt him sliding home. She said she pushed him off her body with all the strength in her being. She was shocked and angry, she’d raised her voice and he’d begged her that it was a mistake. That he’d felt her no was a yes. That he didn’t believe she was a virgin. She cried through the night and he’d held her as she cried still apologizing.

  Anyways years later, they were still where they were though amidst silence and periods of her keeping away from him. She told me she was in love with him and he’d said he loved her too but they weren’t in a relationship. They’ve still not had sex. She tries to go, he draws her back. Well, he insults her sometimes, calls her a whore, tells her she begs for sex everyday and that he has text messages where she begged for it and pictures of her, Sometimes, he’d hit her but still no sex but he did with other girls.

  I sat there and took a good look at this beautiful strong woman. Next time I saw him I felt like breaking a bottle over his head. Well, since that day till last year I kept trying to make her see that he’d planned to rape her. Yes, you’d say he lost control but why put her in a position where she couldn’t move at all? Why go in less than two seconds after he’d assured her he’d not? What if she hadn’t been able to push him from her belly on the bed position? She still couldn’t leave a man that wasn’t offering her anything.

  Well, the Sugabelly story broke out and I sent her Lotanna’s blog link and she read and told me it felt like she was reading her own story.

  There’s this other girl I met during my University days, Ralia (not real name). Her’s was different. One night, she’d left her room door open and slept off. (She always yabbed me for always locking my door like a bank vault.) She woke and felt this dude on top her. Her room door was locked; he had his hand clamped over a mouth. He raped her. She wasn’t a virgin. Anyways, dude goes, ‘I’m really sorry. I don’t know what came over me. You’re really beautiful and I have strong feelings for you.’ something along those lines if I remember correctly. Well, that very night, immediately after his profession of love, cultists stormed the hostel and this dude (I think he’s one of them o), protected her.  That’s how she wouldn’t leave this guy alone. I tried talking sense but she stayed with him until recently. The way she defends this dude ehn, she for slap me one day. If you know how many years ago I left Uni, your eyes will pop at how long she’s been with him.

  These two stories sound too weird to be real. WHO STAYS FRIENDS WITH OR LOVES THEIR RAPIST OR SOMEONE WHO’S HURT THEM?

 The human mind is bigger, stronger and easily worked on than most people can comprehend. Even the strongest of persons fall prey to their own minds in situations they would never have let themselves stay in; they even advise others against it. The situation can be physical and other forms.

  Something similar had happened in both stories. The human mind has its own coping and survival mechanism. These two ladies were not visibly vulnerable nor were they mentally disturbed or weak characters. Their minds had found a way to cope with an event that had jarred it.

  In Chioma’s case, the jarring event was his betrayal of trust and pushing himself in. Let me try and explain. She’d been groomed by him without even knowing it. He’d planted himself in a certain way in her mind; dependable, trustworthy, best friend etc. And then he decided to break her hence the rape that didn’t proceed as it should then he restores himself in her mind by holding her close through the night as she cried. Her mind stayed stuck in the Nonso of before that night and she refused to see the truth that she was a victim of rape. Her psychology of being a strong woman and waiting years for the right guy couldn’t let her see herself as a victim or weak, which was why she could stay in contact with him, even think herself in love with him, kiss him and take all the shit he gave her.  Her mind kept trying to reboot to find the Nonso she knew and kept seeing that and glimpses of him. Kept obeying him to get back to where they were before the event. Have I lost you? He groomed her and after the event, she developed a Stockholm syndrome for and towards her captor if I could use that. It’s all a mind game.

  In Ralia’s case. The event had come first, her mind’s equilibrium was broken and he mended it by an act of mercy after breaking her. He’d protected her. He’d even gone on that night as the cultists ransacked the hostel to tell her about his life. He’d added a feeling of familiarity, bonding to his act of mercy. So her mind went with ‘He’s not a monster. He’s really great.’

  They both couldn’t move until they went back to that event and reset their minds. Staying in touch with their captors was to keep telling themselves that ‘See, he’s a friend. He likes me. He’s a good person. Nothing went wrong. I’m not a victim etc.’

  Yep, everything is and can be controlled through the human mind. That’s how the media and the government control the people.

  Before you give the masochistic excuse of they are women and their minds are weak, ever wondered how military persons get captured by an enemy and they turn on their home country and support the cause of the enemy? Please, did you watch the series’ HOMELAND’? The season one to be precise, a military man who’d been captured returns to the US a hero and we get to see as the series progressed that he now saw the US, his own country as the enemy. He believed and fought for the cause of those who’d captured and tortured him, even made him kill a fellow military man. You could say he was brainwashed, yep, a Stockholm was done on him. You can tell yourself, ‘It’s just a series.’ Where do you think the idea came from? It’s happened in real life. Not once, not twice over the course of history. Now you know why people that stay in abusive relationships, stay and even defend their partners.

The dudes in my two stories, have you wondered why they stayed in touch with the ladies?

  It’s all a power game to them. The attention they’re getting, to have someone whose mind they’ve turned and placed at their feet, someone who thinks they’re great and needs them no matter what they do and say to them, to make sure the ladies stay in line. It’s a rush and there’s nothing like it so they never let them leave.  To keep the ladies in check, they never give the ladies much in order to keep them wanting. To work on them some more so they can never tell anyone. They break their victims down not only by physical events but sometimes with emotional and verbal events eat away at the self esteem or the put up principles or beliefs of their victims. If you sit down and begin to analyze people and their actions and why they do things, you’ll marvel. The dominators aren’t just men o and the victims aren’t just women. Both sexes apply. The dominators never leave proof behind, they cover their tracks and the victims in their moments of loving their captors never keep any proof. In the end when the victim realizes what had happened to them, there’s no proof, they sound stupid.

   There are sick, twisted, psychotic, psychopaths and sociopaths today. They look normal to the world ; successful, well groomed, charming, likeable etc but when they let their guard down and you really see them in an intimate , no walls up way ,you’ll run for cover.(that’s why I don’t buy or fawn over popular people and what people of our appearance generation show. Topic for another day). The most dangerous of people look normal, not just normal but they look perfect.

  

  I watched the whole Sugabelly saga proceed. Some people insulted her mom, some called Sugabelly names, some said it happened because she was seventeen and she wasn’t fully developed, others said she wanted it, a political bulldog. Some have even wondered why she kept going back to him, doing the things she did for him. Some have said it can’t be true that it must be a lie and she’s a schizophrenic or crazy girl that made it all up. Well, hope this helps you understand a little that her story is a possibility. The events she narrated could happen. It has nothing to do with age, family background, religion, gender, strength, vulnerability or naivety it’s your mind. Sometimes, in harsh situations that jar your psyche, your mind finds a way to cope with it. E.g., Nigerians and their attitude when they hear money has been looted by government officials or Government takes a decision that isn’t favourable. The minds of most Nigerians are in a Stockholm syndrome place. Other countries look at us and wonder ‘Why do they keep letting the same thing happen to them over and over and over? They’re like a horse tied to a chair.’

  Control or bend a person’s mind and you can do anything and make them do anything without them even knowing it. To people looking on from the outside, we can’t comprehend it and you have to be responsible for your actions even if you were the supposed victim but it’s a tiny event. I could go on and on, I’ll stop here.

Falling in love with your rapist has been proven to happen in some cases.

Thanks for reading my thoughts, what are yours?