"It began as I finished Nobody's Girl, the torturous and devastating account of Virginia Giuffre's life. It was what I can only describe as a kind of corporeal attack, an existential clutch followed by days of such powerful anxiety my body was taken in bouts of uncontrollable shaking. A sense of not mattering, a virulent dread and dissolving into an all-encompassing nothingness impossible to shake."
"That once you are raped, once your body is taken against your will, once you are invaded and dominated your body ceases to be your own. You become a thing, what Virginia called a toy, to be used and abused and tossed and discarded. Then the press, repeating infuriating, ignorant questions and notions: Why didn't she leave? No one was forcing her to stay. She could have walked away at any time. She was 16. She wasn't eight. She clearly stayed for the money."
A person experienced a sudden corporeal attack and days of uncontrollable shaking, accompanied by existential dread and a sense of erasure. The account parallels repeated childhood sexual abuse, trafficking and repeated rape, describing how invasion destroys bodily ownership, self-love, and agency. The trauma produces enduring feelings of dehumanization, worthlessness, and being discarded. Public skepticism and victim-blaming — questions about why a victim did not leave or stayed for money — ignore trauma's effects and perpetuate misunderstanding of survivors' capacity to act. Survivors' separation from their bodies at the moment of invasion leads to long-term decimation of self-agency and belief in being worth saving.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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