Sonja: “I’m okay with him.”

Sonja got in contact with the man who raped her almost 20 years ago. “I feel more calm,” she says. “I can run into him in the street now.”

Last year, Sonja met with the man who raped her 20 years ago when she was on her way home. “He suddenly jumped in front of my bike,” she recounts. He asked for the time. “I took my phone from my inside pocket, and when I looked up I saw he had a knife in his hands.”

Fear of death

“I realized very quickly: this is not a joke,” she says. “I had to walk with him, further away from the road. There was a container, and he made me put down my bike. And there he raped me.” Sonja suffered a moment of sheer terror and fear of death. “The biggest loss suffered there, is that you can’t know what someone is going to do. I was afraid I would not survive.”

“In my mind I said goodbye to my family, my boyfriend and my friends. I thought they would end up finding me. I tried very hard to talk to him, to change his mind.” When the man was done, he returned Sonja’s clothing to her. “He asked me if I was okay, and then he walked away.”

In shock, she gathered her things. At home, the emotions overcame her. “I started yelling and screaming.” Her mom already heard her coming from far away. She immediately knew what was going on. “I was also very afraid, when I was on my bike, that he would still come after me.”

The police came and searched the area meticulously, but they didn’t immediately find the rapist. The man was caught after he made another victim. “He had taken her phone and made some calls with it.” Eventually, he was convicted to 30 months in prison and to a forensic psychiatric unit. It turned out to be a man with a family. “Some of his colleagues were present at the court hearing, they hadn’t seen it coming either,” Sonja explains. 

Nightmares

What happened had a big effect on Sonja. She started having nightmares. “I was really ashamed about what happened. I lived in a small village, everybody knew what had happened. Sometimes people would come up to me and mention it.” At night, she was scared to go to the bathroom. She was afraid he would be standing in her room when she would come back. 

“For a long time, I felt too unsafe to wear my hair down,” she says. The man who raped her thought her hair looked prettier when it was down. He cut the hair tie with a knife. “I also didn’t wear any light clothing for a long time, so I wouldn’t stand out.” Sonja remains very alert after all those years. “If I go for a run in the evening, I take the main road. I always have my phone with me.”

“See him as human”

During her studies, Sonja starts to think about why people do bad things. After all those years, she wants to see him as human. “For a long time he was a monster in my nightmares. I was afraid to run into him again. I was afraid he would make new victims.”

She wanted to take the ‘emotional load’ off of him. “I have written and spoken a lot about him, but never with him.” She was also curious about how he had been. “And I wanted to tell him how I had been, but also that it was okay for me now. And that if I were to encounter him in the streets, I would be alright with him. That I could say hi to him. That I see him as human.”

“I was in control”

“It was very scary,” Sonja recounts about the meeting. “But it was very well-prepared by the mediator, she was very meticulous,” she says. She went into it with full trust. “The 20-year-old Sonja reacted. You’re going to see someone who has done so much damage, caused to much pain. Not only in my life, but also to the people around me.”

She decided by herself at what moment she would walk in, and decided what the room should look like. She asked for a lot of light. “I was in control. He barged into my life with a knife, now I was in control on how I would enter the room. I really liked that.” Her brother came with her, and stayed close the whole time. She wore her hair down. 

Her rapist was very nervous. “I shook his hand. He was very open, he was really there for me,” she recounts. “He was there on a voluntary basis, that meant a lot to me. He took the responsibility to answer questions.” They talked for 2,5 hours. “He was really sorry.”

“I wanted to have a conversation, human to human,” Sonja reflects. “The first years, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I was angry and I wanted to hurt him. I wouldn’t have been able to do it this way, back then.” For a long time, she saw him as a monster, and his sentence could never be severe enough for her. “But at some point, I started looking at it in a different way.”

Heart to heart

Eventually, she says she would like to give him a hug. “Because it was such a pure conversation. Because of what he gave me in that conversation, because he was so open,” she explains. “With a hug, the hearts are close together. For me it felt right to do it this way.” She can imagine not everybody feels this way. “I grew into it.”

Some of the people around her didn’t understand why she talked to him, they were judgmental. “Because of that, I started doubting it too, is it weird that I want this? Should I do it?” They were afraid it wouldn’t go well. “They didn’t understand at all, but I wanted to find a different way to look at him, so that I could continue my life with a different outlook.” Now that they can see what it has given Sonja, they are happy she did it. 

Full circle

“The first few years I was full of anger and fear, hurt and rage. That kind of energy is low and doesn’t give me anything, no matter how understandable it is. But in the long run, I think that the energy of love and looking at people in a different light gives me more, it gives me peace.” She always wondered if he would be angry or would show up in front of her door. After the meeting, that fear was gone, and she felt peace. “I noticed it had all come full circle, and that it was all okay for me.”