Fugitivus Discussion Forum

My friend was recently a victim of rape by deception. The perpetrator is a mutual colleague. He (the perpetrator) and she (my friend) are in a different city from me. He is going overseas next month for a new job.

The story: He kissed my friend at a work retreat, and she was happy and excited. Then she started hearing rumours saying that he was a serial manipulator who hit on all his female colleagues, and wrote to me to ask me what to do. I said that she shouldn't feel guilty about already having kissed him, because kissing is inherently pleasant, but that she probably should exercise skepticism about anything he told her, and not take things further sexually until she had enough information to judge whether the rumours were true. She talked to him explicitly about how she wasn't against casual sex, but needed him to be honest with her. He said he wasn't interested in a serious relationship, and also told her that the person she'd heard the rumour from (another colleague he'd had a relationship with) was just angry because he'd broken up with the ex sooner than she wanted.



The next day, shortly before I had to leave to catch my flight home, he told her that he wasn't really interested in a serious relationship and they should start seeing other people. She felt violated, and has been depressed ever since. She told several of her colleagues in her city, and they acknowledged that she was in pain, but none of them were willing to treat the guy like he'd done anything wrong. This made her feel like the people she thought were her friends, weren't really. I asked her if it would help for me write the guy an email telling him that I thought what he had done was wrong, and that because of it, I wasn't going to socialise with him. She said that she appreciated my willingness to stand up for her, but that I should not start a conversation with him because she was afraid he wouldn't leave me alone if I did. So I have not written to him.

This is my plan at the moment: I am not going to seek him out, but if I ever end up in a position where I am expected to socialise with him beyond a bare professional level, I will excuse myself. If possible, I will draw him aside to explain why I am excusing myself: he lied to my friend, that was a predatory and exploitative way to act, and because of that unacceptable behaviour, I cannot be friends with him. I will continue to listen to my friend and ask her what she needs from me.

I want a bunch of things, and I am not sure that I can have them all. Most importantly, I want to help my friend get through this, and show her that I believe her and care about her. I also want to prevent this guy from hurting other people. I'm not sure I can do that, because he's going to completely different city, and nobody there will know him, or me. I also want this guy to know that what he has done is wrong. I also want to change myself and my group of friends so that we are better able to ward off predators in the future. If somebody had been there to say "don't go home with him; you're drunk and this is way too hasty", we could have saved my one friend a huge amount of pain. I also want to stay safe, professionally and personally. I love my job and want the people I work with not to be angry at me. To some degree, I probably need to compromise this: if standing up for somebody vulnerable means I'll be unpopular, I'd damn well better be unpopular and learn to accept it.

I'd welcome any stories or advice anyone's got.

It makes me so angry that her "friends" both pushed her into this, and were unwilling to think badly of him for hurting her, which was inevitable. They seem to be willing to be completely oblivious to the fact that this person is behaving in abusive ways toward women.

This is by far not the best advice, or even advice at all, it's just what I would do: I would call out the guy, and the ENTIRE group of friends for being complicit in this, and then dump them all. I realize that's not the best course of action for you, especially because it sounds like you have to work with some of these people and it might endanger your job. But I would not be able to stomach "friends" who let other people hurt their friends and kind of shrug and shuffle their feet about it. That is not acceptable to me.

Edit: I realize I'm kind of focusing on the friends more than the guy who actually did the bad thing here. Ultimately he's the person most responsible for his own behavior, but I guess I feel he wouldn't be able to do it as freely if he didn't have people around who gave it a free pass.

I think most of what you do needs to be in solidarity with your friend, but at the same time you have the right to enforce your personal boundaries.

What I mean by this is, you should not do things on behalf of your friend without consulting her first. You should be listening to what she says she needs and what makes her comfortable. If she would like to confront the rapist, or would like you to confront the rapist, or would like you to leave well enough alone, then you should support her in that. If she wants to talk or doesn't want to talk then you should support her in that.

However, you are also allowed to decide certain things for yourself. If you don't feel like you can hang out with a known rapist outside of work, then you can refuse to hang out with him even if your friend decides she is willing to hang out with him. Same goes for the bystanders.

That's all just my perspective though.

Thanks, Eirwyn and Quixotess, for your replies. Eirwyn, I don't think I am able to dramatically dump everybody. You have made me think harder about the possibility of confronting the bystanders, though. I think that once the holidays are over, I would like to talk to some of them individually, tell them that I'm angry about what they did. I think this is more likely to get through if I get each of them alone rather than talking to the whole group, and if I keep the focus on what they did rather than on who they are. I am seeing my friend again on Tuesday. She seems to want to talk about the rape, so I can find a natural time to ask her whether it's OK with her if I confront the bystanders this way.

Quixotess, thank you for reminding me that I have the right to enforce my personal boundaries. Don't worry; I didn't miss the really important thing about solidarity with my friend, but my solidarity is more use when I remain in control of myself. The focus needs to be on what she's going through, not on whatever psychological issues I'm having.

My friend posted something on Facebook about how tricking someone into having sex with you by lying is rape. A lot of people responded by getting really legalistic, but a couple of people (including me) said "you're right". One person said "I know who this is about, and I think what he did is wrong, so I am de-friending him on Facebook"; I was very happy to see that.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Featherless. I was just reacting spontaneously based on my anger, I wasn't really thinking about how your friend would feel if you did what I would do. I'm certainly glad you're going to be talking to them, though.

And I'm glad that what she posted caused someone to de-friend that asshole.

I talked to my friend. She would prefer that I not confront the bystanders, but doesn't mind if I just plain avoid them. Avoiding them, and continuing to be there for her, looks like the best compromise at this point.

In good news, she is around for the holidays for a while, and I just discovered where to get Ben and Jerry's. She loves Ben and Jerry's.