RAPE

A Survivor’s Story


IT’S every woman’s worst nightmare. Yet rape is an all too familiar occurrence, affecting females of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds across the world.

Last year saw a startling 54 sexual offenses reported in Douala. But a culture of silence on this most taboo topic means the real figure is likely to be far higher.

For those lucky enough to escape without a communicated disease, unwanted pregnancy or long-term physical injury, there is little chance of escaping the emotional trauma.

That can include panic attacks, post-traumatic stress, anger, shame, loss of trust and depression, to name a few.

Here, one survivor bravely speaks out about one fateful night that was to end in violation, humiliation and terror – and change her life forever.

Cynthia`s Story……

Cynthia was just 19 when she was attacked by a stranger after accepting a ride home from work one night, dragged into bushes and brutally raped.

And if she thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, her ordeal was compounded by a dire lack of resources, sympathy and, ultimately, justice.“Rape is something no one ever talks about. It’s the biggest secret – but it’s something that happens alot.

“Since it happened to me, I have heard of many cases of women from all backgrounds, ages and race being raped, and young girls even becoming pregnant as a result.

“No matter how horrible my experience was, I feel that speaking out is more positive than all the women who stay home and never tell anyone they were attacked.”

For Cynthia, the lack of sympathy shown by the nurses supposed to care for her, the humiliating trial and the shocking not-guilty verdict – despite a wealth of forensic evidence – was even worse than the attack itself.

“I just hope that telling my story helps, in some way, to change things for the better.”

That story began in the early hours of June 18 2011.


Cynthia’s attacker led her to believe that a mutual friend had sent him to pick her up after work.

When he suddenly pulled up the car in a desolate area near a beach, at first she was not perturbed.

Innocently believing his claims that he wanted to show her something was a pitiful attempt at a chat-up line, she initially pitied him.

It wasn’t until he roughly dragged her out by the arm that she realized his intentions were far more sinister.

Cynthia's attempts to cajole him into believing she would return with him at a later date to view the beauty spot failed too.

“I was scared and angry but could still hold my composure. I didn’t want to aggravate him. I didn’t know what he was capable of. I knew I was stuck in a delicate situation.”

The beast then pushed her onto the ground, pinning her down as she desperately tried to escape.

“At that moment I was on my stomach. I was crying and had dirt and sand in my mouth.

“I remember thinking, acting scared, screaming and trying to run away is doing nothing but encouraging him to continue, so I acted calm and tried one last time to convince him not to go any further.

“I told him, ‘you don’t have to do this, you seem like a nice guy, maybe we can go out sometime’, thinking he would stop trying to force himself on me.

“He replied, ‘girls like you don’t go out with guys like me’.”

Cynthia realized she had no choice but to fight. As she punched, slapped and kicked at him, he bit her repeatedly – but didn’t budge an inch.

In fact her efforts appeared to amuse him. Chillingly, he told her, ‘you can scream as loud as you can, no one will hear you’.

The monster soon managed to tear off her underwear and rape her. As Cynthia continued to struggle, he became very aggressive and, for the first time, she was scared for her life.

“He shouted very loud, bashed my head against the ground with his hands around my neck and applied a lot of pressure while strangling me.

“He shook me and said ‘if you don’t stop moving I’ll kill you and no one will ever find you’.

“My biggest fear was no longer of being raped but of being killed.

“At that moment I lost all hope of living beyond that moment. His hands remained around my neck the whole time he was raping me, making it impossible for me to see anything but the sky. I could barely breathe.

“I remember thinking, ‘I’m dying; this is how my life ends’. Nineteen, raped and killed.”

Numb by now to the physical pain, Cynthia felt like she was floating above the scene, seconds away from her life being ended.

“I truly believed his next step would be to murder me and dispose of my body.”

Eventually he stopped and, bizarrely, offered to drive her home. Cynthia knew better than to anger him by refusing.

“I wanted to scream, run, beat him, but all my previous attempts had almost led me to death so I felt like I would be safe if I could hold it together just a few more minutes.

“He was very agitated, perhaps overpowering me had given him a boost of energy.

“He talked the whole way home. He said, ‘I didn’t mean for things to turn out this way, I’m sorry, maybe I can give you a ride to work tomorrow, you’re right we should hang out some time’.

Frozen and traumatized, Cynthia stared ahead at the car windshield.

“I was getting closer to my safe point, it was only a matter of seconds now. I had to hold it together and I would be free to go on with my life. After what seemed like an eternity, I reached home.”

But, as Cynthia was later to realize, it was then that her journey really began.

Walking into the house she shared with a friend, covered in dirt, scratches and bite marks, and wearing no shoes, prompted screams from her room-mate who immediately called Cynthia’s mother and then took her to the police station to report the matter.

Cynthia was later taken to the General Hospital for treatment .shockingly, her bruised and battered appearance appeared to be a source of gossip among the nurses.

“They asked me if I had done something to make my boyfriend mad, they were kind of joking about it.”
Photos were taken of Cynthia’s abundant injuries; pictures which were to be later lost by the police – twice.

A blood test was taken along with swabs from her genitals, hair, mouth and fingernails.

“They took my clothes and put them in a brown paper bag. There were about 12 photos of my injuries – bites and scratches, mainly on my back and neck.”

The attacker was picked up that same night after Cynthia was able to give a description of him and his car.

They also asked her who might have seen her leave with him. Out of the handful of ‘friends’ who’d witnessed her climb into his car, just one was willing to testify.

She says incredulously: “He was at home, he’d gone back to bed with his seven-months pregnant girlfriend - wearing the same clothes he had raped me in.”

“When I went to the station next day for more questioning, when I got there, his pregnant girlfriend and sister were there too, bringing him food. They were so angry with me.”

Going through the horrific details of the event was a painstaking affair.

“The officer hand wrote everything, it took three and a half hours. It took so long that he went halfway through to get me some water to drink.”

Left alone in the questioning room, Cynthia was stunned to realize the officer had thoughtlessly left her attacker’s statement on the desk, along with the bag of her clothes.

“I could have tampered with the evidence for all they knew. If it was the other way round and he’d been left with my statement, he could have got my phone number,” she says.

The next day, an identity parade was held. But again, it was a far cry from the professional set-up one would expect in most modern civilizations.

“I’d told the police I would remember the attacker’s voice. But all the people they had taking part were Haitian and didn’t speak English.”

Cynthia had assumed the parade would be conducted behind glass to save her the trauma of coming face to face with her attacker again. She was wrong.

“I was put in the same room as six to eight guys all standing around, one was even drinking a cold Castle Beer.”

Her rapist was standing immediately to her right in the tiny, cramped room.

“I had been told to point to the man who raped me. But he was so close to me I couldn’t –I would have touched him.”

Instead, she walked back out, closed the door and told the officer the attacker was the first man on the right.

“I was told I had failed to identify him because I hadn’t pointed. I was really freaked out, my first instinct was to run out.

“He had been standing, staring at me, the whole experience was so intimidating.”

Because Cynthia’s attacker refused to allow investigators to test him for HIV, she was forced to wait six long months to see if she had contracted the killer virus. Thankfully, the result was negative.

The court’s decision not to grant the monster bail pending trial meant Cythia was at least saved the next seven months terrified she would bump into him.

She remembers an ensuing whirl of emotions as the year pressed on.

Her initial numbness had been replaced by anger.

“During the attack I believed I was going to die so, initially, I was just glad to be alive.

“What had happened began to sink in, I became angry.

“There were no support groups I could go to, the General hospital did not even have a psychologist at the time.”

Acting on “survival mode”, Cynthia even went back to work a few days after the attack. But it soon became evident she was struggling to cope.

The rapist was originally charged with attempted murder, rape and buggery. The attempted murder charge was later dropped.

The four-day trial began in November and Cynthia attended every day.

Unfortunately, the doctor who had examined her in June had left the Islands by then. He would otherwise have been a witness.

Nevertheless, Cynthia arrived at court confident the listening jurors could not possibly fail to believe her, in light of the evidence due to be presented.

She was in for another terrible shock.
A tactic used by the defense lawyer was to imitate Cynthia’s Anglophone accent and to tell the jury how Anglophone people were very “passionate”, implying Grace was somehow to blame for leading her attacker on.

“The trial was even worse than the attack,” she remembers.

“One juror kept looking at her watch when I was giving my statement. Because of the way the court was positioned, I had to face them directly.

“I hate that lawyer even more than I hate the rapist. He kept imitating my accent, ending every sentence with the word ‘you know’.

The defendant’s attempts to portray himself as a church going family man were swallowed whole by the jury.

“He kept referring to his mother, who was loved by the community, throwing in names of people they knew, and talking about how his mom was the reason he went to church every day.

“They seemed to sympathize with him, especially when he said he wanted to get out of prison to provide for his new born baby and girlfriend, things they could relate to. He kept saying he was framed.”

Cynthia watched speechless as the jurors nodded sympathetically as the defendant was cross-questioned. One night during the trial she even witnessed one of the jurors drinking with the defence lawyer, something strictly banned by law.

In the attacker’s first statement to police in June, he had denied any sexual interaction with Cynthia at all, claiming to have dropped her off at a roundabout.

It was only when the DNA results came back that he admitted having sex with her, but insisted it was consensual.

In court, he proceeded to tell the jury a pack of lies about how he and Cynthia had been dating. Chillingly, he appeared to have been watching her for months, like a predator stalking its prey, able to give details of where she’d been, who she was with, even what she was wearing.

As far as Cynthia was concerned, the night of the attack was their first encounter.

Hearing the head juror deliver the ‘not guilty’ verdict was enough to make Cynthia black out.

“I felt like I had offered them a rapist on a silver platter with all the evidence they could possibly need to put him away and prevent him hurting anyone else.

“All they had to do was find him guilty. But it didn’t happen that way.”

It was three and a half years before Cynthia felt able to seek professional help for the nightmarish flashbacks and panic attacks she suffered as a result of the attack.

“I had post-traumatic stress disorder, I would get really anxious and then get flashbacks which apparently is common for rape victims. And it makes it impossible to maintain any kind of healthy relationship.”

Triggers such as someone wearing a medallion, just as her attacker did, or a crack in a windshield, similar to the one in his car that night, would be enough to set off extreme anxiety. It took years before she could even look at the night sky again.

“At first I did not want this thing to be bigger than me, I didn’t want it to define my life. I felt like I could control it myself, this guy was nothing to me, why give him so much importance?

“But the reality is, until you accept it happened, nothing really changes.”

Through private therapy, Cynthia learned she had to forgive to move on.

“The one thing I have learned is that you have to forgive yourself, you have to forgive the person who hurt you, and you have to forgive life.

“It’s almost easiest to forgive him because he’s nothing to me, I don’t know him.

“And I can forgive myself for not seeing a window, an opportunity, to escape the situation.

“But the hardest part is to forgive life. I always feel, what did I do to make God put that across my path?

“But I have to accept it happened, it’s over and that’s how you move on.”

In such a tiny community, one of the worst things for Grace is occasionally seeing her attacker out.

But the most frustrating part of all, she says, is that she knows he has attacked others too yet is still free to walk the streets.

“I believe rape is a mental dysfunction.

“Rapists can’t stop; they rape again and again and again.

“Most rapists are repeated offenders. These criminals must be denounced so that our environment can be a safer place.”

Anonymous Contributor/Stephy

Thanks for reading and have a nice day. xoxo