Anatomy of a Rape Apology

After he raped me, R turned up outside my house night after night to insist I hear his apology. If I wasn't going to listen of my own volition, he'd just turn up the next day and wait. And wait. And wait because steamrolling over my consent was nothing like steamrolling over my consent by raping me. </sarcasm>

When he was at work, he called me instead. While I was struggling with deadlines under the trauma of sexual violence and doctors' visits, he was jamming up my phone. If I ever found a moment that was unspoiled by rape, he'd obliterate it.

In the end, it took a well-built man with a stack of rage to "convince" R to stop apologising. I still don't know what my friend said to him, but I'm pretty sure it didn't include, "please" and "I forgive you."

R's amends were much like any rapist's: 

They were a burden to the victim. 

They ignored consent. 

They offered no legitimate ways to lighten the survivor's post-rape burden. Quite the opposite. 

They were manipulative at best, self-serving at worst. 

He was outside my home to make himself feel better at my expense, despite my having told him his presence was a burden.

That burden was irrelevant to him because his apology was designed to assuage his own guilt. He wanted a bit more happiness for his unspoiled days, and I was the magic ticket. That's why he spent so much time trying to minimise what he'd done. He didn't mean it, he said. (Yes, he did) He didn't realise I'd said "no" (of course he did). He didn't know what had come over him. (I'll bet good money on the fact that it had come over him more often than he admitted) He would never do it again and by the way, he cared about me. (Just not enough to go away when I needed not to see his face.)

Most rapist apologies lack contrition, and I can tell you why: an apology is nothing more than an acknowledgement. Contrition is the opposite of acknowledgement. It does actual penitence by attempting to undo the harms you've caused. 

If R had been contrite instead of apologetic, he would have covered my medical bills and made himself as scarce as humanly possible so that I could find some recovery in the wreckage of his crime. He would have told me that what he'd done was too harmful for apologies. He would have asked me what I needed from him. He would have acknowledged the whole truth instead of minimising my pain, and he would have accepted any decision I made about criminal charges.

R asked me not to lay charges, and that's a demand, not an apology. Demands can't coexist with contrition.

If you've been on Fetlife a few years, you've heard several apologies like R's. I can't count the number I've seen, and not once have I seen a rapist offer to leave the community, put himself in an abusers' program, and cover his survivors' therapy and medical bills. Not once have I seen a rapist turn himself into the police because that was the only way they could confront the reality of their actions.

Not once.

It's almost enough to make you think rape and contrition can't coexist.