“I trusted you because you had to be a friend, you had to be nice.” These words were written almost a year ago, in a letter the author first saw as a…“purify”. With the help of an illustrator friend (@blackbeastcomics), she turned this letter into a comic strip to share “a true story” with as many people as possible: that of a young woman who was raped by a friend in the evening. Their brave and necessary work has just been published on the Instagram account @je_t_ai_ecrit_une_lettre.
When the incarceration had just ended, “Marion” went to a party organized by a friend, in honor of the “found freedom”. Too drunk to go home, she decides to sleep there. The rest she would rather never have known. In a comic published on the Instagram account @je_t_ai_ecrit_une_lettre, this young woman talks about how her friend insisted on having sex with her and how she finally gave in. By refusing her consent, this friend became her rapist.
“I wanted to share the letter I wrote to my attacker because I realized this story happened to many girls around me”, says the author. The two young women behind the strip want to “talk to other victims and tell them it’s not their fault and they’re not alone”. “We also address the aggressors, mostly men, so that they understand that pushing is not flirting and can destroy someone’s life. »
“Often we have an image of rape as an event that takes place in a dark alley. But it’s not just that, it can also be much ‘simpler’ and act as a couple, or with ‘friends’. »
Look :
This comic tells a story that unfortunately still happens to too many women. Through this courageous work, the two authors hope to create a general awareness never to hear “the same thing happened to me” again.
As a reminder, the Criminal Code defines rape as: “any act of sexual penetration, of whatever nature, committed against the person of another by means of violence, coercion, threat or surprise. Rape carries a 15-year prison sentence..